Background:
I am a long time player of Splashdamage games, perhaps known by some of you as a scripter/mapmaker/folk hero. I played W:ET since its launch 8 years ago, coincidentally the same day that my oldest child was born. Talk about a great day! But I digress. Over the years I’ve played a great many FPS games, but I became hooked on the complex teamplay and progressive objective completion of the Enemy Territory family of games. When my old ET buddies rushed out to get Brink, I also did the same, even though my duties as a husband and father limit my playing time nowadays. In any case, I made the following observations about the newest iteration of the ET-style games:
My system, for your reference:
Windows XP Pro SP3
Intel I7 - 860 CPU
3.5 GB of RAM
Intel Extreme Series Motherboard
nVidia GTS 250 PCIe video card
As you can see, my system is well beyond the recommended system requirements, so I had no issue there.
The Good:
In spite of many reports that I have seen to the contrary, I had no bugs or visual artifacts of any kind. The game installed and ran perfectly, as far as I could tell. No crashes, nothing unusual at all.
The game once again captures the spirit of complex teamplay. I spent most of last evening tearing up unsuspecting nublets and buffing my teammates left and right. It was fun, much as I expected. SMART is cute. I had a guy slide up to me and kick me in the head last night. An interesting sight from my point of view.
There is even more class depth in this game than in previous ET games, along with a ridiculous level of customisability. This feature is almost an annoyance to me, but I see how it could appeal to people who really want to have a unique looking character.
The levels load very rapidly in my opinion. I was quite surprised at how fast my system could load cut-scenes and the next level simultaneously. Nicely done.
Shooting seems to have good prediction and accuracy, no complaints there.
SMART adds a new dimension to movement. I found it interesting, but sort of a “frosting on the cake”. I don’t think that it fundamentally changes the game, but again for some players I’m sure it will be more compelling. I’ve always been more focused on fixing the truck, or blowing up the wall, or whatever, than getting there in style.
The Bad:
When I jump as a medium, I feel like I am wearing concrete boots. It seems like I can only jump about six inches in the air if I’m not sprinting. In fact all movement feels slow to me after ET and ETQW, so I guess that I am biased.
I did feel like that at times there was some choppiness in movements that made them look un-natural. ETQW sometimes had the same, odd looking movement. All of the SMART movement looked much smoother however.
I also didn’t see any reason the have the cutscenes play during online play. I’m playing the story mode offline, thanks.
I can’t seem to cycle my weapons to cook off a grenade prior to throwing it. Maybe I just haven’t figured it out yet.
The Indifferent:
Too many weapons for my taste, but I’m sure there are some min/max combinations to be found.
I’ve always been sworn off on XP save, and I’m not changing my opinion. Nevertheless, I’m sure that many other players like the cumulative XP system.
It takes about a bajillion bullets to finish off downed foes. This may be for balance, but it seemed silly to me to have to waste so many bullets on downed foes. And yes, only a fool does not finish them off in ET games.
I found the ‘distance to target’ hints to not be very useful. I found the difficult part to be finding my way through the buildings just from not knowing the maps, and the distance indicator didn’t help me if I was on the wrong floor. Your mileage may vary.
Conclusion:
I think the game is worth the money if you’re willing to work as a team and be patient. The game sort of reminds me of ETQW meets Counter Strike: Source in terms of the graphics and some of the mission (the hostage one, for example). It does a decent job of capturing the essence of the ET franchise while providing a lot of bonus features for players coming from different gaming backgrounds. I find some of these features to be distracting, but overall it’s a fun game, and I’m glad to be back fragging my buddies once again…
–Mortis