To be honest, I missed the boat where Unreal Tournament 2003 (UT2k3) was concerned. I thought it was a worthy sequel and, even though I personally preferred the original Unreal Tournament (UT), I thought UT2k3 would be welcomed by the UT community. Boy was I wrong. It seems I wasn't the only one who preferred the game play of the original. As an historical fact, UT2k3 never caught on like the original despite some good patches and a nice, big, free bonus pack.
This time around the game franchise has pulled out all the stops, taking the best of the two previous iterations and delivering a ton of premium content. As such, I'm a bit more confident that I'm correct in saying that UT2k4 is the sequel for which the UT community has been waiting. What's more, it is the multi-player first-person shooter (FPS) game to own these days for reasons I'll make clear below.
UT2k3 broke a lot of new ground with its visuals, besting every other game in its day. It had some pretty steep system requirements, but it ran quite well on powerful hardware. Perhaps the greatest testament to its appeal is that a slew of games were released shortly thereafter based on the UT2k3 engine. You know it's worthwhile when game developers and publishers are willing to drop big money to license the technology.
In contrast, UT2k4 doesn't push the envelope much further in terms of eye candy, but the developers have clearly spent some time polishing and optimizing. The result is that UT2k4 looks better than UT2k3 while running far more smoothly, even on less powerful hardware. The improvement is positively amazing to me.
To provide the usual breakdown, the models and animation are great, the texture work is superb, the environments (amazingly enough) are pushing even more polygons, and the special effects are positively fabulous. Suffice it to say that there is nothing to complain about with UT2k4's visuals. The game simply looks as good as any game can look, given the state of today's art.
As with the visuals, the audio in UT2k4 takes everything great from UT2k3, polishes it up, and adds even more nifty stuff to boot. With support for the Creative Labs EAX3 standard the audio is very, very good. The positional audio is as good or better than any other game, and the properties of the environments are reflected better than ever. Game audio is finally reaching that point whereat the environments are believable for the aural sense.
Better still, UT2k4 adds a bunch of nice new touches, such as providing the player with some different options for the announcer's voice. Those who hated the Tony-the-Tiger announcer from UT2k3 should easily be able to find a voice they prefer with UT2k4. Everything about the audio seems flawless. I can't think of a thing I'd change—well, aside from ditching the techno-heavy soundtrack and hiring Bill Brown to work his usual magic but I just love his stuff.
The basics of the FPS interface remain completely unchanged. What are worth noting are the new bits that the developers had to add to support the new game modes. Other games have featured air and land vehicles with varying degrees of success—e.g., Battlefield 1942 (BF1942), Planetside, etc.—but UT2k4 does the best job I've seen yet of making vehicles useable with nothing more than a mouse and keyboard. I need my joystick when I'm playing BF1942; it is simply not optional to control the aircraft properly. In contrast, UT2k4 gets the job done beautifully without making me reach for anything else and that's great.
Similarly, the additional interface for spawning and such in the onslaught game mode is equally well done. The developers have managed to add highly intuitive and functional mechanisms without cluttering things up at all. The minimap, new HUD elements, and everything else manage to come together to provide just the right information without eating too much of the screen.
Yet not all is sweetness and light; there are a couple of negative comments that must be made. First, even though the developers have had a good amount of time since the release of UT2k3, they still haven't built any of the great, community features supplied by various other games. UT2k4 is clearly going to set the clan community on fire, so why are there no features to manage clans, buddy lists, etc.? Such omissions could be forgiven in the original UT, and to a lesser extent in UT2k3, but they stick out like a sore thumb in UT2k4. Tribes 2, for example, has had far more advanced community features for years. UT2k4 should do at least that much.
Second, it is inexcusable that the developers overlooked what was arguably the biggest problem with the UT2k3 interface: a complete lack of progress indicators when loading maps. This wouldn't be a big deal if loading the various maps took a couple of seconds, but some of them can take quite a while. I haven't yet connected to a server that required me to download a map, but I'm dreading the moment when it happens. It would really help the player to be patient if the game could be bothered to provide even the most basic feedback.
Hard as it might be to believe, given the wildly positive comments already made, it is nevertheless the case that UT2k4's greatest triumph lies in the changes to the fundamental game mechanics. Nowhere else is it more evident that UT2k4 takes everything good from UTk3, fixes its problems, and adds a bunch of great new stuff at the same time.
For example, although the single-player tournament in UT2k3 was interesting it could also be terribly annoying. I can't even tell you how many times I had to play some of the bombing run and double domination maps because I could not get my idiot, bot teammates to do much of anything constructive. If you're stuck on one map in UT2k4 you can simply change the arena, for a modest fee, which is a godsend for those who want to enjoy the single-player campaign.
Better still, that single-player campaign is more interesting and more varied thanks to challenges, better team management, control over player positions, and so forth. Whereas UT2k3 was really an on-line-only game with some "training wheel" missions, UT2k4 boasts a genuinely fun, single-player campaign as well. Sure, it's a bit repetitive but it's still a good time. Heck, you'll get more out of UT2k4's single-player campaign than you will out of the entire Max Payne or other über-short games on the market these days!
Best of all, to me at least, is the degree to which the designers have tweaked the game balance. UT2k3 was too much of a departure from the classic UT game play for my tastes. I liked it a lot, mind you, but it was simply too different an animal for me to remove UT from my hard drive. In contrast, UT2k4 is the game that will finally free up that drive space. UT2k4 restores the frantic pace of the original UT while simultaneously integrating all of the improvements introduced by UT2k3 and pushing the envelope still further.
Finally, the mechanics of the new (or "new" where assault is concerned) game modes are simply fabulous. Assault was a great game mode in the original UT, but it was problematic for several reasons. UT2k4 does assault right and provides some nicely complex maps on which to play it. Granted, there are barely more than a handful of said maps, but they feature so many different objectives that it's very hard to complain.
And for those who have played it, it goes without saying that the new, onslaught game mode is simply the best. The developers clearly had BF1942's conquest mode in mind, yet they managed to improve it greatly with a little tweaking. Whereas games in BF1942 can be terribly annoying as a lone enemy player grabs control points far behind the lines, or as one team manages to spawn-camp the other into oblivion for minutes on end, UT2k4 gets it exactly right.
The onslaught mode provides at most a couple of places where all of the action will be happening, which makes the game far more focused. It actually keeps the front lines at the front. It also guarantees that infantry can stand on their own against players with vehicles. Mastering the vehicles will do much to help in onslaught, mind you, but they can't completely dominate the playing field as they do in some other games. If anything the vehicles could probably stand to be toughened a bit, insofar as it's possible to shred even the biggest, armored vehicles like tissue paper with the right tactics.
UT2k4 has a story? What would it be? Seriously, I don't think the developers bothered even to provide the single paragraph that lots of other FPS games offer. Sure, there's a Liandri corporation and a past war with hideous aliens, but what does any of that have to do with blasting the crap out of anything that moves? It's hard to say. I'm sure somebody out there probably knows, but I haven't a clue. More important is that I don't care; and most important of all I don't have to care. The game doesn't need a story; it's great without one.
Holy content, Batman! Can you believe it? The original UT shipped with a fair number of maps as did UT2k3; UT2k4 blows them both away with more game modes, more than 100 maps, more weapons, the addition of vehicles, built-in chat/real-time-voice capabilities, etc. Ut2k4 is like a beautiful, sweet breeze amidst the foul stench of a host of games that provide so little by comparison. Who wants to spend $50 on the latest nine-hour game when I can buy a bazillion—that's 1,000 gazillion for those not in the know—hours of adrenaline-soaked gaming for about $20?
Seriously, UT2k4 is positively bursting at the seams with stuff. Plenty of others have made a fuss about it, so I'd better at least mention it: the game ships on no less than six CDs. Count 'em. Six. Granted, one of them is nothing more than a copy-protected play disc, but that's still a whopping amount of content for your gaming dollar. Better still, virtually all of it is high quality stuff. Trust me, there's very little to complain about when it comes to the content in UT2k4.
The lone exception, I think, is still—long time readers will surely expect it—the artificial intelligence (AI) demonstrated by the bots. To be sure, UT2k4 isn't BF1942 or other games that feature AS (i.e., artificial stupidity) instead of AI; no, like its predecessors UT2k4 has the very best bots in the business today. The problem is that even the best are still slightly dumber than, say, cabbage. Sure, they move relatively well and can shoot straight enough, but they're dumb as a post when it comes to tactics.
The bombing run portion of the game just about drove me nuts, for example, because of the idiotic decisions made by my bot teammates. For example, on the very last map in the series I had just grabbed the damage amplifier and was ready to rock and roll. The enemy team was cresting the hill at the center, and I was going to mow them down with my minigun. It was going to be a slaughter told of in song and story.
Or at least it was until one of my idiot teammates thought it would be a much better idea to pass me the ball so he could open fire with... an assault rifle! Naturally, given my luck, I managed to miss the "incoming pass" notification which meant I ended up launching the ball to the enemy and getting killed for my troubles since I was so far out in front. Lovely. Just lovely. So who thought it would be a good idea to give me the ball when I had the damage amplifier? Sheesh. With friends like that who needs enemies?!
Given that UT2k4's bread and butter is its multi-player component, it's not surprising that it shines in this regard. The game browser has been improved, and it even seems that the network code has been tweaked. UT2k4 has the smoothest on-line play of any game of its scope. I don't think I've had more than a couple of problems with lag, and I haven't witnessed any of the bizarro server glitches I saw occasionally with UT or UT2k3. There is nothing to complain about with UT2k4's multi-player aspect. It's the best of the best, hands down.
If it seems like I'm gushing it's only because I am. UT2k4 isn't going to be my favorite game of all time, or at least I don't think it will be, but it is clearly the definitive multi-player FPS game. It defines the genre. Forget the Quake series; UT2k4 removes all doubts that Epic Games and not Id Software is king of the multi-player FPS game.
UT2k4 is a must-buy game for anyone who likes the multi-player FPS genre. So stop reading and go buy a copy today! It even comes with a $10 rebate for those who purchased UT2k3, which allowed me to acquire it for a net cost of $19.99. That's a no-brainer buy for the greatest multi-player FPS game made to date, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
03/28/2004