Unreal Tournament is a great series, and surprisingly, the games did not suffer drastically when sequels were made. The best ones are the first and last, last being UT3. The game’s story is actually different from the other ones, but not by much. In UT3, you are hired into service by a large military company, headed by none other than Malcolm. You have to do a variety of missions for the company, in order to get more important missions, so you can eventually take out the monsters that destroyed your town. It’s basically the same ladder climbing system, but with a different reason.
The gameplay is phenomenal, and is great for lengthy play and quick gore-fests alike. You can turn down the gore, but why would you want to? To me, there nothing better than seeing your foe’s brains splattered all over the screen by an impact hammer. Anyway, there are 3 different mode to choose from: campaign, quick play, and multiplayer. Campaign is what I previously described in the plot section. Quick play lets you choose between a bunch of different modes, all of which are ridiculously fun. Deathmatch is your basic blow the hell out of everyone, UT killfest I’ve come to expect. Capture the flag is just capture the flag. Grab the flag, bring it back to your base. Team deathmatch is just the same as deathmatch, but with teams. Vehicle capture the flag is one of the three new modes in the game, and lets you control tons of cool vehicle, from tripods to tanks, in order to get the other team’s flag. In this mode, I have to assume the flag is made of diamonds, seeing as you die a lot for one flag.
Warfare is the best new mode, and lasts longest. You can use vehicles, your hoverboard, or just walk in order to blow up the enemies “nodes”, which are like the shield generator on Endor. They protect the “death star” as I call it. Its actually a spherical generator. Blow it up, you win. Finally, there’s duel. You just have to kill one other guy, and he switches out with another guy, and whoever has the highest score wins.
There’s all the classic UT weapons there, but they look different. Also, the game’s campaign is very long, about 10 hours, seeing as one Warfare match can take a half hour on normal. If you count the skirmish and online play, the value is as limitless as Warcraft 3.
The graphics are ridiculously good, but I can’t actually play them on full, seeing as my laptop wont let me. Even on the second lowest setting, they are pretty good. The gore is still good, and any types of explosions look okay. The scenery suffers a bit, but its still noticeably better than some other games. I’ve seen the game on full, and it blows Half-Life 2’s head off with a flak cannon. The characters look real, the explosions look real, the gore looks phenomenal, and the scenery make you feel like you’re really in the game. Unfortunately, I wont be seeing it in person for quite some time. Anyway, the graphics are great, mad props to the designers.
The sound effects are astounding in this game. You can practically hear it when you reduce your foes to a puddle, and when you melt their skin off with a bio-rifle, you can hear the sizzle. The announcer is still that obnoxious yelling guy from the original, who basically just screams out if you have gotten more that one kill in a row. There are also a lot of tiny details that the creators put in, such as being able to hear footfalls, or hearing the charging of laser, or the sound of a rocket flying through the air. I play with headphones, so everything sounds closer, but even on just speakers, you can spot these special touches. My favourite sound in the game is when you fire off the redeemer, a huge, nearly map-clearing missle. It’s like the sound of a nuke, kind of delayed, but very cool when it gets there. Finally, all the sounds match up perfectly with events, and the music always fits the area, and never bores you.
Unreal Tournament is a must-have for shooter lovers everywhere, it is the only shooter ever to surpass the original.
