Unreal Tournament 2003

"This game will remind you why you bought UT instead of Quake III."

Please note, this is a review of ''Post-Bonus Pack UT''. The free bonus pack available from epic.com.

From reading the title you might get the impression that this will revisit the greatness of the old one. You know what I mean, get the blood flowing, the adrenaline going and kick as much posterior as the original Unreal Tournament.
Well, unfortunately, its not so hot as the original, not by a long shot in fact. Fortunately, the original was so good, that games that even vaguely approach its greatness are worth your hard earned cash.

The Graphics are SOLID, combining brilliant shading, lightning, textures and more polygons than you can count on one hand (or 6,000 hands, even). Character models animate like a dream and include ragdoll physics (so that they collapse like bodies in real life would), weapon effects are stunning and the level design is by and large a masterwork of art. You wont find better graphics around, even at the time I am writing this review.

The sound works no worse and no better than one would expect, complete with an excellent musical score, annoying taunts and an announcer who you will either hate (so much you wish it was him on the receiving end of your shockrifle) or ignore totally. The weapon effects themselves feel a little wimpy, but I'm sure we can all let that slide.

The big problem with UT 2003, which stops it from being the new best-online-FPS-ever, is that the weapons are wimpy, and this has handily destroyed the UT we all used to know. The once mighty enforcer, which allowed players who were just fragged to hop right back in to the fray, has been replaced by the worthless assault rifle, of which the use of is an exercise in frustration (I kid you not, it is entirely without practical application). The impressive six barrelled heat seeking Rocket Launcher with a grenade launcher as secondary fire has been replaced with an inferior (both in power factor and fun level) three barrelled rocket launcher. The once omnipotent flak cannon is now a shadow of its former self. The Sniper Rifle has been replaced entirely with a 'lightning gun', with its own sniper scope and a devastating amount of firepower, but slow rate of fire. Since FPS of the online only variety are all about speed, you would be very distressed holding on of those and facing down a hallway at someone arming their rocketlauncher.
To summarize, wimpier, slower weapons make for wimpier slower deathmatch. The game is not as well balanced or as fast as the previous Unreal Tournament which would take a serious chunk out of the original's fun factor.
Originally, upon release, Epic's roster of game types was laughable. The standard Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag and Last Man Standing had remained, but instead of Domination, we now had the drastically more simple and less interesting ''Double Domination'' (where instead of multiple points generating points on a by-the-second basis, it is necessary to hold both of two points on a map for 10 seconds) and the assault mode was nowhere to be found, replaced it seemed, by ''Bombing Run'' (imagine football with guns).
Later on, Epic introduced the 'UT 2003 Bonus Pack', which included two new game modes, Mutant (in which one player is the mutant, and is the only one who can score frags, when a player kills the mutant, he becomes the mutant himself) and Invasion (in which monsters from the original Unreal are spawned in an arena and players cooperate to destroy them in waves).
As much fun as Invasion is, the cards had been dealt for Unreal Tournament 2003. Although UT 2003 uses the same ''Unreal Spy'' server searcher as the original, you may notice that only one year after its release, you are unlikely to find more than 500 active servers with 5,000 active players. I recall in the days of the original Unreal Tournament, even on my (then) shiny new cable, it would take minutes to load the thousands upon thousands of active servers, with thousands upon thousands of players.

If you were to ask me, if you are reading this after the time of posting, I would hold on to your money, because Unreal Tournament was clearly where the ball was dropped from, Unreal Tournament 2003 was where it hit the ground, and if the developers respond to the criticisms of their latest iteration of the game, I expect that Unreal Tournament 2004 will be where the ball bounces to.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 12/16/03