Practise offline against up to 16 bots!
We sat down with Paul Wedgwood from Splash Damage for a quick chat about his soon to be released Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and he had some cracking news for us.
Despite previously saying, all through the game’s development that they wouldn’t do it, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars now features offline bot-play, giving you a chance to hone your skillz before taking yourself online.
Click for larger imageSplash Damage drafter in John Dean, bot expert a while back and John has managed to integrate not just a bit of bot play into Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, but a whole load of scalable AI bots that can let you customise your offline game.
The tow major adjustable settings are with the bots shooting accruracy and their tactics. So, if you wanted to see how a tactically aware team might play but don’t fancy respawning all the time, set the bots’ aim to easy and their tactics to hard… or if you want to have a blast, go for the opposite… or anything in between.
Click for larger imageThe bots are able to use all types of weapons, tools and vehicles as well as fill mission critical roles such as becoming engineers or even manning turrets in vehicles if you request it. The AI routine looks at what you’re doing for your team and adjusts your bot allies behaviour to suit, allowing you almost sandbox the offline mode.
Of course, enemy bots will react to how well you’re doing too and might place some nasty landmines or turrets to hamper your progress. Oh, and you know that you can disguise yourself as the enemy? Well bots can do that too and are even smart enough to know that when playing as Strogg and running in disguise, the distinctive noise of Strogg footsteps will give them away… so beware the lone soldier ambling back towards your spawn point!
Click for larger imageOh and one final thing… Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is now heading for the Xbox 360 and PS3 too… but as it always is with Splash Damage, don’t ask when we’ll see it, it’ll be done when it’s done.
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars will be released on the PC on September 28th, 2007 in Europe… North America will have to wait a little longer.
