Absolute classic. Anybody up for another round of AS-Overlord?
All in a day's work in Unreal Tournament.
Now, I am a huge fan of First Person Shooters. I played Half-Life in a weekend, I loved Halo to death, and I still play Quake III on a regular basis. So I found this old game in the bargain bin a little while ago and grabbed it, knowing the storied past and having played demos of the sequels, I was interested in the game. I powered up UT for the PC, expecting it to be a simple, older version of the deathmatch games of lore; boy was I surprised.
Unreal Tournament is by far the best FPS game I have played in years. Combining amazing level, weapon, and architecture design, the game went far beyond my wildest expectations, creating and expanding the genre of FPS into pure bliss. Not only is it required playing for FPS fans, but it's mandatory to own if you have a computer at all; the polish, value, and general tone of the game is simply outstanding.
Okay, sure, the game is old; let's just get that out of the way. The graphics are blocky and the textures are blobby; the sound feels tinny and everything is very compressed for an eight year old game. The game looks very much like an N64 game, abet a clean, higher resolution one, but in the end most people who play anything recent will not be impressed by the face graphics of this game. Thankfully it doesn't take anything down, but the game does look considerably ugly at points.
But that's actually a positive note, because the game can run on anything. If you have a piece of cardboard and it can run Windows to any extent, there's a very good chance that the game can run UT. That means that you can bring the disc along with you and throw it on Grandma's old Windows 95, because the game simply does not take much power to run; nor does it take a lot of internet to connect either, with stable code and well implemented battling. From any computer this game excels, and Epic has always done a fantastic job at making their games run well for anyone.
If you do have the extra power that the game might be able to use, however, then you have quite the game ahead of you. Unreal Tournament has some of the most amazing designs in both the levels and maps, and in the buildings, locations and bases. You'll be fighting your enemies inside of volcanoes, in the middle of an army base, on a derelict spaceship and more, and it all looks stunning to behold, even if the edges are still choppy and poor. There are so many different places to go and see; the game feels different with every map just in the way everything is presented. One moment you are playing a Quake game on an asteroid, and the next you're playing Half-Life in a laboratory. Big jump there.
And the levels themselves cannot be described in words. Legendary is the best way, because all of these maps have been copied and "improved" in other online shooters. They're always the very best in their respective games, and here's the main collection of the most fun, ambitious, and successful pack of maps that have been time tested and still to this day entertain its online community. Some people even bought the game for a single map, AS-Overlord, back in the day when the game first came out for its D-Day style beach-rush. That's how awesome these maps are; simply legendary, and very very fun.
The shooting isn't so bad either. With a whole bunch of gloriously wicked weapons that feel powerful yet fully balanced, UT has a full arsenal of guns that will have any FPS game drooling. From the blast from the Shock Rifle to the accuracy and power of the sniper, everything has its place and sits in it proudly, waiting to be used by the right user. The only two exceptions are the BioRifle and the Redeemer. The former is a wimpy piece of sludge that is a broken mess when in the wrong hands, and the Redeemer is basically a nuke in your hand, making is fun but overpowered.
All this comes down to the modes. Capture the Flag, Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch are simple enough, but with the polish the rest of the game has it's just as fun. Assault is an objective based mode that's brilliantly enjoyable with some really good friends, and Domination is a fight over a bomb, and plays a lot like football. There are also tournaments that automatically set themselves up for fast online matchmaking, as well as a little bunch of miscellaneous options called "mutators" that balance or make the game wild, like making good players fat or letting everyone have Anti-Grav Boots. All these options add up to a lot in the end.
For the internet-challenged, there are a whole plethora of offline computer controlled characters (known as bots) that have some of the amazing AI that the Unreal series is known for. They'll support you when you need it in Capture the Flag or other Team games, but as an enemy they can be downright diabolical. They'll dodge your attacks and make you wish you've never been born...though if you're good enough or bad enough they will rise or fall to your playing level. Though they won't last you forever, the bots are a great group to play with for good practice.
As for a single player campaign, there is only a measly tournament that can be played through to challenge the other bots, which can be fun when it gets intense but gets old fairly quickly. But with a little mod called "Oldskool" UT suddenly has the capability to play single-player maps from the original Unreal. With fan made campaigns, such as the 36-level epic Operation Na Pali, who needs anything more? Some of the downloadable games can better-up full campaigns that you pay for these days.
Well, the game comes built in with an editor for map and model making, so there's no shortage of games, maps, and modes to play on the internet. But if you don't like any of the brilliance that Epic has thrown into this game, then make your own material and show everyone why you are the best. Simply put, the value for this game is fantastic, no matter what price you get it at.
As for the PS2 and Dreamcast versions, a problem is the lack of downloadable content, which makes the game much shorter-lived than the PC one, and the controller versus the keyboard and mouse. With the very large UT maps, the mouse is better for swinging the camera to face your enemies, which is a little too slow on a DualShock controller. Of course, even this game can't go wrong, but when faced with the choice the winner is the PC version, hands down.
From the sound, as well, there's plenty of brilliance. The voice-overs sound good, with an announcer telling you what's up, and the bots and players alike have great taunts that get fired over the radio transmissions. The guns sound plenty powerful and live up to their in-game performance. All of the effects are nice and clean, though the voices can give off a crackling noise at times. The music itself doesn't sound amazing when you first hear it: it appears at first ear to be a simple quality and a few undertones. As you play the game more, the music really blooms into a mood maker, making the matches more exciting and enjoyable. The composition is on the level of Halo, with only a few dull tracks mixed in with a lot of good, quick winners, making the soundtrack an overlooked album.
Overlooked. When Quake III Arena came out, it was the talk of the town; A new game in the legendary Quake series. Unreal Tournament came out about the same time, and they were direct rivals, and because of this a lot of Deathmatch fans missed out when they didn't give this game a try, because the maps, locations, and community all stand out as some of the best in the video game business. For the first time in my video game career, I am claiming this game to be perfect, thus earning my only 10/10 rating.