While we can’t say exactly when the title will ship for console, given id’s rote mantra “It’ll be out when it’s done…,” we can say that id, Activision and Nerve Software (which is developing the Xbox 360 version) recently showed us a build of the game they’re referring to as being in the “beta” stage. While it’s surely speculation on our part, the “beta” proclamation and what we saw on the screen indicate that the game has to be pretty close to being ready for public consumption.

If you aren’t familiar with the PC release, a little summary: Quake Wars is set in the time before Quake II, where Earth is fending off the Strogg attack. The companies state that those intimately familiar with the Quake timeline and story, will see familiar technology from that period. As such, you get to play on either the GDF (Global Defense Force) side or the alien Strogg side.

Quake Wars’ gameplay is an interesting mix of genres: It has a first-person shooter as its chewy, chocolate center, but it also features objective-based team action as its tasty, candy-coated outer shell. Much of the game involves picking off players from the other faction—could it be called Quake if it didn’t enable that?—but the design sets up scoring based on the completion of objectives. It looks like it’ll be a challenge to decide what to concentrate on at any given moment.

Of course, the team-based structure is key, in that you’ll generally be doing what’s needed to help the group, as, in any given match, one team plays “offense,” while the other plays “defense.” Each faction has five roles from which you can choose to be—such as the GDF’s medic or field-ops soldier. Both groups have similar roles on their respective sides, though there are some differences.

Also, while it’s intended to be a team game—supporting up to 16 players total—you can play it alone or with a couple of friends, and Quake Wars will fill the open slots with bots, as well as set up the AI to play in roles needed to round out the teams. You can set up a match to enable you to utilize bots in different ways, such as restricting them to not doing objectives for you. It also enables players to run matches via System Link or Xbox Live, and if you’re online, you can structure it so that you and your friends are a “party,” enabling you to all go into a match together.

The game comes with a comprehensive Training Mode that gives you a guide bot to step you through everything you need to accomplish and how to compete every part of the objectives. It looks to be a great starter for learning all the aspects of the roles, though if you decide to rough it, the screens that describe each role indicate the abilities in relation to specific objective needs. You can also change your role in the middle of a match, which basically kills off your current character and enables you to restart at the nearest spawn point in your desired role.

Each map (of the 12 that will be available out of the box) features different objectives. For example, in the Sewer map that we saw, the Strogg are trying to poison a city. To stop them, the human “offense” had to go in and take down a Strogg shield, follow that up by blowing one of the two grates enabling access into another area, and finish up by hacking into Strogg nodes. Each objective requires different roles to complete, so you’ll need to rely on various players across the team and communicate between you in order to complete everything that needs to be done to achieve victory.

Additionally, there is experience earned for completing objectives and matches, but the “growth” of any player depends on what they’ve accomplished. For instance, an engineer will get XP for doing repairs during a match, but not for shooting enemies. The game tracks your progress in what the companies say is “nearly a thousand stats,” with medals and achievements granted for certain milestones. Also, this structure extends between the offline and online games, so you can build up your proficiencies in a bot match, then go it into online games with your higher skills. Bots also “grow” with you, so you’ll notice that they become more proficient as you play.

Visually, the game uses an id technology called “MegaTextures,” and the result is a selection of maps comprised of a variety of terrain types. For instance, you can look down at your feet—if you can find time between bullets whizzing by and vehicles trying to run you down—to see a patch of snow on a dirty path or see a mix of grass and soil, and it’ll have a realistic look that’s made up of tiles, but doesn’t look like it’s tiled. The tech apparently enables smoother transitions of the seams from one texture to the next. Frankly, we don’t care how id does it, but it worked for us: The landscape looked less like a game level and more like a battlefield.

As we said, we don’t know when Quake Wars will be ready for stores, but we expect to get at least another look at it and hopefully get a chance to play before that time. When that happens, we’ll be sure to bring you our impressions, so stick with TeamXbox for updates.

From Team Xbox.  

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written by Josh upton, April 06, 2008

that is sick!

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