This column is about the major aspects of ET that make us never want to stop playing it. Hopefully after reading this, you can comment on what you find most attractive about the game.

image: evil_video_game_addiction

The ongoing gameplay

Unlike most first person shooters, Enemy Territory gives you an ongoing, action filled gaming experience that is just a thrill to the players. The fact that it is an objective based game, different from the last man standing type of game that most FPS games are, plays a huge role in what makes the gameplay of ET so attractive. This means if you die early on in a game, you will not have to wait until the others are dead as you would in for instance Counter Strike. The game is made fast-paced by the continous respawn time, which is a genious concept to the impatient, like myself. On top of all that, with the ability to revive a dead team mate it can not get any better. Different objectives depending on maps gives you another factor that makes the tactical aspects of each map different. This means tactics and teamplay play a big role in the outcome of a match, different from a pure aim based gameplay.

It's free!

The fact that Enemy Territory is free and open sourced results in mainly two opinions. The first one is that it has a bigger chance of surviving as an online competative game, since you will not have to buy a CD key in order to play it online and that it is possible to modify. On the flip side, a free game can be less serious, less moderated and too easy to find ways to create cheats for, which it might be. The reason for a steady flow of new players is also probably because ET is free. Very few people would buy an old game, but who would not download an old game for free! Since you can download the game anywhere, anytime, it's available to everyone and gives you a "plug-and-play" feeling.

"Look and feel"

In many ways the look and feel of ET is important for the player's impression of the game. The colorful, WW2-look might be delightful to the player, not to mention the balance between details and simplicity in the graphics. The feel on the other hand was made possible thanks to our beloved Quake 3 engine, which gives you the perfect feeling of playing with gravity as you bunny hop your way through the map. The hitboxes in general are sort of different compared to other first person shooters as you hopefully hit where your aim is pointing at.

Endless possibilities

There is nearly no other FPS games like ET where you decide all the different possibilities for how the game is going to look and feel to you. As soon as a beginner finds out about the various settings he or she is able to modify it can be a bit too much. A lot of players in the beginning phase can not really decide which configurations to use. I think this is one of the key things about ET, you will always be able to improve your playing by changing settings, either it is your mouse or graphics adjustments, or simply your field of view just to name a few. This way you can be creative and adjust the game for your liking. Sure there is a lot of other games that allow you to change settings, but I think ET has endless possibilities in every ways of your gaming experience. In addition to all this, you have a wide range of weapons and classes to swap between during gameplay.

Why does it never end?

There is always something new to do in ET, either it is competing on a top level, trickjumping, playing on a public server, finding bugs or coding mods, what ever you want to do. The only way to make the players stop playing our beloved game is simply to make a better game than Enemy Territory!

These are some of the things I think about now as I haven't played ET in quite a while :)
My next column will be about what makes ET annoying and worth quitting ^^