You can play the game offline with the AI providing automated bots for both your teammates and the enemy soldiers.  This mode is best used to familiarize yourself with the maps, and I wouldn't recommend buying the game if your sole intent is to play it offline.  Sometimes your bot teammates do just fine, even accomplishing objectives without your aid.  However, they are often more of a hindrance than an aid.  There were times when the battle effort would completely break down as the bots stubbornly tried to push their way into a meat grinder of enemy fire, spawn after spawn returning to the same place by the same route to be killed again.  There didn't seem to be enough 'I' in the AI to realize that perhaps it would be better to take an alternate route to the objective or to try and flank the enemy positions.  When your team gets stuck in one of these endless cycles you're pretty much screwed as it is very difficult to carry out the objectives 100% on your own.

Not surprisingly the game is the most fun when played online.  What is surprising is that the number of players supported has been cut in half from the PC version of the game, from 32 down to 16.  Since the maps don't appear to have been scaled down as well, battles are not quite as large and dynamic as they are on the PC version of the game.  It's also harder for a team to compensate for a bad player or two.  Teamwork and coordination are even more important when you only have an eight person team.

Quake Wars is a cut above the average online shooter, but it can't quite match up to the top tier games or its PC cousin.  It's definitely worth renting because you may find the game is for you, but you could just as easily find that the online play fails to catch your interest.

In The End, This Game Hath Been Rated: 70%. Quake Wars is worth taking for a test drive as a rental, but its limited maps and emphasis on coordinated teamwork, not to mention a lack of a compelling offline content, will limit its appeal.

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