Weapons Part 1

Guns guns guns

Unreal Tournament sports 10 basic weapons (and a pair of special ones - the chainsaw and the translocator), each with a primary fire and secondary fire mode. This sounds like quite a lot at first, but when you break it down and analyze what they all do, then you'll see that many of the familiar deathmatch weapons are there, just wearing different clothes and a different name. Still, a dozen weapons is a dozen weapons; if variety is what you're looking for, then Unreal Tournament is where to find it. Another thing you'll notice about most of the weapons is that Epic used extremely complex models to represent them. Almost all of the weapons have animations like moving slides, and rotating barrels. Many even have digital ammo counters on them, which was probably inspired by the rifles in the movie Aliens. We had mixed feelings about the ultra complex look of UT's weapons. While some of the guns looked cool (pulse blaster, flak cannon), others seemed uninspired (minigun), and a few were just downright ugly (ripper and rocket launcher).

More details

In one of our previous articles we mentioned the swift weapon switching. It's still not instantaneous but it's certainly fast enough that you probably won't feel hindered by the delay. Another notable aspect is that Epic has given massive bouncing power to a lot of the weapons in UT, including the Shock Rifle, the Ripper, the Rocket Launcher, and the Flak Cannon. These all have the ability to throw your opponent great distances through the air (upward or otherwise). We like this feature lot - it adds to the fast paced, arcade flavor of the game. You may recall that we talked about juggling in an earlier UT article. After testing, we've concluded that it's unlikely you'd see a whole lot of "juggling" in UT (bounce them up into the air with a rocket, nail them with something else as they land) like you did in Quake 1, but it's not outside the realm of possibility.

Hopefully without boring you, we'll do a quick run through of all the weapons:

Impact Hammer

If you run out of bullets, then the Impact Hammer is all you'll be left with. This is a melee weapon only. Hold down the primary fire button to charge it up, then touch someone with it. It will automatically discharge and register a powerful punch at them. The secondary fire is a quick hitter, and can be used to deflect incoming projectiles like rockets in order to diffuse the damage. Careful about pounding it into walls though - you can damage or kill yourself this way. The bots tend to be really good at using this weapon!

You can 'rocket jump' with this

Enforcer

The Enforcer is your basic pistol handgun. You spawn in with this weapon and 30 bullets. Primary fire mode shoots the bullets one at a time (hitscan of course), and fairly accurately. Secondary fire is how you'll be shooting it most of the time, though. You'll see your gun tilt sideways (yes, ghetto gangsta style), fire faster than normal, but with much less accuracy. Each bullet packs a decent amount of punch, but with the fast movement speed of the characters, you'll be hard pressed to beat an opponent who has a better weapon.

Pop gun

It doesn't get any more ghetto

Our favorite feature of the Enforcer is being able to pick up a second one and fire both of them, one in each hand. There's nothing quite like running around with two handguns, just like Chow Yun Fat in a good John Woo flick. Hit secondary fire and go dual-ghetto mode! Double Enforcers is actually a decent threat.

Biorifle

We found this gun to be the most useless in the game. The Biorifle spits out globs of green, toxic goo that stick to walls and the ground. Sure it's got a high rate of fire, but the fact that it shoots out in an arc makes it very difficult to use effectively. The only situation where the Biorifle proves decent is when someone is chasing you and you want to try and slow them down a bit. Secondary fire mode lets you save up a huge wad of goo to shoot out - this wad will explode and spread into many smaller globs. Again, it might be useful to drop on a big crowd, but if you've got rockets or flak, you're probably better off with that anyway.

Glue gun action

Ripper

The Ripper gets our award as the second most useless gun in the game. Basically it's the same as the Razorjack from Unreal. It shoots out razor blades that hit for medium damage and can bounce around walls, floors and ceilings at high speed. If you get lucky, you can hit someone in the head and decapitate them for an instant kill. However, the bounciness and unpredictability of the Ripper makes it a weapon that's just as dangerous to the assailant as it is to the target. Secondary mode functions much like the Tribes disc launcher - the disc explodes on impact with enough force to bounce the target a good distance into the air or off to the side. Where it differs from Tribes is the power. The secondary fire of the Ripper doesn't seem to pack a whole lot of punch.

I'd rather have a Tribes disc launcher

Shock Rifle

The Shock Rifle is probably one of the more powerful weapons in the game. Its primary fire is a hitscan beam that has the added effect of bouncing the target back a good distance. It packs a decent punch but you're not going to get any one shot kills off of primary fire mode unless your opponent is already damaged. Secondary fire shoots out a slow moving ball of energy that packs more power and hits with a bit of splash damage. The real attraction of the Shock Rifle is its combination attack. If you fire a secondary energy ball, then hit that ball with the primary fire beam, it will create a good sized explosion that will gib just about anything within its radius. This is a great way to clear out a corridor or small room full of opponents. There was one thing we didn't like about the weapon though - the primary fire is hitscan but the resulting animation is not. It can be a bit confusing to aim the weapon if you don't catch on to this.

Combo attack 1

Combo number 2