More On Enemy Territory
Wolfenstein Enemy Territory is now my new favourite game of all time. That’s a bold statement but if you’ve played it, you know what I mean. And if you’ve never played it, you’re missing out. It’s multi-player, which is a necessity, and there are lots of servers with lots of players. The graphics are good but still run on older machines. And best of all, the game play is far superior to Quake3 or Urban Terror.
What really sucked about Urban Terror was that no matter where you went, there were losers who simply sat there with their sniper rifle and killed you as you exited your team’s spawn area. While that may seem like ‘just part of the game play’, it sucks for overall enjoyment, especially given how hard it is to combat that. If faced one of those sniping spawn campers you first hard to figure out where he was, which typically takes two or three deaths (insert serious cursing and swearing at this point). Then you try the frontal assault, but given that he’s well established in some sneaky position, he sees you coming and takes you out before you can get into a good counter position. Finally, you figure out a sneaky back route that gets you to his position where you can slice him up with your knife and have a good chuckle. Unless he’s been smart and moved, in which case you start all over again from scratch (insert more cursing and swearing).
You still encounter some of this online with Enemy Territory but now you have several things to counter this. You have more players and with more targets presenting themselves, the sniper has to choose and some of us are bound to get through. You also have five different types of characters (soldiers, engineers, medics, field ops and covert ops) you can play, each with characteristics that contribute to the overall battle. And you are scored on what you contribute to the game not how many kills you get. This was the absolute best decision that the game designers made; with scoring based on how well you play your character, there is no longer a draw to the high powered scopes on sniper rifles because a sniper with a high kill count could be easily out played by an engineer who blows up all the bridges or a medic who runs around the battlefield healing everyone. And because of that, Enemy Territory is a true multiplayer game where you can simply rely on one or two good guys or act independently.
So if you run Linux only (like me) and are looking for something to occupy some free time, check it out. But be warned; the first time you play it, you’ll find that your entire day slips by and suddenly it’s 2am and you’ve missed lunch, dinner and your bedtime.
Wed, 06 Jul 2005 18:55 Posted in General
