Unreal Tournament 2003 Review October 07, 2002 Jakub Wojnarowicz

Overview

Page:: ( 1 / 8 )

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.

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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.

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128MB of RAM

16MB DirectX 8.1 compatible card

2.5GB hard drive space (!)

FS Recommends

1.4GHz processor

512MB of RAM

GF4 or better

Interface and Sound

Page:: ( 2 / 8 )

Menus galore

Unreal Tournament had one of the most plainly functional FPS interfaces out there, and little has changed for UT2K3. It’s not flashy or elegant, but remarkably easy to use and obvious. Everything is divided into a large assortment of specific menus, each dealing clearly with the subject it’s supposed to. Somehow this massive system avoids being cluttered or overwhelming. It takes a short while to get used to, but it’s never confusing. In fact, it has some features we loved, like the ability to queue up weapon auto-selection to your preference. Hate the flak cannon? Put it as low as you want. Always want to pick up a rocket launcher, even if you have a lightning gun? Rate the RL higher!

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UNSTOPPABLE!

The sounds that come with UT2K3 are basically the same as the ones in the original UT. Even the controversial announcer makes a re-appearance, as do the trash talk character voices. Not all sounds are identical, some may have been re-recorded or to use the popular movie catchphrase, “digitally remastered”. Whatever the case may be, the sounds are very appropriate for the game and still high quality. We are upset somewhat at the fact that more new sounds weren’t included, but we’ll cover that later in the ballistics report.

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512MB RAM

32MB GF2 GT-S

ASUS A7V

Graphics and Performance

Page:: ( 3 / 8 )

Spinorama

UT2K3 is the finest looking shooter out on the market. It’s not realistic, the models aren’t to scale or natural and they wield caricature guns, but damn us if it’s not a sweet looking game. The Unreal engine has clearly moved forward by leaps and bounds since we last saw it in Rune. There is absolutely no comparison, it’s like comparing StarCraft to Homeworld. Characters are more expressive and have a far greater variety of motions. Weapon effects are on a new level and players show damage they take by leaving trails of sparks/flames.

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In a strange twist of fate…

The review system happens to have exactly the ‘recommended’ requirements listed by Infogrames. After spending days with the game, we can safely say based on this circumstantial evidence that whatever the development, marketing and testing teams were smoking, it hit them pretty hard. The ‘recommended’ system requirements should be listed as the minimum specs, and even then that would be borderline criminal lying. The 1GHz Athlon with 512MB of RAM and 32MB GF2 GTS was chugging along at barely playable framerates that this author hasn’t experienced since trying 640x480 software mode Quake on a Pentium 133, or Ultima 9. This is at 800x600 resolution with all the goodies turned to the minimum. On small maps with few players, we can almost see getting by on this setup. Unfortunately, UT2K3 is chock-full of those panoramic, grand gestures which the creator deigned to call a ‘map’. If you intend to play UT2K3 for a long time, kiss your upgrade budget goodbye.

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As the rose itself bloomed in

Springtime, morning death

Gameplay

Page:: ( 4 / 8 )

The actual play

When the UT2K3 demo came out, I was extremely excited over the possibilities. Yeah, the maps it offered weren’t the best, but the gameplay was frantic, fast and vicious. We hadn’t spent enough time with the game yet to see exactly what we liked specifically, besides the speed. After about a week of playing, we’re glad we spent so much time before the review to take a close look.

The movement speed of players makes for an exciting match, but there were other, more subtle changes in the maps that improved gameplay. Weapons aren’t a resource since they default to “stay” after pickup, but health is. Health items are very rare and scattered, making skilled play focus around keeping yourself alive. This works much better in dueling than it does in a FFA melee, since if anyone can get a good weapon in FFA but no one gets health, even the best player’s life expectancy is very short.

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Game modes

The game is played in regular deathmatch, team deathmatch, double domination or bombing run modes. Double domination is like domination in that you need the capture control areas, but you don’t earn points by holding them. Rather, when both areas are under your control, a 10-second timer starts counting down until a point is scored. Bombing run is essentially football without the downs, or Rugby without a scrum. There’s a ball on the map and the ballcarrier’s weapon becomes the ball launcher, with which he can score a 3-point fieldgoal, punt or pass. He can also score a 7-point touchdown by running into the endzone… er… portal. If not for the map design, this would be our favorite mode of play.

UT2K3 introduces some new features as well. The first that you’ll encounter is “adrenaline”, which can be collected as adrenaline pills or earned by making kills. When your adrenaline hits 100, you can hit keystroke combos to go invisible, berskerk or move faster. These gained abilities have a timer after which they run out, or they’ll stop when you die. It’s pretty gimmicky if anything, we’d prefer them without the adrenaline pills. Like dodge moves, there are now double-jumps and wall-jumps. Again, they’re more gimmicky than anything – there’s no skill involved. Even strafe jumping takes more ability than a double-jump or wall-jump. That’s not to say they’re not fun and useful, just don’t expect pros to go on the bandwagon until they become skill moves that take a lot of practice to execute.



SIDEBAR: The rose petal blooms

As the rose itself bloomed in

Springtime, morning death

Gameplay Problems

Page:: ( 5 / 8 )

Where the fun stops

That, ladies and gentlemen, is all that we have to say about UT2K3 that’s complimentary. The rest falls into the ‘major gripes’ category. We’ve already gone over the performance problems that UT2K3 faces, and the disadvantage it puts players who even have the recommended system specs at. But there are more serious issues purely with the design.

Maps are atrocious. There is no other word for them, as maybe one in ten is designed properly. Free-for-all maps are designed with terrible killzones and spawning points. It’s just too common to spawn and die immediately – the maps feel overcrowded despite their generous size. The availability of powerful weapons nearly every spawn doesn’t help that. Bombing Run maps have stupid chokepoints that could be defended by Starvin’ Marvin and a bag of cheesie poofs. Double Domination, on the other hand, has control points that are just too easy to capture. Once the countdown starts, all it takes is someone flying by the point to block the scoring opportunity. Worse, players remain at the places they were in during the last score, which often results in situations where the scoring is back-and-forth since the losing team is healthy, freshly armed and ready to assault the weak control point positions.

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Weapon selection

The weapons are just… bad. The most effective tools in the game are essentially all about spam. Even the assault rifle starts with four grenades that come off the alternate fire. Just find a crowd and spam the area for cheap kills. There’s no skill involved. The BioGun, rocket launcher, flak cannon and shock rifle don’t require any aim. Knockback effects seem random – sometimes someone flies wildly, other times they barely budge. In a game where the primary test of skill is in avoiding damage, what’s the point of littering it with area-effect high-damage weapons? The only weapons worth keeping for a competition mod are the chaingun, rocket launcher and shock rifle. In its current shape, UT2K3 demands less skill and is less likely to show the difference between good and average players than even its predecessor was.

When combined with the level design, like certain bombing run maps which have bottlenecks, the game actually becomes frustrating. While we weren’t expecting Unreal Tournament 2003 to be a killer pro competition app, and made it clear why it isn’t, we did expect it to be more fun than it is.



SIDEBAR: There may be a cheat out there already, or I just happened to play someone with insanely good aim. Whenever he got the lighting gun, everyone in his line of sight died. He easily racked up scores of 30-6, 20-5 and so on, but died all too easy without his weapon of choice and his movement skills were very questionable.

Ballistics Report

Page:: ( 6 / 8 )

Pros

Graphics. Easily the best-looking FPS that’s available, or at least the flashiest. People may argue for the realism of Battlefield 1942, but the point is that BF1942 just doesn’t have as many features.
New additions. Though not quite up the competitive gamer’s alley, adrenaline, double-jumps and wall-jumps make for a fun experience with a greater variety of moves.
Simple fun. Many players will be able to get in and enjoy the game, particularly the teamplay modes, without caring all that much about how much trouble that truly awesome player on his team is having trying to be dominant.

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Cons

Gameplay. Call us out on it, but we’re hardcore, we’re biased towards games which give the freedom for a skilled player to dominate, not restrict their abilities. That’s because after a while, sooner or later everyone starts noticing the limitations. UT never surpassed Q3A’s online popularity, being right on its tail during these past few years, but slowly dropping off every few months.
Performance. Utterly horrible. There is no excuse for a game to perform so badly at the lowest settings, especially on a system which meets the recommended system requirements. Unless you have all the latest hardware, don’t bother with UT2K3 for a while, the 20fps isn’t worth the frustration.
Value. We said we’d explain our gripe with the re-used sounds even though they work, and here it is: the game costs an absurd about, being found for $70 Canadian at the cheapest major retailer we could find. Granted, it is a new game, has a lot of content and a new engine. But it’s also not 50 hours of Final Fantasy, Baldur’s Gate II or the endless customization that Neverwinter Nights offers. There’s no excuse for it costing as much as those games. Also, what happened to Assault and Domination? I’m paying good money here!

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Conclusion

Page:: ( 7 / 8 )