Unreal Tournament 2003 Hands-On

Holy crap! Epic has really gone out of their way to make this Unreal Tournament 2003 MP demo as fast paced and easy-to-get-into as possible! More importantly, the net code seems awesome, and the loading times are fast. Experienced UT players will get to grips with this game in 20 seconds flat, and it will take newbies, well, enough time to get their asses handed to them to realize that they'll have to practice more in order to start playing on a remotely competitive level. Still, this demo is great fun! We've played the two DM maps, and the gameplay is a lot more fast-paced than in the original; actually, I'd say that UT2003 plays in normal like UT played in turbo mode.

I swear I saw somebody beyond those rocks!

Checking out the default weapon.

The physics engine works magnificently, and it adds an awesome feel to the whole gameplay experience. The jumping is excellent, and the way the models react to blasts, rays, and bullets is phenomenal!

The weapons are diversified and nicely balanced (at least the more important ones), but the fact remains that Rocket Launcher is the king of the hill (even though you cannot load up on the rockets any more). From what I could tell, the mini-gun has been beefed-up as well, and as expected, the Lighting Gun is hella fun (though not as powerful as I expected it to be). These three weapons, along with the 'Chain' and of course the Flak Cannon present the most important arsenal in the game. And, while we're at it, I should mention that the Flak seemed a bit weak, too.

The maps are excellently designed, and depending on the number of players, good gameplay flow is damn-nearly guaranteed. My only problem with them is the over-abundance of various power-ups (by default), making the controlling of maps easy for the player who learns the cool spots and shortcuts first. To that effect, the game really doesn't favor the newbie players and it gives an almost unfair advantage to experienced UT dudes.

Both visually and audibly, UT2003 is a masterpiece, and it's hands-down the prettiest PC game ever! No really, everything from the fantastically animated models, to the great indoor and outdoor environments looks truly next-gen. At the beginning of the demo, you'll see a big-ole' NVIDIA logo and a slogan: "the way it was meant to be played," so immediately that should suggest a thing or two about the 3D code. The engine is heavy on T&L (which is a good - nay, a great thing), which consequently means that Epic wasn't being cheap about putting polys in there and they certainly crammed every goddamn code trick in there that they could think of. Naturally, they must've been working closely with the NVIDIA programmers, so your best bet in order to play this demo "the way it was meant to be played" would be to have the latest 40.41 drivers and a GeForce4 Ti card. However, I doubt that ATi's Radeon 9700 pro won't do the job here.

The sounds are awesome, the screams and yells of the models as you fill them full of lead(?), but I think that the in-game announcements sounded a bit exaggerated. They're just too 'ready to rumble' for my taste, if you know what I mean. That's it from me for now! Download the damn thing from Action Trip.com and blast a way! I'll see your ass on one of the servers. No, I mean it quite literally - I'll be the one camping and jumping people from behind :)