Graphics: From afar, the battle scenes can have an almost epic scope. The plumes of smoke billowing in the urban areas of Africa and a Utah beach-style landing are good examples. However, once you’ve run around in a good portion of every level, you realize that they’re lifeless, dull and sparsely populated. The planes that fly overhead and drop armaments or heavy payloads do a little bit to spruce up the atmosphere, but not enough. Bland character models and poor (very poor, almost 2D-like) explosions show Quake Wars’ mediocre look and feel.

Interface: Menus are easily navigable, controls offer some customization and the online component is serviceable. (I’m still not a fan of matchmaking, but that’s an issue with every game on Xbox Live). So why the low score? Because there’s no kill-death ratio display! I have no trouble admitting I’m a bit of a stat whore. It’s why I play online games. I want to kill and not be killed, and I want to gloat about my awesome kill-to-death ratio. In Quake Wars, even this feature is gimped. You won’t see a ratio at all in single player; instead, after a match ends, the game hands out preset awards, most of which aren’t described. While online, you have to play in a game that allows for stats, which means the host has to set the bots to hard. Why can’t the game count human kills in online matches with the bots set to medium or easy? This is unacceptable.

Gameplay: For all the railing I’ve done about Quake Wars, let me say that it’s not a bad game. It plays fine and it runs fine. It’s just uninteresting. It’s nothing we haven’t played or seen several times in the past. While the player movement and damage may seem perfect, what’s the point if the game has no emotion or life? I shouldn’t yawn in the face of death, but I yawned several times while dispatching foes in Quake Wars. The moments of tension and fun were few and far between. There are no buildings that crumble under the might of your grenade launcher. There are no interesting weapons with which to maim your opponents. Everything about it is ordinary.

Mulitplayer: Supposedly the meat and potatoes of Quake Wars, the online mode is reminiscent of a Wild West ghost town. I was online at different times (morning, midday and evening) during three weekends and there was normally only one game in progress. Despite the relative emptiness of the servers, there was still noticeable lag. The 16-player limit is also a bit perplexing. It’s nice that the game fills empty slots with bots, but with a game this size that isn’t really pushing any technical boundaries, there’s no reason we shouldn’t have a 24 to 40-player limit, but I guess it doesn’t really matter, since it can’t even fill 16-player games with live bodies.

Sound FX: Nothing exciting. The shrill voices of the Strogg are generally unintelligible and annoying. The gun noises and explosions won’t drive you to turn the volume up to 11.

Music: There is no music during the game itself, just the brooding tune that plays under the main menu. It would have been nice to have had some generic beats that raised and lowered as the on-screen action shifted.

Intelligence: The intelligence of your comrades varies during battle. At times they show signs of brilliance as they react quickly to your every need. Other times, you watch hopelessly as a medic rushes to revive you, only to turn away at the last second for no apparent reason. And good luck finding someone to give you ammo-they’re certainly out there, but they’re unlikely to heed your calls.

Difficulty: The three difficulties are balanced almost perfectly. Easy will help noobs adjust to the game without getting their butts kicked. Medium brings quite a challenge, and hard bots are difficult to single out when teamed with human counterparts.

Overall: With franchise heavyweights like Battlefield and Unreal Tournament recently releasing new iterations, it’s tough to recommend something like Quake Wars. It’s a light package with no real redeeming factors, and that makes it a tough sell at full price. Even worse is the lack of any community. With a lightweight single-player mode and no one playing multiplayer, keep this one on the shelf.