Multiplayer first-person shooters aren't new, of course, but many of the familiar features of modern shooters can be found back in what began as a mod for Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory.
Chief amongst those features are systems of levelling up your skills, driving players towards strategies more useful to their character growth, if you will, rather than just attempting to win the match and move on. Even if you lose, you've hopefully still made some progress towards your goal.
But what are those goals? What is Enemy Territory? Is it just a Second World War multiplayer FPS?
Fun Times
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory wants to be played. There's even a page on its website saying how you could still play it, for free, in 2019. I downloaded it, fired it up with no problems, and tried to find a way to play against some bots.
I couldn't, so instead, I downloaded ET: Legacy, a fan-tweaked version with extra mods and whatnots bolted on, including bot support for some practice. It, too, ran with no problems, and I once again tried to play against some bots.
I couldn't, and frankly couldn't be bothered to fix the problem, so I hopped into a server and learned the hard way.
The core game is that the Allies fight the Axis until a victory condition is met, which has something to do with holding onto territory or maybe destroying something. I don't actually know (I never figured it out), suffice it to say that it's not a simple game of deathmatch, for example.
Going in as a bog-standard soldier, I'm armed with an MG42 and move painfully slowly because of it, though you can sprint with other weapons as though you weren't carrying a machine gun at all, so that's something to get used to.
Emerging from my spawn point, I almost immediately spy some Americans on the other side of the courtyard, and do what anyone else would do in this situation: I open fire.
Obviously, I proceed to die. Though I do get revived, I have nonetheless been ruthlessly and quickly picked off, from great range, in seconds. It's not the most promising of starts to my time with Enemy Territory, but it is the start I expected.
The controls are as you'd expect, so I wasn't having any issues with moving and shooting - both rather important in an FPS. What I was having a problem with was how utterly useless this MG42 was.
Given an unobstructed view of three targets, none of whom looking in my direction, all I managed to do was make vague suggestions to everyone else that there was something to shoot down there. I received no feedback for hits, and no kills were registered to me. They all fell down dead, one by one, but it wasn't me.
Frustrations
I was getting into advantageous positions, I know I was, but absolutely nothing was landing. What's the point of successfully flanking the enemy if they're going to be the ones to land all the hits. I'm chucking hundreds of bullets in their direction. Slowly, and there's probably a fair bit of spread on them, but still. I want to be better than this, because I know I can be.
Sadly, the round I joined ended. We'll have to wait for the next map.
Further Fun Times
Into the deserts of Africa this time and the action was practically kicking off as soon as the game began. I think some kind of air-raid descended on our spawn point, and Allied forces were flooding through the walls after all.
Naturally, I backed into a corner and fumbled with my weapons.
A side-arm and a dagger probably do serve a purpose in the right situation, but given the pace of the game, I'm struggling to think of when those situations will arise. It feels like your lifespan is measured in seconds, and there aren't too many more seconds to wait for an instant respawn back at base.
Medics and teamwork no doubt give you a reason to live longer and push forward strategically, but Lord knows what I was meant to be doing here. I'm just reacting how and where I can.
Whenever I died, there were glimpses of more competent players showing off Enemy Territory in a better light than I. You can get a flamethrower, look. That's gotta be fun. I'll never get a flamethrower, but hey, you might want to work towards that. Good for you.
Turning a corner and finding myself somewhat outnumbered, I backed off in a panic and was only capable of shooting the helmets off of my targets. I've gotten some kills this round, I know it, but it's getting ridiculous.
Outnumbered and outgunned, I ran away like my life depended on it, and witnessed a remarkable bit of play from one of my teammates.
Well, I say remarkable, a well placed explosive lead to a triple kill. It's not like it was an 'Only in Battlefield' moment.
As you can imagine, my death wasn't too far away. Around the corner a few seconds later, in fact.
Further Frustrations
And so the grind continued. Spawn, move, spot an enemy, shoot, maybe land a kill, probably get killed instead, respawn, move, repeat. I just wasn't having any luck, but it did at least look chaotic, and I could see how it would be fun for some.
But how do you approach a game where you do all that you can and get rewarded with that much XP? Just look at that pitiful amount. That's a joke. You can get that much in modern games by just looking at the enemy. And look at the leaders! What the hell are they doing to get that much? Are they killing machines? Are they on an objective I don't know about?
Knowing I was doing this poorly, I tried to play a little more carefully, and eventually gained a promotion!
This might even have been my second promotion - something happened after the corridor exploded behind me, but before an enemy jumped around the corner and gunned me down. There's so much going on that I can't keep track of it all. How on Earth could anyone? Just focus on what matters and ignore the rest.
Getting promoted matters. That must have increased my XP...
Excellent.
Final Word
I ended on the losing side, a negative K/D ratio, and so few XP points that I have to wonder if anyone could get into Enemy Territory in 2019 if it's their first time with the game.
Well, the answer is yes - it's easy to get up and running and join in on the action. But the question is whether you can compete and have fun. Actually, yes, you can do that too, newbie or not. You'll have relative amounts of fun, at least, if you don't care about your stats, but there's fun to be had, certainly.
Multiplayer games live or die according to their communities (on the PC at least), and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory's community is still going strong, and games are still full of people eager to unleash the carnage on each other. That's to be commended. Some games are a hassle to get up and running and then to find the action, but not here. This is ready to go when you are.
Are you ready? Should you try to be? As a shooter, it does what it says on the tin. It's not astonishing to look at but easily does the job. Classes and modes will keep you as busy as you want to be kept. What appeals to me the most is the early signs of more modern shooters.
Progression, even when all is lost, means the next game will be better, right? Unlock that bonus, equip that new weapon, enjoy that new piece of equipment, and use them all to become a better player, both personally, and for your team.
But to do that in a game that is 16 years old, full of people much better than you to begin with? That's a hard sell for those with a casual interest. And yet you should still give it a shot, I think. You might not play it for too long, but it made its mark on the genre and is still going to this day.
Fun Facts
Server settings allow XP and the associated unlocks to be ignored completely, to level the playing field. Throughout a game, defenders tend to get more XP, and would, therefore, get stronger the longer the round went on, making it even tougher for the attackers.
Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, developed by Splash Damage, first released in 2003.
Version played: Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, PC, 2003.
ET: Legacy 2.76, PC, 2019.