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Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Demo
Written by Jim Rossignol on September 10, 2007 at 7:02 pm.
The Enemy Territory: Quake Wars demo can be downloaded from here, or a little faster here. It is around 740mb big. ATI users need to download and install this, in order to avoid frustration.
The demo does not include this lovely map.
The demo includes the map from the beta test, Valley, which, while being fairly representative of the action from the game as a whole, is not the finest map the game has to offer. I can say this with some certainty because I’ve played Splash Damage at the entire game, including a run through each of the four campaigns. My PC Gamer review will contain my thoughts on that experience in a week or two. I’ll link to it when it comes online. Meanwhile, for information on a more exciting map, take a look at this spoiler-packed preview. I’m calling “spoilers” on this one because I honestly can’t think of another multiplayer FPS where the maps could be spoiled by being talked about beforehand – ETQW’s maps are huge and surprising.
If you’re going to have a crack at the demo – and you’re going to be a miserable sod if you don’t – take a few things into account:
- The Strogg and GDF experience is quite different. GDF have to attack on this map, and Strogg defend. The GDF must build a bridge, move a mobile base, kill a tower thing, launch a bunker-busting missile, and then assault an installation. Meanwhile the Stroggs must fight a retreat. Although the classes are paralleled on either side, they are not mirror-images of each other, and every single class has a wide range of different equipment. Try everything.
- Check out the mission system, I think the key is ‘m’ to select a mission. The HUD information for it appears top left on your screen. The missions will change dynamically depending on your class and the situation of your team. Both the game and your team will generate missions for you. Tell me this won’t be in the next Battlefield game – it’s an awesome feature.
- Chuckle as the guttural Strogg shock troops politely say “Thankyou” and “You’re welcome” in the voice bind menu.
ETQW will arrive on 28th September, although there’s no word as to whether it’ll be on Steam, as far as I know…
EDIT: Other places to try and get this demo are listed here. And there’s an offical torrent here.
Also, there’s a detailed guide to the demo’s map here.
Related Stories:
26__________________
Martin Coxall says:
So.
I played it for about ten minutes.
Good Christ that was an irritating ten minutes. One for the ADHD fratboy dickhole demographic, I guess.
Which is to say, ID’s natural customer base.
September 10th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
SwiftRanger says:
Bwoa, the asymmetry definitely makes it a deeper experience (if you’re willing to get into it, which may take more than a few hours) although I don’t see it becoming the StarCraft of multiplayer FPS’s as well. I hope some of the sounds (bullet impact) have been fixed and the vehicle tracking too, some stuff just didn’t work out that well in both beta versions.
September 10th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Mr Wonderstuff says:
Kinda fun…as a n00b I took the role of sniper…typically pissed off the entire opposite team. Runs pretty nicely but the mouse movement seems a little ‘heavy’…mouselag?
September 10th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
John Walker says:
Sigh – the entire thing chugged hideously on my uber-machine, the mouse barely moving on the options screen, let alone the game itself.
September 10th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
The_B says:
Bah.
I’m not likely to try it then until I get a new rig. And I love ET.
:(
September 10th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
Turin Turambar says:
Sorry Martin Coxall if the game is not for you, but actually Id Software is in the business before the ADHD fratboy collective was recognized as such.
:P
September 10th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
Surreal says:
That ATI patch link goes to the support homepage rather than the patch itself (due to the site’s irritating use of frames).
This is a direct link to what I think is the page of the right patch:
href=”http://support.ati.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=29459
September 10th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
tim e says:
I really, really like this. It took a round or so before I understood what was going on – but I was soon jetpacking across the sky, dropping bombs on GDI covert ops. There’s a lot of stuff to learn, and the interface is pretty intimidating, but I think it’s worth persevering with.
September 11th, 2007 at 12:11 am
roBurky says:
Really not impressed, and I haven’t even played it yet. It seems to run like crap on my new PC, and has some horrible mouse lag.
September 11th, 2007 at 12:31 am
fatty says:
Its pretty tasty to be honest. If it runs badly on your ‘uber-rig’ i think you should quit willy waving as your rig aint that hot. I run it on a medium spec rig: core 2 duo e4000 / 2gb ddr2 / 7900gtx and its absoultey spanking looking.
Anyway back to the Demo, having played ET for years i had no issues dropping in and getting it on. If you are new to it, try it offline with bots or just pick and class and a mission(m key) and get stuck in!
September 11th, 2007 at 11:27 am
Alex Hopkinson says:
Apparently dual monitor setups with Nvidia cards need to fire up the Nvidia control panel and under 3D Settings, toggle multi-display to Single Display Performance Mode.
September 11th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Alex Hopkinson says:
Unfortunately, “apparently” in my previous comment was short for “I saw this the QT3 thread about the demo”, so I have absolutely no first-hand advice to offer you Rob!
September 11th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
Crispy says:
You DO NOT need an uber rig to run this. I’ve been fine running in 1040×768 with 1024MB (good quality, paired) RAM, a (single core) 3800+ and an X1900 GT (256MB) on WinXP (Home Ed).
I strongly suggest joining a sub-100ms latency server and making sure it’s not server-client lag that’s ruining your experience because through both the Betas the game has been running fine. If you’re in the UK check out the Rackage servers (which should crop up in a latency
September 11th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Crispy says:
(I see I can’t use the ‘less than’ sign thanks to the XHTML code -_-)
…which should crop up in a sub-100ms filter listing). I’d avoid the bot servers unless you’re looking for a quick tutorial, in which case they’re actually quite good, but generally the bots are rubbish at attacking (which the Stroggs have to do on the first objective of valley to defend the bridge). It’s probably worth working out how to fly the air vehicles too against bots, because crashing a crew-laden Bumblebee will have you sticky-labelled from head to toe in distasteful descriptors.
September 11th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
Tim E says:
Oh. I just discovered that you can disguise yourself as the enemy team, and release hhovering, radio controlled bombs. Woo!
September 11th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
Mr Wonderstuff says:
Yea the disguise thing is really weird. I Keep getting team-killed :-(
September 11th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
Homunculus says:
Huh. Those beta ATI drivers cause loss of signal to my monitor after POST. I don’t even get to see the Windows XP splash screen. Same with the most recent official Catalyst drivers. I’ve had to revert to the beta drivers that were released especially for Bioshock at the tail end of August, which work fine. How peculiar and somewhat mildly infuriating.
September 11th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
Si says:
On the (off)topic of the ATI drivers, the Bioshock beta ones, and the new ones for Quake Wars have done…something to WoW. But only the trees. In most zones I’m fine. But if there’s a tree anywhere on screen, my framerate dip awfully. Which is fun, what with the main city in Outland being in a gorram forest.
September 11th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
Pretzel says:
Played it twice over the weekend. It’s pretty fun, but I’d like to see the other maps first. This one is pretty cool, but I’ve experienced a bunch of really short games where the GDF immediately accomplished 3 goals in a minute.
While I generally like the game, it’s got some faults. The hud is scattershot full of text and alerts. They really should have streamlined it. To add to the pain, they allow players to insert color changes into their names, which destorys any readability they had from color coding things.
The GDF voices are wierd. Voice responses like “Thanks” and “You’re welcome” are done in this annoying sarcastic tone that detracts from the mood.
The biggest problem of all, though, is that 90% of the time you have no idea what killed you. Just suddenly your dead and hope you can read your deathmessage in time to figure out who killed you. Since the map is this wide open terrain, you’re often sniped from a guy a mile away with no chance of avoiding it, or responding to it by taking him out. Maybe that’s “realistic”, but this isn’t a realistic shooter, and dying for no apparent reason isn’t fun.
Every once in a while you get told you’ve been promoted, but you’re never given a reason why, so you don’t know what you’re doing that’s so good. The game apparently wants to encourage you to improve, but doesn’t explain itself so the whole thing is a bust.
The statistics are kind of nice, but they’re not very usefull. Knowing who the best was at heavy weapons versus light weapons seems like a banal distinction, while knowing the “least accurate” player is simply kicking someone when they’re down (and most likely to quit).
September 13th, 2007 at 4:31 am
Crispy says:
(Hopes he got the XHTML code right)
Every once in a while you get told you’ve been promoted, but you’re never given a reason why, so you don’t know what you’re doing that’s so good. The game apparently wants to encourage you to improve, but doesn’t explain itself so the whole thing is a bust.
I agree with this. They do explain it vaguely via the persistent stats screen, but some proper explanation would be welcome. Through both Betas 1 and 2 it was only very recently that I learnt how to tech up in ‘Battlesense’, and even then I only know it’s something to do with staying alive and getting a good K:D ratio.
September 15th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Cool to Hate « Seniath’s Blog says:
[...] comment I once saw (actually directed at me), on RPS (and I must admit, it rather offended me): Martin Coxall [...]
July 6th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Islandesque says:
Pow!
November 28th, 2008 at 12:02 am
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Excellent, was looking for something to keep me entertained tonight in lieu of raiding (monday is our off-night) or, well, anything else. Shame it’s gonna take about four hours to download. And then probably an hour to find a good server. And then I’ll quit after 5 minutes when I remember why I never play any online games ’sides WoW.
September 10th, 2007 at 7:48 pm