Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory

"Unique among other shooters."

To me, Return to Castle Wolfenstein's Single Player sucked. After I finished it, I felt that shooting at AI wasn't really fun. I was more in the mood for a multiplayer gameplay, but I realized that RtCW didn't have one. That sucked even more. But then ID Software made an expansion pack, called Enemy Territory, for multiplayer gaming over the Internet. But hearing that it only contains six maps, I thought it wasn't worth the money. Boy, was I a dumbass. I heard from a friend of mine that Enemy Territory is now a free, stand-alone game that was up for download. I was like, “Hmm, since it's free, I guess I will give it a try, then uninstall it after it consumes more disk space.” But I never did. =)

Graphics-9/10
The graphics. Textures were great, albeit it's similar to other textures. And the environment was like, “Wow. Not bad for a WWII game.” The character models definitely fit the WWII genre, and the part of your HUD where you see your character's face, and when you receive damage, the face starts bleeding and all. It's an old Wolfenstein feature, but it's greatly improved. And the weapons don't look shabby, either. Plus, it gets even better, when it ran on a powerful engine (much like Unreal Engine) that even a computer with 128 MB of RAM can handle this baby.

Sounds-9/10
Sound effects were great, it definitely keeps you awake (if you have your volume on full blast) and excites you and stuff. Allies and Axis have a voice menu of their own. I personally like the Axis voice menu, because they're accents are hilarious. Kein Problem! Danke Sehr!

Controls-10/10
This is your typical FPS-style controls: Your mouse for looking around and shooting. Your W, S, D, and A keys for moving/strafing. And your number keys to switch weapons and other things. But in W:ET, you can switch from running to power running (in which you run really fast, but it drains your energy [not HP] very quick). It makes W:ET kind of unique from other FPS games' controls.

Gameplay-9/10
What good is a game when there isn't any gameplay? The gameplay in W:ET definitely ups the fun factor. Of course, you got your weapons – including a Panzerfaust and Steg – and your character positions. Let's say you want to help someone out by healing him. Be a medic. Being a medic, you can throw med kits on the ground for your teammates to grab when they're injured, or when they are hit and wounded on the ground, you can revive him by using a needle. I think this position is great for beginner players, since the Medic can heal himself, and gets XP points really easily. The intermediate players can use the field ops. Field ops can support their teammates by throwing ammo packs, and cam call for artillery support or an aerial strike to wipe out huge hoards of opponents. I think it's not fair to have that kind of advantage, since I die every time I run outside. Next in line is the engineer. The engineer has to know what they are doing. They are the main people to complete a game. They can repair weapons and clear out obstacles with their dynamite. But my advice to you, is that if you want to be an engineer during a game, always have your teammates around you to cover you while you're doing your stuff. And the last two, Convert Ops and the Soldier. Soldiers have four powerful weapons in their arsenal, one of them is my personal favorite, the flamethrower. Convert Ops are responsible for sniping or shooting from a far distance. They have three guns, one including the sniper rifle. I use the Convert Op whenever there is a hill or a high platform, so I can snipe my enemies and gain some crazy XP.
And the only, but excellent, official gametype for W:ET is the Objective. Allies (AKA the Assault team) must complete anything, from escorting a tank from start to finish, destroying at least one objective with the engineer's dynamite, pull a switch, or a mix of everything. I like the tank Objective. The gametype is somewhat unique from other WWII gametypes. Oh yeah, and I forgot – THE MAPS! There are only 6 maps in all, and like I said earlier, I thought it sucked. But after playing all six of them, I was like, “Wow, the maps are so huge and colorful!” Plus, there's a map editing tool out there for download in which you yourself can make maps for W:ET as easy as one, two, three! Without any map editor, there will only be six maps, and it kinda gets boring, so I'm glad ID put this feature in.

Overall, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory is a great multiplayer game. In fact, it reached 4th to 5th place on GameSpy's multiplayer stats chart, with an average of ten thousand players! There are occasional tournaments, so there'll be plenty of competition.

***9/10***

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/16/05