Unreal Tournament

"Excellent."

To tell you the truth, I'm not really a big fan of shooters. Goldeneye, Perfect Dark... I've played them all before with some friends, and they didn't hold my attention for a long period of time. Sure, they were fun to play for a while with friends, but after I'm done I don't have that much interest in the game anymore. However, on a recent trip to Poland, my cousin took the time to show me a PC game by the name of Unreal Tournament. I instantly recognized the name and showed some interest, and although I had never played it before, I was eager to try it out because I had heard good things about it. As soon as the opening scene started, I was blown away by the amazing graphics, paired along with excellent music. My amazement tripled when I actually got around to playing the game and its different modes hearing more great music, and I got such a great look at the game that I decided to order it from the Internet when I flew back to my home in America. And lo and behold, the game got even better for me when I explored the depths and the different modes of play that I didn't have time to access at my cousin's house. Unreal Tournament simply proved to be an excellent shooting game like no other.

The graphics were downright awesome. The 3D environments were packed with tons of detail, as were the characters that you play as. If you take the chance to move your display around a bit during the gameplay, you'll be amazed at how much detail is put into every single little nook and cranny of the course. The weapons features in Unreal Tournament all have their own realistic design, which is not very surprising, but good because it is awfully boring seeing the same weapon pop out in front of you every time you arm one, even if it is different than your previous one. The characters are nicely detailed, with a wide range of different suits, faces, and skin colors/types... the only flaw I've found with graphics is some very minor pixelation problems on the characters, which are only barely noticeable on the creation and information screen. This is actually a relief, because this problem is not seen on the character during your actual battle, unless you happen to get extremely close to your enemy. Besides this small pixelation problem, everything else looks very clear and sharp, and overall, the graphics were simply excellent.

The music featured in Unreal Tournament is GREAT! Very rarely have I ever come across a game with so much variation in the tracks, with each one being great and fitting in nicely with the rest of the game... so far, every single track I've heard up until now is excellent, and fit extremely well with the surroundings. The music is usually intense, and therefore it fits in magnificently with the theme of a deathmatch and the different environments. Not only that, but there's a lot of different pieces of music played... in fact, I still don't think I've heard every single one, since I always just seem to get a new one every time I play a new round.

The sound was excellent as well. There's a lot of sound in Unreal Tournament, and all of them seem to be quite good. Each weapon has two different kinds of shots, and each different shot from each different weapon has its own unique sound. You can often tell what kind of weapon is being fired when you hear the gunfire, and this could even be used to your advantage once you've learned to recognize each one. Other sounds include some small bits of voice acting, and sounds that were generated from the activity of your character that you are playing as. For instance, when you are running, you can often hear some light footsteps as you run along, or you can hear the sound of splashing water if you happen to run through a puddle or jump right into a pool of water. Also, you can hear some small amounts of breathing from your character, in cases such as falling from a high level and hearing your character gasp for air when he or she hits the ground. And finally, as I mentioned, there are some small comments heard during gameplay. While some of these are orders, such as “Cover me”, most of them are taunts such as “You suck!”, “Loser.”, or some swearing. There were four different kinds of voices (two for the man and two for the women), and luckily they sounded very good for each comment, which is a big relief after playing some games that feature horrid voice actors. Overall, the sound was very nicely done, with no noticeable problems.

The nice thing about the gameplay in Unreal Tournament is that it mixes some old, classic modes of shooting with some new, unique modes exclusive to Unreal Tournament. When you first start your Unreal Tournament, you only have one gameplay mode open to you: The classic deathmatch. In Deathmatch, your obvious goal is to kill your opponent as many times as possible. When you kill your opponent, you obtain a “Frag”. To win, you have to get a certain amount of Frags before someone else does, and the amount needed to win differs depending on the level you are playing or what kind of setting you put on for practice mode. You lose a Frag if you kill yourself, either by falling into lava or space, drowning, or using a large gun while being too close to an enemy, so this should obviously be avoided. One must keep in mind that you are not always playing against one enemy, but rather there are often 4 or 5 other players that are not on the same side. This is a great idea, because it establishes the fact that you might not die a single time, but you still may not win. This also seems to increase players' aggressiveness, because the player always has to rush into battle and kill as many people as possible before the other people slaughter themselves.

Other modes include the classic Capture the Flag, where you work together with a teammate to capture the enemy flag and bring it back to your base, while guarding your own flag and making sure it isn't stolen by the enemy. This charm of this classic mode hasn't died down one bit, and is still as fun to play as ever. However, there is another kind of mode that I personally have never seen in any other game, and it is called “Domination”. Domination is a pretty cool, unique (and hard!) concept, in which you work with another player to take over and control “control points”. You must first track them down, then secure them and the control point's symbol with change from a gray “X” to your team symbol, with the color of the team you are on. For every 5 seconds a control point is controlled by a team, that team gets one point added to their score. It may sound easy to defend one certain area, but there are always at least two points to be controlled, and it's rather hard to control and guard one without having the other one taken over by the opposing team.

The last mode of play is called Assault, and it is a mode in which the players are split into two teams, the Attackers and Defenders. The Attackers are supposed to destroy something or take over something, and the Defenders' job is to stop them from doing so. An example of this would be to invade an area and blow up a computer terminal without being killed by the Defenders. To win, you have to be on the side of the Defenders, and stop the Attackers within three minutes. It's harder to win if you are on the side of the Attackers because you must first complete your objective within three minutes, then switch to the other side and stop them for three minutes.

Of course, like all shooting games, Unreal Tournament becomes a game of strategy and skill. One must use some advanced techniques to succeed, and these include things such as dodging and striding to avoid bullets, taking out foes by shooting them in the head, etc. There's also an array of armor and health restore units to make things harder, but this isn't very surprising since it is a very common sight in shooters. To make things more interesting, they've added “Sprees” to Unreal Tournament, and to get a spree you first have to kill a certain amount of people without dying yourself. For instance, killing five people without dying causes a verbal notification to everyone that you are on a killing spree. Killing ten people in the same way would make you go on a “Rampage”. This makes the game quite interesting and allows you to shoot for something high, to become the best!

Lots of fun in this game. Between the different modes of play, the wide variety of challenge levels, character designs, bot customizers, and online multiplayer games, Unreal Tournament proves to be a very long and lasting game, which should keep you busy for a very long time. Like the back of the box states, no two games are ever the same, and this is a true fact.

Final Word
If you like shooters and gibs, I highly recommend that you try this game, and if you don't like shooters, try it anyway. It packs amazing graphics and audio, awesome gameplay, lots of fun and replayability, and everything else good that you could imagine. Again, it is highly recommended to anyone that you should at least try it out, and I doubt you'll be disappointed with an awesome game like Unreal Tournament.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 08/06/01, Updated 08/06/01