Unreal Tournament 2004 Review

Introduction

The Unreal series has been going for a while, from the release of Unreal to the latest engine of UT2004. There have been many advances, 1 being graphics, as hardware gets faster the games they run are becoming more and more complex, UT2004 is on exception. UT2004 has many features old and new. Read on to find out more.

First things First

There are 2 versions available to buy now, the 1 disk DVD version or the 6 CD version. A special Edition DVD version will be made available later on featuring a special DVD with tutorials on how to make your own mods and a headset for internet play. The version on review is the DVD version (i dont fancy messing around with 6 CD's). It comes in a DVD style case, and comes with the Game disk, Manual and a Rebate Token. The Rebate Token is for the people who alredy bought UT2003, they are entitled to a £7.50 rebate on the game.

Value

This game ranges from an amazing £17.99 to a full retail of £34.99. In the high street shops you will be expected to pay anything between £25-£35 although this may vary. Online retailers may be offering better prices of £17.99 to £25, and again this may vary whith who you are buying it from.

The Review

UT2004 has too many feature to review individually, so i will be conserntrating on the main changes and improovments. More information on the game can be found here official web site.

Interface

Apon loading you are Greated by the classic UT loading banner on the desktop, followed by a vid clip of the Nvidia campaine "Nvidia The way its ment to be played". The menu layout isnt much different to its predecessor, just a colour change and a change of some option placments. Easy enough to find all options needed to configure and play the game. Some settings can only be found in the UT2004.ini file like its predecessor, but in most cases this is not needed.
UnrealED 3 also comes with a UserFriendly interface, which is what made the game engine soo adaptable.

The Game

First off lets walk you through the game types available

Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture The Flag, Double Domination, Bombing Run, Last Man Standing, Invasion, Mutant, Assault and last but not least Onslaught.
No dout you have noticed a few new game mode and some old. UT fans everywhere can finally play the Assault mode again, which was 1 of my favourate modes. The Main new addition to these mods is Onslaught. This mode has 2 Teams each with a Power Core and there are power Nodes around each Map which the teams need to Take comtrol of, once they have a line of Power Nodes connecting them to the opposing teams Power Core, they cvan then start destroying it. Theres a bit of domination thrown into that game type. You will also be able to drive several veichals around the maps, infomation on the veichals can be found HERE .

I bet you dont want to wait around with controls, you just want to get strait into the game, well you might be in for a long wait any way. Due to the sheer size of the maps, textures, music, sounds and static meshes, UT2004 take a long time to load, i found myself entering the game way after it had started. I was on a 80gb Western Digital 2mb cache drive. I have since switched to a IDE RAID-0 setup and all onslaught maps load in 20 seconds or less, but thoughs of you without RAID setups will probally have to wait.

Once the maps load you are greated with the same stunning effects that can be found in UT2003. The game play and speed is much like UT2003, so is the feel of the game. The frame rates have droped due to the size and ammount of detail in both Skins and Maps, but nothing too drastic. First game mode i tryed was of course Onslaught, this did suffer quite a performance hit, most of the maps in this game type are huge and spaced out, others are small and hektic once full of players. These maps would not be playable without the veichals, because of the size of them, would take you a while to walk from 1 end to the other. Online play is why this game was made, and also what makes it fun. UT2004 has a built in Team Speak function and has a total of 3 channels per server, 1 per team and a public channel, you can customise kesy to switch between them. This takes away the need to use outside programs that take up valuable resources, you can sellect the ammount of bandwidth used for this function by selection good or poor quality.

Coming out of the game and into the IRC chat facility we find a Text-to-Speech Function.Text to speech is a method of converting text odiously into speech, some abbreviations of words have been converted as well, EG LOL = Laughing out loud. This function can be turned off.

Extras

With UT2004 comes UnrealED 3 equipped with all the latest tools and options required to build a professional style map. UnrealED 3 also allows import of static meshes built outside of UnrealEd eg, lightwave or 3D Max 6.

Conclusion

UT2004 has certainly redeemed itself. With the Addition of Onslaught and the resurrection of Assault, UT2004 has got a lot of what made UT the original soo famous, and some of what made UT2003 popular. Just like every First Person Shooter on the market UT2004 does have its Strengths and Weaknesses, most of which can be overlooked.

Product Info and Requirements

Pros and Cons

Pros -

Very nice graphics.
Addition of New and Old Game Types
New and Old weapons
Addition of Veichals

Cons -

Cannot install 1 copy on a network
Requires a Powerfull PC
Takes a long time to load

Ratings

Area	%
Ease of use	85
Performance	90
Style	15
Value	90
Reviewers Rating	85
Total	85

Links

15 Apr 2004 by GOTH_THING