Straight Jacket Type Fun
Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory
I'm not prone to use what could be considered a crude anology to describe a game but I can't help it when it comes to Enemy Territory. Here goes. I really hope this review is a lot better than others that have been written.
Ever purchase a porn video and there's some hot girl in it that makes you go, "Whoa!" Then, a while later your friend gives you a porn and it's that same girl and now she's in some hot sort of girl-girl action thing with lots of hair tossing and so forth? Well, the first film that you spent money on is RtCW. The second free film which is even more fun to enjoy is Enemy Territory. Yeah, that's right. Not only is Enemy Territory completely free it's even better than the original Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Let's get right to it.
Much like the original RtCW, Enemy Territory is a team-based game. There's now five unique classes of characters all of which are dependent on one another to fulfill the overall mission of the map whether it's to steal some gold, defend an objective, or destroy an object. One team attacks while the other defends. In Enemy Territory, the Allies are doing most of the attacking while the Axis are defending.
Class? You Ain't Got no Class!
The fact that it's a class based system is of paramount importance to what makes the game so much more enjoyable (and difficult) than deathmatch or even a team deathmatch style of play in other games like Quake 3 or Counter-Strike. While in those games you can often run off by yourself and still do well, attempting to do the same thing in Enemy Territory will most likely have you sitting around waiting for respawn a lot. Therefore, there's a much bigger learning curve in Enemy Territory than in other first person shooters. So if you're a new to the game you might want to read this or you might have people yelling this at you:
If you don't understand that then you are a newbie and need to get reading. Or have someone read for you. Consider it good quality time with your family, sister, or local parish.
As for the classes, there's FieldOps (Lieutenant in RtCW) which gives ammo and calls airstrikes, Medics to heal everyone, Engineers to blow up stuff, Soldiers to carry the heavy firepower, and the new CovertOps class which can carry silenced weapons, use demolitions on certain objectives, and most imporantly spot and locate the other team (and mines) and have it placed on his teammates command map. While they can carry silenced weapons and scoped sniper weapons, I feel the sniping job is secondary to finding and locating the enemy. But that's probably because I'm the one who doesn't go CovertOps. Heh..
The problem that is occurring right now is that since the game was totally free and it's new, there are a lot of people who do not have the patience, intelligence, or desire to learn how to work on a team. I'm not saying you have to be a CAL Invite player to understand the intricacies of this game but you can't simply pick up a rocket launcher and pull the trigger either. Again, read the manual that came with the game.
A little bit more on the soldier class. The Soldier class has one weapon taken away from it's inventory from RtCW (the Venom) and had it replaced a more realistic weapon (an MG42 machine gun). Go prone, pull the trigger, and watch the other guys fall. Quite simple really. On the other side of the spectrum is the mortar.
This is brand new and quite fun to play with but I do have an issue. I'm pretty sure that even though the mortar didn't work right in the beta they stated it would in the final. By working right, what do I mean?
Well, in the beta, a Covert Ops or Field Ops could use their binoculars to mark a spot so the mortar carrier could know where to aim. The mortar carrier sets up, and his HUD displays a vertical and horizontal bar with angular degrees on it. In theory, if you know your stuff, you can turn the mortar to a certain bearing and then elevate it to a certain bearing and then you get to gibbing.
Well, the problem though is that RtCW and Enemy Territory, the characters don't move at real life speed. People can jump continually and they have a sprint bar to make them move pretty fast. I'm not saying that's good or bad and in fact I'm for a little suspension of disblief. If I wanted the real thing I'd have been living in the 40's.
So, in the Beta documentation it was stated that in the final release the markings that show up on the azimuths of the mortar carrier would correct not only for horizontal but also vertical. However, now in the final, only the horizontal correction still works. I queried this issue on the Splashdamage forum and one of the Splashdamage folk (or would it be blokes since they're British) simply said, "That was a typo." Riiiiight.
The mortar carrier is now limited in his usefulness. If you get in a big public server then a mortar can be a lot of fun. Just find a spot to sit in, bracket some key points on the map and let 'er rip. I've done it and it's quite fun (top score was on the Battery map with 27 kills). My teammates and I who I play in CAL with were getting a laugh as the mortar rounds wound squash some unsupecting Engineer or as I would spawn camp the other team (yes, we're not very friendly).
However, if the vertical azimuth correction were to be fixed the mortar could become a lethal tactical weapon. In it's current state though, your team is just down another body that could be utilized a lot better if he or she carried a panzerfaust or was a medic to heal his other teammates. More importantly it would be an appealing alternative for 56kers out there. There's no real need to get into circle strafing fights (which a modem user will lose every time against a LPB) plus he/she would get to play what is without a doubt the best multiplayer experiences out there.
Gameplay Modes
Another fun feature in Enemy Territory which takes it a step beyond RtCW is in the inclusion of a campaign and ranking system. In campaign mode you not only play one map but you actually play across three maps (or six if you know how to tweak your server). So, as you progress across the maps and perform well you slowly start gaining new skills. If you're a soldier you get to reload your heavy weapons quicker, if you're a medic you can heal teammates back to full strength, or a host of other "promotions" which reward the good players. Conversely, if you join a server that's in their third map of a three map campaign you'll most likely be playing a lot of catch up as you have to start with zero rankings. In those cases it's best to take a support role like Medic or FieldOps and just help those with all the experience points (XP). While Campaign is the new map rotation scheme other types of gameplay exist as well. There's Stopwatch (one team sets time for other team to beat), Last Man Standing (One Life to Live. Die and you're done), and Objetive Mode (a more standard Capture the Flag theme type I believe).
Gameplay
How's it play? In a word: smooth. It's still the tried and true Quake-3 Net code and it's been tweaked for this game some to account for the new features.
However, it's hard for me to say just how well does it play. Since it's multiplayer the experience is dependent on the quality of the players. Sometimes you can't help it that your team is full of people running around like chickens. Other times it seems like your team is connected telepathically.
The one thing that is missing from the game is a native voice chat program. However, there are plenty of them out there like Ventrilo.
Maps and Pretty Pictures
There are six maps in the expansion. A lot of people have been clamoring for more and I don't blame them. The old maps in RtCW will not work in the new game. Perhaps some kind soul is working on that. I certainly hope so. I've become so accustomed to the old RtCW maps that it's nearly second nature to navigate them anymore. I swear I know how to get to the gold crypt on Village better than how to get to work some days (if you don't get that don't worry, I'm just saying I've played too much RtCW).
The biggest change with the new maps is that they are much bigger (average mission time is now 20-30 minutes where in RtCW it was 10-15 minutes) plus they have a lot more topographical definition. There's more hills, valleys, and narrow hallways to explore. Plus there are now weather effects in two of the maps. On Railgun it's snow and on Radar it's rain. While you can turn off the weather be warned that some servers consider that a cheat and will kick you for it. Plus there's a whole lot more to do especially for the Engineer. On GoldRush, for example, the Axis Engineer needs to be build three or four roadblocks, a command posts, and lay mines to slow down the enemy. If you want to learn the maps, go Engineer for a while.
Note the old school face throwback in the bottom left
Server Side and Misc.
Currently, I'm hosting a server and you can find it in the in-game browser as |R| Come Get Some. There appears to be a problem with Win32-based servers crashing from time to time but SplashDamage has stated they're working on a server-side fix.
There are two features that deserve mention. One is Punkbuster and the other is OSP. Punkbuster is anti-cheat software developed by EvenBalance software. It's a server side program that checks a clients settings for possible violations. While leagues such as CAL and OGL have made up their own rules for server admins to add to their PB database file, a server admin can set his PB settings to whatever he wants. Or he could even turn PB off. Punkbuster is a very handy tool which will help keep most of the most blatant hack and cheaters off your server. It even includes a web based administration tool so if you're the uber control freak you could still administrate it while at school or moving back into your parent's basement.
OSP (Orange Smoothie Productions) is an in-game server tool that was developed by some clever fellows and it's now been incorporated natively into the game. OSP allows an administrator to quickly change server settings from public to competition mode, kick annoying players, or shuffle teams around to even the playing field. The inclusion of both OSP and PB makes Enemy Territory one of the easiest games to administrate and setup even if you're new to the server admin game.
Conclusion
Well, it's free to download, it's got awesome overall gameplay, and graphics. What's the problem here? Go download it already and get to playing.