Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars moves the Quake series back to a time long before the invasion of the first game, when the Strogg are attacking Earth for the very first time, turning it into a purely team-based multiplayer war between the human defense force GDF and the alien invaders. The game openly builds on the concept of the free-to-download Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory from the same studio, Splash Damage – no narrated single-player with characters or story cutscenes, just large maps with a chain of sequential objectives that one team must complete within a time limit while the other tries to defend them until time runs out.

Each side offers five distinct classes with their own gear and role in the team, from a medic, through an engineer who builds fortifications and bridges, to a heavily armored machine-gunner and a stealthy scout with camouflage, and on top of that the human and alien sides each have their own set of vehicles with a completely different feel to handle. Combat plays out across both infantry and driven vehicles – buggies, tanks, flying transports, or walking Strogg war machines – on sprawling outdoor maps where the front line keeps shifting back and forth. Splash Damage built the game on a modified id Tech 4 engine supplemented with id Software's MegaTexture technology, which made it possible to render huge, seamless terrains, giving contemporary team shooters a scale closer to military action than classic arena deathmatch. Completing objectives was rewarded with experience points and gradual unlocking of class abilities, so even losing one battle pushed the character toward more useful abilities in the next, keeping the game engaging even after dozens of matches on the same map.

Why play it: Ideal for players who, after Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, were looking for a similarly open team-based war with classes, vehicles, and sprawling maps, just set this time in the sci-fi world of Quake and with a visibly larger battlefield scale.