Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory

"Best Free Game? Mabye."

Enemy territory is a great game made better by the fact that it's free. Because of that I gave it a little more leeway in rating it.

Graphics 8/10
Although the graphics are 2 years old and do lag at times you can actually see blood on your character's face. Outdoors, the game chugs. On a mid-level computer, the game runs pretty smoothly until an explosion happens. Then, it chops up worse than a Swiss army knife. This is a killing point of the game because there is at least 1 time where you will be trying to blow something up. Indoors is where this game shines but is pretty useless because most of the action is outside. I don't think it's fair; however that Activision and Splash Damage made a free game for the high-end computer owner.

Gameplay 8/10
The game play combines the multiplayer of Star Wars: Battlefront with Medal of Honor: Frontline's WWII setting. Now don't get me wrong, WWII has been so done to death, every game should ship with a toe tag. But I have only played one of them and I thought it fun. But that is me and not you. Of course there is a D-Day level, but it is unfair as the germans have the ability to call in lots of air support. As the Allies, the average life span is 10 seconds in that level just starting out. Sooner or later someone will pull a miracle and make it to the next part. There, things start going your way. After the ten minutes that it takes to storm the beaches at Normandy, It takes a mere five to finish the rest of your objective. This is where the game stops being fun and it starts being annoying. As an added problem, you must play this level! Other than that, the gameplay runs fast-paced and team based. When you start the level you will have to choose a side (either the axis or the allies) and class. The classes are soldier, heavy weapons, engineer, field ops., and covert ops.. The game is set that the game cannot be won by a single player against a team. The game has you completing objectives that are done as a different class. (No army of 1 stuff here!)

Audio 6/10
The audio is very arcade-y and becomes annoying at times. Because this is World War 2 there is lots of gunfire (90% at least). The other ten percent is taken up by the voice cues and the fanfare that coincides leveling up. The menu music doesn't match the setting at all.

Story 1/10
It's WWII. What else do you want? I am truly sorry that this game doesn't get any deeper than that. This game could have been so much more than killing the opposition and taking names.

Other stuff 6/10
This game has one of the largest mod communities I have ever seen. There are maps, editors, and client mods. The client mods are important because a lot of hosts won't let you play unless you have theirs'. This causes you to search the Internet to find this file by and means necessary because you can't play without it. Then, after hours of painstaking 404 errors, you find the file and download it, only to find that this download has spyware! That's right, spyware! After another 10 hours spent removing it, you have to figure out which folder to add it to because the author forgot to add it. The next day that host is gone and another host with another client mod is in his/her place. It's a vicious cycle that will never end. Hats off to the developers for making a very customizable game but this is ridiculous! Other than that it is all good.

I love this game; I just don't like the downloads.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 05/09/05