PC Game Review: Enemy Territory Review, A Free Shooting Game
Introduction
Part 3 of our free shooters series is going to deal with Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. A FPS that is set during World War II, the game was initially developed as an expansion pack to Return to Castle Wolfenstein. According to press releases, the single-player game mode was not up to par so Splash Damage released multiplayer game for free on May 29, 2003. The multiplayer engine is the game that was then open sourced and a wealth of modifications began to be developed. It is nearly impossible to now join a server that isn’t rigged with varying gameplay mods.
Gameplay
6 officially released maps mimic World War II campaigns in addition to many other custom-made maps. Players that are killed respawn in a certain time limit set by each server. The only exception to this is a “Last Man Standing” game mode that is true to its title. Usually, there are objectives for the attacking team to complete and a set time limit for them to complete it. Like in the previous game we reviewed in this series, America’s Army, the defense team must prevent the attacking team from completing their objectives. A stalemate gives victory to the defense team.
The characters are skinned as Allied or Axis soldiers and carry a multitude of realistic weapons from that time period including pistols, machine guns, and flamethrowers. As a player progresses in a server they earn experience points that are often relevant to the class of solider they are: engineer, regular soldier, field ops, medic, or covert ops. Depending on the server settings, a player’s experience may be saved or kept but is for future sessions but experience points are not unique to each server and not interchangeable. The weaponry for each type of soldier is different and gives unique abilities such as a field op soldier being able to call air-strikes.
The multiplayer experience can be fun with pre-programmed voice commands chat functionality. Gameplay is governed by the anti-cheating software creator PunkBuster.
Requirements
The minimum system requirements listed by Splash Damage are a 600 MHz CPU, 128mb RAM, and a 32MB OpenGL graphics card. Not very demanding requirements at all – most modern computers will be able to play this game and maximum or above average graphics settings.
Conclusion (3 out of 5)
As a free shooter that was not originally developed to be one, Enemy Territory lacks some refinement that a full retail game might offer. The graphics are not stunning, and the gameplay feels like it can’t decide between being realistic or unrealistic. But for a whole $0, this shooter is sure to be a great time killer (pun intended). 3/5
Screenshots
Free Shooters Series
Part 1: “Soldat” | Part 2: “America’s Army” | Part 3: Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory
