Unreal Tournament

"Unreal Torunament shines on Dreamcast."

First things first, I love Unreal Tournament for PC. I loved going head-to-head online, but when my computer farted, I turned to my Dreamcast. If I can get one point across, it’s that Unreal Tournament, on any system, is guaranteed fun.

Graphics/Sound: This game looks pretty good. The textures, guns, and effects all look real good. Some freezing occurs during real intense fragging, and the lack of the cool alien/female characters is a drag. The player models are pretty good, and the death/celebration animations look decent. The real standout, graphically, is when you’re growing really fast, fragging your friends/enemies and there is barely a click of slowdown (an Unreal trademark). The music in Unreal Tournament is good, if you dare pay attention to it. The sound effects are cool, bullets zing by your head and the organs splat around. Some taunts, however, started to bug me, but I had more focus on the fraggin’ 7/10

Gameplay: Wow. Sniping my friends/bots is probably the most fun that some boring maps have to offer. Some maps, however are stocked full of sweet little secrets, and some pretty sweet guns (Redeemer!). Now, I’ve heard many people complain that the controls are horrible…I couldn’t disagree more. The controls that I preferred out of the few you can choose (Sorry, no custom jobs) would be the ones were you can look with the joystick, and move with the buttons (‘Y’ is forward, for instance). Those genius controls should be used for every first-person-shooter on the Dreamcast (and I’m sure they are available on most of them). Sniping with the joystick may be tricky, but once you get used to it, it’s bliss. The campaign mode is pretty lousy (I would recommend beating it though, for maps), but ‘Practice’ is where the fun its at. You can choose your mutators, number of bots, and difficulty. I just wish that some more mutators could have been added. Anyway you look at, the gameplay shines. 9/10

Replay: If your like me and you want a game where you can boot it up and start fraggin’, then Unreal Tournament is a must buy, for any console, but the Dreamcast controller and control scheme shouldn’t be overlooked. This game will keep you hooked, and glued to the television for days. 10/10

My Final Thoughts: A few more play modes would have been nice, maybe some more maps and mutators, but the overall ‘fun-ness’ is pretty darn high. If you have a Dreamcast, want a cheap and fun game, it would be utter madness if you didn’t check out Unreal Tournament. 9/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 12/09/02, Updated 12/09/02