The competition in the online shooter market for the consoles right now is pretty intense, or at least it is at the top. When you weigh in COD 4 and Halo 3, you're looking at a large percentage of world wide online multiplayer activity just across those two titles alone. With that said, any new title entering the fray will certainly have its work cut out for it, and this is the reality that faces Enemy Territory: Quake Wars as it sees release worldwide for the 360 and PS3 consoles. While the PC version enjoys a sturdy following much like the original Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory did, the console release just doesn't seem to have the same appeal and will struggle to match blows with the big boys of the online console shooter scene.

ET: QW is based around the world of Quake where Strogg invaders have arrived on Earth with malicious intent in the year 2065. Earth's only hope comes in the form of the GDI, which is a collective multi-nation military effort (even though all GDI soldiers seem to have American accents in the game) out to put an end to the invading forces. From a storyline perspective, Quake Wars is not strong and doesn't really rely on premise much at all - this title is all about the gameplay.

The gameplay itself is best described as traditional team death matches, but with a slight twist. Rather than simply rely on kill totals, Quake Wars makes use of an objective system which places more purpose in your actions other than to simply kill your enemy. Each map will offer different objectives to obtain mission success for the side on the offensive, while the side on the defensive will obviously have to prevent the objectives from being met within the time period to win. It's a good gameplay design, and it worked well on the PC, but it doesn't seem to translate as well to the console.

One reason why is the 16 player limit in the 360 release just doesn't lend itself well to this system. While 8 on 8 is plenty in some of the maps, other maps tend to be quite wide open, and it can feel empty when you only have so few players. The PC version rocked up to 16 v 16 matches, and it was this fact that allowed the PC version to boast some of the most intense online shooting action around. Sometimes, it was so action packed, you'd kill 10 people and die 10 times in under a minute. In comparison, the console version just isn't at that level, and even compared to other online console shooters, Quake Wars just doesn't seem to be as consistently action packed. In fact at times it can be a little boring, as you often take longer to travel to the action than it took to die and respawn in the action itself. The game continues to include vehicles in the console release which do help add some variation and means of quicker transport, but they're mostly secondary additions to the gameplay, not to mention the aircraft seem quite hard to control on the 360.

Like the PC version though, the objective system does generally work well even if there isn't as much action going on, as it acts as somewhat of a traffic controller, flowing the attention of the map to key points at any given moment. While gamers are free to ignore the objectives entirely, like the PC version it seems most gamers pay attention to what they're meant to be doing, which in effect tends to bring gamers who aren't interested in playing along with the objectives at least to the appropriate sections of the map at the right times. So really, while the 360 version does have a lower player count, the gameplay still does its best job condensing the action into one or two spots, which helps the game do the best it can with what it has.

The class system also continues to work well in the console release, offering gamers the choice to be a standard soldier, medic, field ops, engineer and covert specialist, as well as the Strogg alternatives for each of these when controlling the alien invaders. Each class has its own distinct purpose and abilities on the battlefield, with most maps actually requiring actions from multiple classes for victory for the offensive side. As well as this, you can customize some elements such as weapon config and you can also unlock some enhancements based on XP earned during the campaign.

However while the objective gameplay and class system do their jobs, ultimately the game lacks the edge when you go online. Perhaps it is partly because I'm in Australia, but the online action didn't stack up well to the offline modes, which are basically the exact same as online except with bots. The thing about this though is, while in most cases bots are no replacement for true human vs human action, it seems that there is a limited amount of gamers online playing Quake Wars - so much so I didn't manage to find myself in a 8 v 8 human match at all during my time with the game. By default the game fills the rest of the slots up with bots (although hosts can turn this off), but in many games online I found there were more bots than humans playing. When you couple this with lag, which was occasionally quite prominent, I can't help but acknowledge the game was better offline than online. Again though, this may come back to being an Aussie and playing almost exclusively on US hosts, but this doesn't seem to stop me enjoying (and kicking occasional arse in I might add) COD 4 online, or most other online console shooters. I'm not really sure if it's the net code or what, but Quake Wars struggled mightily for me from a latency point of view and even when it was smooth, it didn't seem worth staying online when the offline action is almost identical.

The game could have generated some freebie points with its graphics but there isn't much to write home about here either. While the game doesn't look bad per se, it doesn't really look that great either. The textures are noticeably low quality in spots and the models don't appear to be as detailed as we've seen with other console shooters. On top of this, the frame rate seems to get a little sketchy at times, and in general isn't what I'd call super smooth at the best of times anyway. Control wise the game does a decent job not really going outside the box of normal console shooter controls, although as already mentioned the controls when flying aircraft in this game seems quite hard to get the hang of, which can make for some awkward moments online.

For a collection of reasons, ET: QW on the 360 just doesn't seem to live up to the quality of its PC predecessor. The game doesn't seem to flow as smoothly, the graphics seem closer to the Quake 3 engine than the Doom 3 engine and, perhaps most impacting of all, the action just isn't as intense due to scaled back player count, not to mention what appears to be a lackluster pool of fellow online gamers. As a stand alone effort ET: QW 360 isn't a bad game, but compared to the PC version, and compared to a few other 360 online shooters out now, it just doesn't stack up well. After all, gamers can only play one game at a time and when it comes to online shooters this tends to mean gamers stick to one game for a significant period of time, and I'm not sure ET: QW 360 has the quality to be this one game for most people. It's not all bad, but ultimately Enemy Territory: Quake Wars isn't overly suited for the console.