One of the grandfathers of the First Person Shooter genre, Quake arrived on the scene at the perfect time and rode the growing wave of the internet into the hands and homes of new audiences. It was more accessible and, as was the case with Doom, players didn't necessarily need to have advanced technical knowledge and live in a college dorm to enjoy the strong multiplayer component of the game.

After Quake's release, the game's developers at id Software continued their commitment to pushing the genre forward and into the hands of even more players with sequels and strong support for their mod community. Eventually the game's engine and associated tools gained popularity in their own right and went on to power very influential titles like Half-Life and Star Trek: Voyager Elite Force.

Now, once again, id Software is using Quake to reach out to a new and broader audience and we were invited to take a look at it. This time their sights are set on introducing console gamers to all the intricacies of objective/team-based multiplayer by bringing over their highly successful Enemy Territory: Quake Wars from the PC. At first, it's a goal that seems both simple and ambitious. PC to console ports are becoming more and more commonplace, but translating the unique gameplay characteristics of team/objective-based multiplayer games to the console mindset is a bit more daunting.

However, from what we saw there's reason to be pretty encouraged. That's not because they are making numerous and significant changes though. After all, the PC version did receive over 80 awards, including a few "Game of the Year" titles. Also, we found it pretty interesting that bringing Enemy Territory: Quake Wars to consoles was part of the plan from the beginning and was part of the reasoning behind limiting the PC matches to 16 and 24 player maps - well below the max accommodated by other pc multiplayer-focused shooters. That decision helped cutdown on the number of changes the developers would need to make to the maps for the console versions.