The Best of the Best of the Best...With Honors.
Written: Dec 19 '99
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Nearly everything's good...bots are kinda stupid.
Cons: Internet lag.
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| Alkaiser's Full Review: Unreal Tournament for Windows |
With its critically acclaimed AI and vast, expansive worlds, Unreal garnered much praise and acclaim of 2 years past when it was shown off at E3. But it faded into the background as people went crazy over Half-Life, which won all sorts of Game of the Year awards, and yet still managed not to be all that good. (Come on, just because it had a little bit more plot than every other first person shooter, does NOT make it better than every other game on the market.) Well, Unreal’s back…and it wants revenge. However, with the impending release of Quake 3, will history repeat itself? Can Unreal Tournament hold its own in the battle of first person multiplayer games?
One of the coolest gimmicks in UT, is the fact that it links to ngWorldStats. By entering your password, your play is logged, and you can determine how you match up against the rest of the world. It also keeps track of various other nifty statistics, and I’m a bit of a meaningless stat buff, so it’s pretty cool to me. (You can just see the ads coming soon though, "Unreal Tournament, 100 Million Users Fragged!") Being able to determine your world ranking is pretty important for bragging rights, and in multiplayer games, there’s hardly anything more important than bragging rights. (With the possible exception of, according to Zeorai, "style".)
Deathmatch, that's what UT is basically all about. If this mode wasn't fun, then UT wouldn't be fun. You've got a variety of weapons. The standard rocket launcher and pistol of course, with the difference being that you can pick up two pistols and shoot them both, the way John Woo says it should be done. The rocket launcher comes with the nifty innovation that you can load up a volley of up to 6 rockets to put some major smack down on your enemies. Then you've got your array of different and useless guns, like the Bio Sludge Rifle, and the Shock Rifle. The Flak Cannon and Sniper Rifle are pretty nice, and flying the Redeemer by wire is really nifty...although hella cheezy. Then there's your hand to hand weapon. The piston. What the hell's up with that? Why a piston? And why is it operable outside of any other mechanical housing? Just in case you need to pump?! Errgh. But weapons aside, Deathmatch is quick and fun, and the map designs are very, very nice. If you kill people in streaks you'll go from a killing spree to "Godlike", and if you kill people in quick succession, you may even achieve the elusive "Ultra Kill".
UT isn't perfect. No game is. However, it doesn't crash, which is good, and it doesn't have any really big errors in it, which is also good. Some of the weapons seem too powerful. The Flak Cannon up close, will kill an unarmored enemy in one shot, as will the rocket launcher. The Sniper Rifle allows for far too many head shots, and too many Minigun vs. Sniper Rifle battles end with a throaty bass-filled voice announcing "Head Shot". Also, the taunts that your players get, and people on the net invariably set to automatically go off every time they get a kill, are severely limited, as are the taunting animations. It'd be better if UT let you set some macros for text taunts that you could customize yourself. You can only hear "Die, b*tch!" so many times before it sickens you.
This game's awesome. It made me forget about the Quake 3 demo. In fact, I hadn't even thought about it until I started writing this article. Unreal Tournament blows away all current competition, blows Q3 out of the water, sky, or whatever else Q3 runs away into. This is the best FPS game out there, hands down.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Alkaiser
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Member: Clayton Chan
Location: Irvine, CA
Reviews written: 655
Trusted by: 344 members
About Me:
Broke the 700 pound mark on my leg lifts.
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