A Game Lost In the Shuffle: Quake Wars

I figured it’s been a while since I did any video game related blogging on here.

In a post Team Fortress 2 world it’s difficult for most team and class based multiplayer shooters like Quake Wars to garner attention. It’s especially difficult to win over sales when a game has absolutely zero marketing. Let’s not forget to mention the horrible console ports that left a bad taste in people’s mouth and thus starting that word of mouth domino effect. I nearly avoided even trying the PC demo for this game because of the bad experience I had on XBOX 360. Luckily, I was persuaded into trying it by a community member who said the game on PC was a completely different experience. And it is!

There’s a big discrepancy between a game like Team Fortress 2 and Quake Wars. Some seem to think it's the exact same game only with much less charm and an obvious lack of Valve ingenuity (unless you played Enemy Territory: Wolfenstein). That's not entirely true. In Team Fortress 2 there’s only one clear objective that you and your team must focus on. It’s great, and I'm not saying one is better than the other, but one thing I like about Quake Wars is that I feel like I'm worth something to my team.

See, I suck at Team Fortress 2 for very obvious reasons. One is that I don't play as much as I should, and the second is that I just can't compete with these PC gaming veterans. Though I'll always love Team Fortress 2, sometimes I need something else.

Quake Wars does things a little differently. It makes you feel competent by infusing a single player-esque style of play into it's multiplayer. It gives each class specific objectives to accomplish. Whether it’s placing deployables, hacking spawn points, building bridges, there‘s always something for you to do and make you feel like you‘re contributing -- mostly because you can run off and do something else if one objective is too hard. It deliberately forces teamwork as well. Each time you complete a goal you help your team push forward to accomplish your primary objective

The game makes it quite clear what you‘re supposed to do throughout the game, and it’s constantly keeping you up to date to avoid any confusion.



There are enough noticeable differences between the Strogg and the GDF (the two opposing teams in the game), especially with the way classes operate that definitely spikes up the learning curve. One key difference is the way health and ammo are distributed by other classes. On the GDF side of things you’ll have medics giving out health and reviving players, and field ops dispensing ammo. Strogg use a unified source of energy for both health and ammunition called “stroyent cells” that are distributed by the team‘s “Technician“.

The game did only ship with twelve maps but each one is incredibly large and has plenty of terrain variation. You’ll encounter open battles, corridor shootouts, and you’ll even find yourself defending or attacking bases depending on your current objective -- all of that in the same level and the same round. Portal into another world during a multiplayer FPS game say what?

It really is a bummer no one plays this game. Perhaps this blog will persuade some of you to pick up a copy and jump in. It’s not like the game costs much anymore. You can find a new collector’s edition copy from a reputable 3rd party Amazon seller for under $10. Or if you’d like a copy directly from them, they sell the standard edition for $10. Less if it’s on sale (which it usually is).

Add me on STEAM if you plan on buying it or already own it (vexed_alex)!

Things that you may not like:

This game is over a year old. The graphics aren’t horrible, but they’re also not very stellar. The artstyle isn't very unique either.

Similar with graphics, the sound is very poor and stock. Guns sound isn't very impressive, and neither are explosions.

Weapons don’t feel like they have a kick to them. You'll probably feel much more powerful with a paintball gun than you do with some of the guns in this game. That's not to say they're technically weak.

Vehicles are there, but they’re much less useful than in games like Battlefield. It isn’t a bad thing for me, but some of you who played BF2 and want more of that should look elsewhere. Flight vehicles have a very steep learning curve as well.