My first thought when I played the demo:
“This is much smoother than Battlefield.”
I never thought that I would say that about a game. For me, I’ve always been a Battlefield franchise fanboy, starting with 1942, moving to the Desert Combat mod, and then through Vietnam, Battlefield 2, and finally, Battlefield 2142. I have logged hundreds of hours in all of the games of the franchise, and yet Enemy Territory: Quake Wars comes along and takes the idea of the Battlefield games, shakes it around a bit, and comes up with a new mix that is diverse, satisfying, and most of all, smooth.
The Battlefield engine has always felt cludgy to me. Character movements lacked the little polishes that you see in the Source engine or the Unreal engine. Since the game blended infantry and vehicular combat, I shrugged off my feelings as a limitation of the engine. Playing something that has the infantry combat so right, while still making the vehicular combat meaningful, is a real joy.
ET:QW is based on Id Software’s Doom3 engine, which I never found to be very spectacular. I played Doom3, I played Quake4, and neither of those games really impressed me as terribly stunning. However, seeing this engine render outdoor environments is impressive…it also makes my videocard cry. To make it playable at widescreen resolution, I’ve had to dial-down the detail substantially, but even then, the environments are gorgeous, the character and vehicle models detailed, and the gameplay furious.
I’ve only had the opportunity to play the one map that came with the demo, but I am eager for more of the objective-based gameply that the game promises. I’ve been playing “capture and hold” for years with Battlefield; having an Unreal Tournament-inspired assault type of gameplay is making me salivate.
The game releases October 2, 2007.