Enemy Territory: Quake Wars takes a more strategic team-based approach to the series of first person shooters traditionally known for its frantic gameplay. Developed by Splash Damage, Quake Wars employs a class system that provides each character type with its own unique ability. As each large map comes with its own series of objectives that only certain roles can fulfill, victory requires a team that can carefully balance the different classes and their respective traits.

For example, take the sprawling map Valley. The mission, Global Defense Force (GDF) on offense and Strogg on defense, involves a Strogg device poisoning a town's water supply. Thus, the GDF gets tasked with destroying the contamination device, but a few obstacles stand in their way. First, an engineer must construct a bridge over a small valley, allowing the passage of a mobile command post. Then that mobile command post, must travel over the bridge, through a nearby tunnel and establish itself within Strogg territory. Once at the specified point, the mobile command post deploys, pushing the Strogg frontline back with the creation of a new spawn point and a number of vehicles, including tanks, helicopters and troop transports. Next, a player specializing in covert ops needs to disable the shield generator protecting the contamination facility, after which any member of the soldier class can plant explosives on the contamination device itself.

Of course, with up to 24 players in the PC version and 16 in the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 iterations, each trying to further their own agenda, things don't proceed quite that smoothly. Building the bridge requires a conscious effort from the GDF, as it places the defenseless-while-constructing engineer in an exposed position. The tunnel the mobile command post must travel through ends up as a choke point, with a number of anti-personnel and anti-vehicle usually waiting at its end alongside a large concentration of Strogg. In addition to the players facing off against each other and the machinery, engineers on both sides rush to keep the equipment in working order, as the destruction of the turrets or the mobile command post would hamper that side's efforts. Because hacking takes covert ops five or ten seconds to complete, deactivating the shield generator proves difficult without any support thanks to a heavy number of nearby Strogg, all of whom receive notice once the hacking begins. A soldier's planting of the explosives on the contamination devices moves a bit faster, however, the explosives take a while to charge and can be easily deactivated by a Strogg constructor, again requiring a team effort to protect.

Another map, Area 22, puts the Strogg on the offensive. The GDF have acquired a Strogg artifact, which the Strogg first tried to destroy through a series of aerial volleys. Though the volleys left most of the base in ruins, the shielding of the facility storing the artifact held, forcing the Strogg to deploy a ground assault. To achieve their goal, a member of the Strogg soldier class must first set the charges to destroy the generator powering a nearby jamming tower. With the jamming tower no longer an issue, Strogg command drops a mining laser, which a Strogg engineer must repair. Once activated, the mining laser eats through the reinforced doors of the facility holding the artifact, opening up the last mission objective: destruction of the artifact via the charged explosives of the Strogg soldier.

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