Ut has been in the works for over 6 years basically since the dawn of doom on pc, secret level wanted their hand at an oline fps of their own. They gave us unreal, which was a relatively good fps with average online great for the time though, but there was something missing. 2 years later they release unreal tournament a game which would define a genre for many years to come.
The game takes place across different galaxies and basically tournaments have been set up to find the ultimate warrior, the player of course participates and it is your goal to win the tournament with as little ease as possible.

Gameplay -

The gameplay is your traditional shooter it is very well adapted to the dreamcast controller which is a far cry from quake 3 which took hours to get used to. The best results for this game are with a specialised gaming keyboard and mouse as aiming above or below you with a controller sometimes be very very difficult. Ut features many modes including deathmatch capture the flag, assault, domination, team deathmatch, and more, and as these modes are specifically designed for heated online play, they are still a tonne of fun on single player. Speaking of single player the levels are varied the ai is very tuned which can sometimes make you forget you are playing against a cpu, the ai is just incredible. There are over 10 weapons which are totally different from each other, unlike most shooters the guns on this game are totally different to anything you have every seen as it is a futuristic shooter, some of the things have to be seen to be believed. Anyway onto the multiplayer, this is where the bulk of the game takes place, and by god its worth every penny. You can play up to 8 players in one game running on the 56k dreamcast modem there is absolutely no lag whatsover as secret level specifically designed it to be lag free. The game is one of the fastest created and with no lag its pretty amazing that the dreamcast or pc doesnt blow up, your eyes have a harder job keeping up with the action. On a down side to the game they dont have level specific servers so any noob who goes into a game first time will be blown to pieces in a matter of nano seconds thanks to player created mods and just immensly skilled players.

Graphics -

Whilst not rendered as smoothly as quake 3, ut still does a very very high class job of bringing action to your screens. Everything is running smoothly aside from when you encounter 5 people in one room or do the 4 person split screen which then the frame rate drops rather sharply, so stay away from them. Textures are beautiful unmistakable for similar jaggy games ut has a look of its own. Character models are full of polygons although a little more wouldnt of gone a miss. Gore is displayed fantasically with bodies blood and brains exploding everywhere in a frenzy of killing. Overall on the graphics side ut is a dark, yet colourful game with some of the best visuals on the dc.

Sound -

The sound effects on this game are out of the world, easily as influential as doom back in 93. From shooting to screaming ut has it all. THe soundtrack on the other hand which was pretty decent in the pc version seems to be a miss in this game and is a sure miss. Sometimes the sound can become unsynched from the incredibly fast gameplay which can be rather confusing yet amusing. The effects are where this game really shines on the sound front with it using every channel the dreamcast has to spare.

Value -

Value is a difficult thing to measure on this game, as far as single player goes this game is uncomfortably designed not for this so if your without an internet connection this game is surely not for you, and same with the ps2 version. Its the multiplayer that counts though, and that will keep you addicted for a couple of weeks wheras the single player modes you can blast through in about a day, yet loose interest in about 2 hours.

Overall ut is fun for all ages well the higher ages anyway, and must be played in a dark room with lights off with speakers on full its brilliant.