MENU
RTCW: Enemy Territory... Free Crack?
Two weeks ago, if you would
have asked me if I believed a company would give away a game, I would have told you that
with the exception of old games that aren't making money anymore, no. Either
things have changed now and Activision and ID have said "Ahhh forget it! We're
not going to make enough money off this game now, so just give it away!" or it
could be that the game sucks and the developers, producers, and their moms all know this,
and the guilt from making people pay for a terrible 
game would be just too much for an executive to handle. HAH!
Yeah right!! An executive with a conscience? Impossible! That
leaves us with the first option, and boy am I glad they did this.
The system requirements are
actually, quite low. All you need is a
PIII-600MHz or equivalent with a 32Mb DX 8.1 and OpenGL compatable video card, 128Mb RAM,
and 1Gb hard drive space. This should be low
enough for most computer systems now days.
Graphics in a first person shooter are definitely important, and the graphics 
quality in ET are great
for this aging engine. You can tell at a
glance that a lot of work went into the graphics. I
like the way when you get shot in the head, the screen goes red, making it difficult to
see. Also, the falling snow effects are great
and the teams are easy to tell apart. ET has nice zoom with the sniper rifle too.
Some of the best features on ET are the controls and interface.
Again, you can tell extensive work was put into their development. Your keyboard is
fully programmable, and each key can be assigned to anything. Worried about finding
a server? Don't be. It's as simple as clicking on multiplayer and
double-clicking on the
server you want to join. Your options for quick chat are good too. I have all
my number keys assigned to common phrases, such as, "Affirmative," or "I
need ammo!" I use the keys around WASD for my guns and other functions.
Very nice setup indeed.
Sound effects in ET are realistic and make for some great added
effects. When an air-strike is called in, you can hear the planes fly in and drop
the napalm. The only problem with the sound is that it's not surround sound.
You don't hear people sneaking up behind you, only the sound of their blade as it stabs
you in the back.
Learning to play the game is a snap. Each map that you play will
take a small amount of time to figure out, but if you read the objectives before you
charge right in, it shouldn't take you much time at all to get a grasp on the situation.
The characters themselves will take a bit of time to get used to as each has their
own special place in the game. In about two hours, you can figure out the roles of
the various classes and how to navigate at least a few of the maps. Don't worry
about the learning process, it's a blast!!
This
is all great you say, but is it fun? Oh yeah, it's fun! I've been playing now
for hours and hours at a time! I didn't even want to stop to write this
review. As a matter of fact, let's get this review over with quickly and get back to
playing!! You can play as a covert ops and steal enemy uniforms, be an engineer and
plant dynamite, be a field ops (in regular RTCW it was a Lieutenant) and call in
air-strikes, and much more! Almost daily new maps are released by the fans and they
can be downloaded by the servers you want to connect to, if you don't already have them
installed. Cheating ruins most games, but there's punkbuster integrated into the
game, so cheating is no more.
Honestly, if the game's engine wasn't so dated and there was surround
sound, I would have to say ET was like crack, but sadly, it's not. A game can only
be addictive as crack if it's perfection, but those two limitations put it just under at a
91%, making it extemely addictive. But what can you say? It's a free
standalone online multiplayer game? You'd better be grateful because I've seen too
many games released for gobs of money that should never have even entered the beta testing
stage. From my viewpoint, it looks like ID and Activision deserve some Kudos!
Thanks!!
Review by: Guntario