Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory Review

Looking back, one could say that Return to Castle Wolfenstein was a well executed title. It had a decent enough single-player adventure coupled with some awesome multiplayer action, courtesy of the people at Nerve Software. The single-player portion of the game was made by Gray Matter Studios, with the original license belonging to id Software.

Given the game's success, one would expect that Activision would publish a full-blown retail expansion pack some time after the release of the original. Things didn't work out according to plan, however, and so the retail product with both single-player and multiplayer modes was scrapped in favor of a free; yes - free stand-alone MP expansion which you can download. The expansion is entitled Enemy Territory and it is developed by a group of relative newcomers - a studio called Splash Damage. The entire installation file weighs in at a fairly modest 264MB, and you don't need the original Return to Castle Wolfenstein to play the game.

As I said, the expansion is multiplayer only, which in itself is not at all bad, as the folks at Splash Damage had more time to perfect the gameplay, tweak the online code and work on the graphics. Obviously, including a single-player game would bring the whole project right back to the beginning, as its implementation was the very reason why Activision decided to scrap it altogether and release Enemy Territory as a free stand-alone expansion pack.

As it stands, Enemy Territory is a damn fine; and (did I mention it was free?) add-on, which improves on an already engaging and addictive multiplayer from the original. Right off the bat, the game comes with the support for PunkBuster - a handy utility that blocks out cheaters from attempting to use cheat codes in online matches. I'm sure you all know how big of a problem that was in Counter-Strike. Having a cheater-free server ensures that the matches (excuse me, campaigns) will be very intense, interesting to watch and fun to participate in.

Splash Damage programmers have introduced some rather novel concepts to the game. In all honesty, none of them are what you'd call 'groundbreaking,' but they're novel enough to get both rookies and experienced players excited about Enemy Territory.

According to Splash Damage "Probably the biggest of these (innovations) is the campaign game mode and the persistent attributes for players. In playing Enemy Territory online, two teams battle each other through a series of three missions that make up a single campaign. There will be two campaigns in Enemy Territory: North Africa and Northern Europe." So in stead of fighting just one battle, you're actually fighting a war.

As many of you already know "Each player picks a character class, such as engineer, soldier, field ops, or covert ops, and then makes use of that class's special abilities, class-specific weapons, and inventory items.

During combat, your use of seven different skills is recorded and you are awarded experience points (XPs). Whenever one of these skills reaches a new level, you are given a reward relevant to the skill. For example, for achieving level four in "battle sense," you are awarded "trap awareness" as a new ability--this allows you to locate nearby enemy land mines."

But more importantly; and in connection to the campaign game mode; these skills are persistent across missions until the end of the campaign.

Obviously, the idea here is to encourage team play as much as possible (besides the fact that you'll need specific classes like an engineer to even win in certain situations), as players are rewarded XPs based on mission goals and their skill, rather than just on how many frags they had.

Other new features include an additional covert ops class (can steal uniforms from dead enemy players and use these to infiltrate the enemy base, and then place a satchel charge), the augmentation of the engineer class (more often being required to construct a bridge, deploy a command post, or repair a tank), the command map, the new weapons, and the overhauled interface. All this comes together very nicely, and lets you enjoy the game even more so than before.

Granted, folks are still rather confused on the servers (they don't know the maps that well), so the concept of team play is not really in place yet, but, in between matches, I could notice people asking for medics and engineers to join their team, which is a very good sign for the future. If given proper attention by the online community, these new features, which are included in ET, could result in some incredible in-game tactics once the gameplay has matured a bit.

Splash Damage has done an excellent job on the maps as well. They are rather large and tailored for conquest type matches. The biggest advantage of the new maps is that they provide very lifelike settings, and also, a great variety of environments suitable for close and mid range combat. If positioned properly, a player with a semi-automatic sniper rifle (my favorite weapon at the moment) can pick away unsuspecting charging enemies before they even realize what hit them. But, if you happen to end up in a tight corridor, you won't stand a chance against a rushing soldier with an MP40 assault rifle.

Graphically, I love how Splash Damage programmers have added the swaying grass, but the rest of the game looks pretty-much like RtCW.

The whole process of joining an online game is as straightforward as it gets, and the net code is VERY stable. I played over ISDN and DSL, and if you set the connection rate properly, you shouldn't get any lag whatsoever. I played for four hours today and it was awesome (14 players on the server). The net code didn't give me any trouble, which means that I could snipe away with ease, and I could basically hit people wherever and whenever I wanted. What more can you ask for in an online shooter? I thoroughly enjoyed the experience points system, and I feel that once the players are more accustomed to the new rules, Enemy Territory will actually play like a team-based shooter rather than a free-for-all deathmatch like you would game in today's Counter-Strike matches. The servers support up to 64 players and it's highly recommended that you have PunkBuster on, or otherwise, you won't be able to join some the servers that have that option enabled.

In closing I guess you can't go wrong if you download this free expansion. It ain't like it will cost you anything! I won't score Enemy Territory, but I consider it a fine multiplayer project that gets two thumbs up from the trigger happy crew at Actiontrip.com. Now leave me be! I'm off to join my favorite French server. I get good pings there, and get to type in stuff like "French people smell like decomposing goat carcasses" in French. I use one of those wacky translation programs...