Quake Wars

I have enjoyed Quake Wars quite a bit.  It runs well on my system.  I bought the game because I have always loved ID's games especially the Quake Series.

I love how important team play is in this game.  It is one of it's greatest strengths and one of its greatest weaknesses.  It can be very frustrating if your team is not working well together.  Although there is technically a single player mode, all it is, is a version of the multiplayer game with bots.  This was a surprise to me, I had expected that Quake Wars would have a story line and a full blown single player game mode in addition to a full blown multiplayer mode.  This was kind of disappointment at first because I did not have a great internet connection at the time.

In the game you are either placed on the human or alien (strogg) team.  You can pick the class of player you will be: soldier, fields ops, medic, engineer, covert ops.  Depending on your class will determine what weapons are available to you and other skills/attributes.  The game is a series team objective matches called campaigns.  There is a cycle of rotating campaigns complete with different maps and objectives.  This game has a steep learning curve, which may be a turn off to you, or make the game have a greater shelf life depending on what kind of games you go for.

As you play the game and fulfill your responsibilities, you gain experience, which unlocks certain benefits for example quicker repairs for the engineer.  The experience points is accumulated over a campaign (three different maps, and usually about an hour of game play.)  Every campaign resets the experience points, which provides a more even match of players new and old to the game.

There are also several vehicles that you can drive or pilot in the different matches, which adds variety and additional strategies to the game.

I highly recommend that if you don't have a headset (headphones +microphone) that you buy one.  The game has a built in communications system which again makes the game more entertaining and facilitates playing as a team.  One negative is sometimes the language of the other players can be foul and potentially offensive.

I have recommended this game to friends in the past.  Some of them have enjoyed it and some of them were turned off by the learning curve.  This game keeps track of all of your statistics.  Including time spent playing.  I've played it over 130 hours and still really love the game. As you gain experience and complete objectives your rank is raised.  Which really only serves as a badge of honor.