nice coating for an already renowed masterpiece
User Rating: 9.4 | Unreal Tournament 2004: Editor's Choice Edition PC
Almost 7 months later, Epic gives us a Editor's Edition including all the original content, all the patches, 3 new vehicles, 6 new skins, and 11 of the best mods. Did I forget to mention 4 new Onslaught maps too? ONLY 4 you say?! Yes, but they are quite well optimized, everything fit almost perfectly. It's apparent how thoughtful was the testing; these maps are as good as the best original ones. The casual player won't see any residual bug here : UT2004 is even more polished than before, and it was already a reference. ONS-Urban is stunning; ONS-IslandHop can be tactical online for adept players using well the new vehicles. Speeking of which: the new vehicles are well implemented and don't imbalance the gameplay. The Paladin & SPMA designs are appealing, and each has some learning curve before being able to drive effectively. The SPMA's impact explosions are a bit cartoony though ( a residual cell-shading ). The Cicada has a less than sterling design, even awkward at first sight. Don't let that fool you: it's an awesome flying machine and it starts to shine when you fly it ( or see it in action ). A good Cicada player can do a lot of damage not only around nodes but against any terrestrial vehicle. The mods included are all worth a look. Alien Swarm is the most polished; but the unavoidable Red Orchestra is by far the most popular. Air Buccaneers has some of the most innovative gameplay mechanics in the recent years. All these mods are of course heavily tested ( covering surprisingly many opposite genres ) and the devs are encouraged to do so: there are some deadlines and push imposed by the 1 000 000 dollars Unreal Contest. It's good to see how Epic works in close relation with the teams involved too. This package deal is the result, and shows how the Unreal community is still one - if not THE - most hardcore and dedicated. The bot AI has been tweaked, like they said, and playing Onslaught offline is now as challenging to play than any other mode. Playing at a decent level, you have to rush very quickly in order to compete. UT2004 is - again - one of the smoother, silkier, and refined gaming experience we can find nowadays in the action-adrenaline genre.
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