Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

ETQW  is a great game.  The game has the addictiveness of many of the great large-scale first person shooters.  I was used to playing shooters like Halo and COD which were close-range, deathmatch style shooters.  When I started playing, I tried playing it deathmatch style: I shot everyone I saw.  This didn't work very well.  I ended up dying often and the time limits were too long to keep my interest.  I put the game down for several months and played Quake 4 and Halo and other shooters instead.  But then a few months later I picked the game up again and gave it another shot.  This time I worked with the interface more and found that it was easy to pick up if you have the right mindset.  I played for hours on end (which is easy to do with matches that last 30-60 minutes) and when I finally took down that Strogg tower for the first time, the feeling of accomplishment matched that of some of the greatest shooters ever.  The leveling up system is on the good side, it isn't as good as series such as Call of Duty however, but it is certainly not bad.  The game tracks how you kill and what guns you use and it levels you accordingly.  The biggest draws to this game are the huge maps and mission base action.  In many ways the experience feels like a MMO first person shooter, because there are so many players at once.  The problems are that, while the maps are huge and varied, they aren't polished.  The player models and weapon varieties look nice, but the environment textures seem compressed, even on the highest qualities.  Up close, many of the textures can be down right ugly.  But, the action is varied and the missions are epic.  Every battle has a goal that feels like it makes sense in a larger war.  By the end of the story mode so-to-speak, you really will feel like you have defeated the humans and/or Strogg.  There were some minor bugs and glitches when first starting on a map, but overall the game is well worth its $20 price tag.