Real fun with Unreal Tournament (Unreal Tournament (PC))

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	Unreal Tournament (PC)
Date:	28/11/00 (24 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great gameplay, Good sound, Good graphics

Disadvantages: Only for fans of first person shooters, No printed manual

I've been a fan of first person shooters for years, since the days of Doom. I've played, or owned Doom 2, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, Quake 2, Blood 2, Unreal and Half-life.

I got the demo ages ago from a magazine cover mounted CD (PC Format I think), and installed it. Sitting down to play, I thought that it was a great game, even though some of the options and games styles were not available. It was originally going to be an add-on to the original Unreal and would have been called Unreal: Tournament Edition, but was scrapped in favour of a standalone game with a new 3D engine.

I didn't buy it at the time because of a cash shortage (i.e. beer and girlfriend was more important than gaming), but made a point of noting how good it was and that I would get it sooner or later.

It turned out to be later, because I have only just bought it as Infogrames have just been re-released on budget, for the paltry sum of ten of your English pounds.

It's still an outstanding first person shooter, even though it's well over a year old. Rather than the likes of Half-Life, Quake etc, Unreal Tournament is basically a deathmatch program - there is no story line for you to follow per se as you would in Quake 2, Half-Life etc. just a series of maps and challenges that you must undertake to climb higher up the ladder of each game type.

It has a lot of different play options like normal deathmatch (every man for himself, basically) and the rest of the games are team-based affairs with computer controlled AI bots making up the other members (although it can be played over the internet, this is not an option I have tried as of yet).

The team events are what set this aside from the likes of Quake 3 which I think has only a deathmatch system (and in fact, Id have recently released a mod for Q3 which brings in more gameplay styles). In Unreal Tournament (UT) each game style is done in a ladder based system - as you get bette
r, your opposition gets better and you unlock more maps and game styles (in the beginning, only deathmatch is available, then you get better and can deal with the other elements of the other game styles).

Other game types include CTF (Capture the Flag), Domination - where you get points for every second you are in control of a command point (and there may be more than one per map) and my favourite Assault, where one team attacks and one defends a base. The time taken for the first team to capture the base is the time they must defend the base for in the return round. Great stuff!

The graphics are clear and crisp with any text clearly visible – however the graphics engine does run better on 3DFX cards than other types – patches have been released which fix most of the problems present in the release version, but I still think performance was a bit lacking with my GeForce AGP card. The sound is good, with appropriate meaty sounds for the weaponry (which I must say has been improved since Unreal when I thought the weapons were a bit weak).

The AI bots are, in general, excellent, although I have seen some of them at times make stupid mistakes, but all in all, they behave well enough for you to play the game without realising they are not human. There is also an order system so that you can tell the bots what to do - the commands are fairly basic e.g. attack, defend, hold this position etc. but they're implemented well, and anything more complicated would slow down the gameplay as you wade through a multitude of complicated options.

The gameplay is excellent, with the early levels used as an introduction for anyone who has not experienced the delights of deathmatching before, and then gets harder as each new game style is introduced. You don't need to complete one game style to unlock another, but progress about two thirds of the way up the game ladder.

All in all, Unreal Tournament is a very good game
. The budget edition is the special game Of The Year edition which comes with an extra CD full of extra maps and the like. If you like first person shooters, or like deathmatching but can't afford a good Internet connection, then get UT.

Lots of new MOD (modifications) are being released every month for this game that enable you to play in many different types of game. Strike Force is one that springs to mind which is very like Counterstrike in that it's set in a real world setting with "proper" guns as opposed to space age ray guns and the like. These can be found all over the internet and on magazine coverdisks (PC ZOne is usually good for UT MODs)

Only quibble I have is that the manual is on CD in pdf format. This seems to be the norm these days, but is very frustrating to have to print out your own manual which could take well over 30 pages for some games, or else you're in trouble if you need to refer to it mid-game.

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