Everything is Unreal
Written: Jul 23 '02 (Updated Jul 23 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Original excellent weapons, varied gameplay
Cons: Resource hog to the extreme
The Bottom Line: I'm told that Unreal Tournament has good graphics, but I really wouldn't know...But I put it on my list of top games. Isn't that enough?
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| glock64's Full Review: Unreal Tournament for Windows |
There are so many first-person-shooters in the market today making it quite hard to find something new. For a long time, nothing happened in the FPS world.
I remember the day I downloaded the Quake III: Arena demo. At the time I thought the game was the best shooter around. Never have I seen such stunning graphics, and what's more, Q3 ran smoothly on my system. (P3,555MHz). But do not be fooled, the magic of Q3 wore off in a few months.
Then came Half-Life. It takes a lot in a game to get my adrenaline going, my heart pumping, and nerves frayed. And that's what Half-Life did. I still remember vividly the way I flinched when a headcrab (mutated alien crab) jumped in my face from the dark air vents of Black Mesa.
So I decided to try Unreal Tournament. To my dismay I couldn't run the game in Direct3D mode. So I crossed my fingers and tried OpenGl mode. It worked, but not very well. My framerate was about one or two frames per second.
There was only one option left (gulp): software mode. Software mode is where the game is run totally without 3D accelleration, where there are pixels floating around everywhere, and where the Minigun looks like a multicolored log. At best a high-resolution version of the original Quake.
But graphics don't make gameplay, right? Of course not...well at least not all of it. Unreal Tournament (UT) is unfortunately multi-player only. There is some sort of story: in the not-so-distant future, the Liandri Corp. controls an arena where people fight to the death with dangerous weaponry. And the weaponry is eclectic. There are five types of gameplay in the single-player (that is, bots only + you multiplayer): DeathMatch, Domination, Capture the Flag (CTF), Assault, and Challenge.
DeathMatch is just like the deathmatch most other games. You run around in an arena, shooting everything that moves...well every player actually. Domination is a nice break from the norm, although it reminds me of Capture the Flag. In Domination, you are placed in a level with three marked locations. Your team must control these locations while repelling the opposing force. For every location you control you gain 1 point every five seconds.
Capture the Flag is pretty self-explanatory and should be known by most fraggers around. You must capture the enemy's flag and bring it back to your own flag. Assault is my favorite, partially because it's most resembles single-player mission mode. In fact, you are given a set of objectives which you must complete with your team members. The opposing team has to prevent you from completing your objectives. If you complete your give objectives, the teams switch sides. My only complaint is that the objectives are much too similar.
Challenge is just a simple variation of DeathMatch, where you compete against the best of the Liandri fighters until you must go against the best.
Beginners and professional combatants alike can enjoy the game, with about eight or nine difficulty levels, from Easy to Godlike. Despite this, however, the bots are somewhat dumb. On some of the levels (esp. the teamplay modes) you can find a spot high up, take a sniper rifle and pick the bots off one by one. Not once do they take any real action against you. And then there's the problem of your teammates getting in the way. Sometimes I just want blow them away and get on with the game.
The levels themselves are extremely diverse, a nice change from Quake III. There are factories, space stations, ships, underwater facilities, and residential (albeit small ones) areas. I wish there would have been some brighter levels, though.
The weapons are also diverse, unlike some other shooters I've played (hint, hint). There are two melee weapons, the air hammer and the chainsaw (which can only be used with a mutator). You start with an Enforcer pistol, and nice powerful gun that can be doubled up. As with all UT weapons, there is a secondary fire mode: faster firing, gansta-style, which, if used up close, can cause some real damage.
Weapon number 3: the GES Bio Rifle. Players of the first Unreal may remember this one. The weapons is a rather original concept. It shoots highly toxic blobs of green sludge and can be quite deadly. The secondary fire shoots a huge globular cluster of corrosive sludge which can gib almost anyone with a single blow.
Weapon 4 is the ASDM Shock Rifle. A powerful instant hit energy weapon. Weapon 5 is the Pulse Gun, a multi-firing plasma weapon, whose secondary fire is like a plasma-lightning gun. Weapon 6 is the Ripper, also an original design. It fires a whirring rusty blade and can decapitate someone with one, well-aimed shot. The blades bounce off walls and anything else.
Number 7 is the Minigun, a high-damage shredding weapon that can kill anyone in seconds. Number 8 is the Flak Cannon, which is a cross between a shotgun and a grenade launcher. It fires molten shreds of rusty metal and is immensely powerful. Other weapons include the Rocket Launcher, the Sniper rifle, and the Redeemer. If you play the game, I must recommend the Redeemer, a gargantuan thermonuclear weapon of mass destruction. It can vaporize groups of enemies in a flash. You can even pilot the missle around the arena!!!
The sounds are pretty good, and the bots will periodically yell a few profanities (which can be turned off). But it's nothing spectacular.
So as you can see, the accellerated graphics don't work on my system, but I still love the game, better than Quake III. This just proves graphics don't always make a game.
As for online play, its just like any other game. You connect to a server and join a game.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
glock64
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Location: Ontario, Canada
Reviews written: 32
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me:
Some of my interests: reading books, Star Trek, mathematics, computer games, writing
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