Overview

The surprise

When Unreal Tournament was released, it came as a bit of a surprise to many gamers. Although there was considerable hype, pomp and marketing of the game, not everyone expected it to succeed as it had. With its numerous game modes, competitive graphics and unique levels it attracted a large crowd of FPS players, many of them new to the online deathmatch scene. UT never competed successfully against Quake III as a hardcore deathmatch game, but it had other features that made up for it.

Fantasy setting!

Gotta admit, the levels are beautiful

Double damage :D

Enter Unreal Tournament 2003. When the demo was released, we were stoked and ran out to buy the full game as soon as it was available. The sequel, developed by Digital Extremes, a company partnered closely with UT/Unreal developer Epic Games, faced some big challenges. How does one make a sequel to an online deathmatch title? id software got blasted by many for rehashing the same old formula with Quake III, and this was their first dedicated online title. UT2K3, being the second game in the series, has a lot of question to answer.

Is it just a ‘patch’ game?

Complaining about something is trendy. It gets attention, it often gets somebody a welcome to the bandwagon and some might even argue that it looks sophisticated, since the complainer demonstrates a critical eye. Even complaining about complaining is a fashionable activity – to call someone out for being a whiner is as likely to get as much applause as being the original complainant. Why bring this up? Inevitably you will hear comments like “they could’ve patched UT to do this”, as we heard them with Quake III “why not just patch the Quake II gameplay and let map authors design the maps?” Ingore those comments – they do horrible injustice to the developers that work hard at making the game.

Eat that, sucka

It's coming right for us!

Muahaha

The time a developer spends updating or designing an engine, creating the textures, models, animations, special effects, sound effects – and then putting it all together on levels with actual gameplay – is staggering. To suggest that Unreal Tournament 2003 could have been a patch to UT is an insult to that effort. All that work is precisely what went into UT2K3, the same with any sequel. If Civilization had supported a mod community, gave players access to the code and let them mess around with it, would people be saying the same about Civilization II?

With that out of the way, let’s cover what Unreal Tournament 2003 brings to the table. The most immediately noticeable change is the graphics, which have undergone a complete overhaul. There are new weapons like the assault rifle, and modified old ones such as the link gun and lightning gun (sniper rifle.)