Weapons Galore

Rocket launcher, shotgun

If there's one overriding criticism levied on id Software for Quake 3 Arena, it's the lack of innovation in weapons selection. Sure, we all love the solid, carved style of the gun models, but their functionality dates back to the original games of Quake, Doom and beyond. You've got your staple shotgun, rocket launcher, lightning gun, and rail. Add Quake 2's hyperblaster in the form of the plasma gun and a BFG, and you've got Q3A's major weapons in a nutshell.

Unreal Tournament is going to blow that list out of the water. Not only is Epic stocking the game with a plethora of devastating weapons, they're carrying over the alternate fire mode from the original Unreal, and making some major tweaks to what traditional players are used to.

Weapons tweakage

Taking a hint from Doom, Quake 1, and Randy Pitchford (who stated that default weapons should always be hitscan), the useless dispersion pistol has been dropped as the primary weapon, in favor of the hitscan enforcer (Unreal's automag). And of course, tag another player using them and you can pick up their gun for some John Woo styled whupping! With changes like this, Epic showed that they were more than capable of weeding the bad from the good.

The original Unreal guns have also been tweaked significantly. The flak cannon, while still a projectile weapon, now functions with the spread of a double barrel shotgun, and is the point-blank weapon of choice. Unreal's 8-ball gun has been replaced with a more traditional rocket launcher that loads up to 6 rockets before spewing them in a horizontal spread. In a move to appease Quake-style players, the rocket launcher's trigger has been made so a simple menu toggle can be switch it from delayed wind-up fire to instant-release. I personally prefer the faster instant rockets to the multi-loading variety anyday.

The awesome flak gun...

...does its job!

Add to this carnage a Quake 1 lightning gun in the form of the silky-smooth Pulse Gun, and the collection is complete. In fact, the Unreal Tournament "shaft" is the smoothest yet, especially when compared to Q3A's server-side implementation. For high-latency games, the jury's still out on the reduced feedback for the pulse gun's client-side effect.

Smooth as silk

Perfect zero

As with most games with a number of weapons, UT does end up having a few less-useful guns. The Biorifle, while functioning to cover doors and hallways, isn't quite as effective or satisfying as a grenade launcher. Epic's much-hyped Ripper performs better in theory than reality, especially when compared to the truly devastating armaments.