May 31, 2008

One of My Favourites: Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory

Updated: June 07, 2008 (Created May 31, 2008)

An ET review from a medium-skilled player who enjoys the game

Introduction
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (or ET for short) is a FPS (First Person Shooter) game, native for Linux, which borrows concepts from Return to Castle Wolfenstein, and uses the Quake 3 engine. The idea initially was to develop it as a new commercial RtCW mod, but, ultimately, it was released as a free standalone, multiplayer game, after the developers abandoned the development of the single player part of the game.

Gameplay
It was released in May 2003, and ever since, it is one of the most played online games. It features several modes like Jaymod or No Quarter, and 6 default maps playable in two available campaigns, the Central Europe campaign (including Wurzburg Radar, Fueldump, Railgun) and the South Africa campaign (including Siwa Wasis, Seawall Battery, Goldrush). Each campaign puts two forces face to face, Allies and Axis, and each team has to accomplish certain objectives (or keep the other team not to) in order to win.

Battery Recharged (click to enlarge)



Each team benefits of 5 types of classes (Soldier, Medic, Engineer, Covert Ops, Field Ops) and each class has its own special features. For example the Covert Ops can steal enemy uniforms, or the medic can heal and revive friendly players.

The good thing about the class types is that this way you will have to take a different approach for each of them. For example, the medic will let soldiers go into the middle of the battle, and supply them with health packs and revive them when it's the case, keeping out of enemy fire if possible. Don't mind the frags: you receive experience for objectives you accomplish, including healing friendly players.

Online playing
The online playing experience is awesome: weapons which need real skill in order to be used at full potential, grenades of all kinds (a new weapon introduced in Jaymod is the Cocktail Molotov). You can find servers with active players nearly at any time, and most of them have a system to never reset the experience points (not a very good idea if you ask me, but some players like it that way).

Many more maps and skins are available for download, and usually all the major modes include some interesting new feature. The game does not receive updates any more, but the available modes are in constant development and improvement.

Siwa Oasis - a true classic (click to enlarge)



Particular aspect: trickjumps
It is also known for its videos and demonstrations of the so-called 'trickjumps', which can be mastered only by practising and playing for a long time. One famous example would be a bug in the Oasis map, where you could jump over a wall using trickjump, despite the fact that the developers never intended to have it that way. There are servers dedicated only to trickjumps, running maps specially designed for it. Mastering trickjumps is a way of getting respected by other players and be regarded as a highly skilled player. Of course, trickjumps are not everything: you have to be a useful team-mate and struggle to be part of a team. If you ask me, I never liked those players who only play as medics and usually heal no one but themselves, making points while their team loses (medics in new versions of Jaymod cannot use healthpacks any more, so this is no longer an issue if you play Jaymod).

The Paris Bastille map (click to enlarge)



The well-known, commercial game Enemy Territory: Quake Wars borrows lots of concepts from ET.

Documentation and support
Enemy Territory is no longer updated, but the mods for it are, which keeps the game evolving constantly. There is plenty of documentation and websites dedicated to ET on the Internet, like the following:

Enemy Territory - Planet Wolfenstein
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory Strategy Guide
Enemy Territory at Jolt.co.uk
ET and RtCW at Jolt.co.uk

Conclusion
The best thing about ET is that it's free and the second is that it easily competes with any commercial online FPS game. Overall, this is one of my all-time favourite games: it offers a great online playing feeling, the multiplayer part is complete and can keep you playing it for hours.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Been playing it since 2003... man what a ride. Love the game and still play it.

No other game comes even close a team oriented fps.

Great article and happy fragging. ;)

Craciun Dan said...

Thanks a lot, I'm sure I will :-)

Yeah, that's true, it's one of few games which emphasises team play.

Unknown said...

A great game, i've been playing it since the Return To Castle Wolfenstein multiplayer test a long time ago.
v55 :D

Anonymous said...

Any chance you could post a real link to the source code ?

The only links you provide seem to end up at windows exe's


mark

Craciun Dan said...

Actually I use to download the binary from here. Just search for 'enemy territory linux', they provide a binary to run and install the game.

Alternately, you can download it from id Software's FTP site here.

I'm not very sure about the source, but I'll come back with a link as soon as I get into it.

Craciun Dan said...

OK, it looks like the source itself doesn't exist, but you can download the SDK from here.

Anonymous said...

Well, to say it can compete with current-day FPS-games is very wishfull thinking ;)

Nevertheless I wish you all loads of fun. For me it looks and feels very outdated and I'll stick with games like Red Orchestra & mods.

Monk.

Anonymous said...

Try TrueCombat:Elite, this is a ET mod very realistict, it's awesome !
It is a way much more addictive than ET :-D

Anonymous said...

Trickjumps? Intriguing. Great Article. You summed up wolf et pretty well there. Good Job. I also love the game. Been playing it since I learned of it last year.