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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What UT2003 should have been, 8 Jul 2004
Having played the original Unreal Tournament almost solidly for three years, all offline against the game's wonderfully adept and flexible AI opponents, the 2003 version disappointed me. The look of the game was stunning, but the gameplay felt heavy, the weapons unbalanced, and the single player game was highly stylised, but exceptionally un-fulfilling and tortuous to play, with clunking, mindless team-mates and sharp-shooting but slow-moving opponents. Epic seem to have received the criticism well though, and despite UT2004 seeming to be a remake of last year's offering, the actual gameplay has been refined so well that it feels like a different game. The 'bug' of so-called "boost-dodging" (which gives unrivalled height and distance to jumps) has been removed - this move that took advantage of a loop-hole in the game physics gave an unfair bonus to those who knew about it, and left all the other players wondering how they'd cleared that huge pit when they themselves kept falling in each time. As such, the combat feels more grounded and human, as well as more even.There is no doubting the pace of this game is phenomenal; bewildering, in fact, to the beginner. But the multitude of game modes, map styles and scenery is unparalleled. It comes at a price - the amount of hard drive space required is huge, and the hardware required to turn over the graphics at a decent speed will make you and your wallet wince, but the visual experience you get out of it really does make the jaw drop. Gameplay has been fine-tuned to be more even, and makes shoot outs last a little longer now - enough to be interesting and skill-dependent, but not too long to be an endless exchange of gun fire. The one-player mode will hold your interest, and makes you play many different game modes to succeed and climb the ladder to ultimate victory and a few pleasant pictures (not really reward enough, but a good ending is something hard to find in games these days). A special mention must go to the game's Onslaught mode. Bringing in vehicles, bases, huge power nodes and rolling terrain, it does turn heads in spectacular fashion, and takes the focus away from on-foot combat for something different. It's very well created, and with enough people or bots on your team, can expand into a 45 minute battle to grind your opponents back to their own base and conquer the whole map. Clever stuff. Unreal Tournament is more than a game - it's a living, breathing community of flak-heads who want to play with and against others at all hours of day and night. The online experience (as long as you have at least a 150k broadband connection) can be excellent when you can find the servers and players to fill out a good game, but a word to the wise: Don't even THINK about trying to play online until you've successfully mastered the game mode you intend to play against the PC, first. There are way too many outstanding players out there, and they take sick pleasure in dispensing repeated thrashings to new players. Get a solid grounding beforehand, or else you'll be put off for life when you go online and play against the egotists that swamp the internet servers.
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