I have never been a fan of games of mindless violence. I usually like to think my way through a game, or at least exercise a little more strategy than jump, strafe, point and shoot. Unreal Tournament requires none of this strategy. However, it is truly hard not to like this game. Jumping on the wave of first person shooter multiplayer madness initiated by Quake and perfected by Half-Life, UT strives to be the ultimate online FPS. And in a lot of ways, it is.
The first thing you notice when playing Unreal Tournament is the graphics. They are truly a sight to behold. ALthough slightly worse than those of Quake 3, UT's graphics get the job done, and then some. The lighting, the textures, the player models...all are done excellently and with an artistic touch. The graphics are bright and colorful, more like Tribes than the murkier earthtones of Half-Life and the earlier Quake games.
The sound is also well done. Rockets roar, grenades bounce with a clang, and chainguns ricochet crisply. Frags sound gooey and painful, and the post-kill chides offer the bots a form of humanity untested till now.
The controls are seamless and flowing. Using the same tried and true setup of nearly every FPS to date, your character is easy to navigate and control. Controls are very sensitive (although they can be tuned down); your character sprints everywhere at a dizzying pace. If you haven't played an FPS before, this might not be the first one to try, as you will get dizzy and disoriented.
Now onto the meat of the game. As far as I am concerned, an FPS cannot be much good without some great weapons. Luckily, UT has them. Unlike Q3, Unreal Tournament uses the secondary fire function perfected by Half-Life, giving you in effect twice as many weapons. Some of my favorite weapons are the flak gun, sniper rifle, and of course, the rocket launcher. The flak gun is your standard shotgun, except its secondary fire launches a grenade that bursts into a shotgun spray when it hits a solid surface (including flesh). The sniper rifle is a joy to use, as a headshot blasts the head clean off the body, sending it rolling around freely. And the rocket launcher fires a customizable amount of small rockets in a shotgun spray, though if you fire solitary rockets, they can home in on your target. The secondary function of the rocket launcher sends a handful of grenades bouncing around until they burst into flames. These are what FPS weapons were supposed to be.
First and foremost, Unreal Tournament was made to be a multiplayer extravaganza. But for the net-declined, it also incorporates a solid single player mode, featuring skilled (if predictable) bots. The single player game is based on a progression through different events: deathmatch, capture the flag, king of the hill (domination), and assault. I found "assault" to be the most creative. In this mode, you and your team must attack a fortified area defended by the other team, usually the goal being to destroy a specific item. When you succeed, the other team attempts the same, trying to beat your time. The gameplay is fast and furious. You have about a tenth of a second to pull the trigger before your enemy does the same. As opposed to a game like Counterstrike, where you die maybe once a minute, in UT, a life of 15 seconds is a decent one. As the game progresses, the carnage piles up...as you navigate the map, don't be surprised to see numerous copies of your corpse lying around in various locations of the map: you will die, and die often. But your goal is to make the enemies die more often.
The first player mode can get a little tiring. It is the same over and over: running, fragging, and shooting to pieces. However, that isn't necessarily a bad thing :) The AI is pretty easy to figure out, and it isn't the greatest you've ever seen. Word of warning: the final boss is EXTREMELY frustrating. But the meat of the game lies in the multiplayer. As I said, the gameplay is fast and arcade-like, and if you prefer this over the calculated, strategic attacks of Team Fortress or CounterStrike, then this may be right up your alley. The team who wins this game is not the one who plans and strategizes, but the one with the quickest trigger finger and best aim. There are plenty of multiplayer modes and people willing to play. This game is superior to Quake 3 in its diversity of weapons and modes, so if you like Quake 3, I don't see how this game would fail to please. Overall, I give this game a 5, because it fills its niche and fills it perfectly: yes, even better than Q3. If you want fast-paced, arcade-style online mayhem, this is the game to get.

Recommended: Yes