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Unreal Tournament 2003 Review - PC

The crowd roars with expectation, the cameras flash, the lights bear down with blinding intensity, and the arena is throbbing with thrill of the upcoming match. Everyone is whipped into a frenzy as the contestants enter the area, their arms raised, milking the crowd for all they're worth. Eyes race, veins pump with adrenaline, and guns are primed. They eye each other off with a hint of derision - just who amongst them will be the ultimate tournament champion? No matter, it is time to gib! 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 - the teleporter fizzes into life and the contestants are transported to the game arena. LET THE TOURNAMENT BEGIN !

Unreal Tournament 2003 is the game that has been the top of many players wanted lists for most of this year, and much of last year, and it is finally here. After all that painful waiting and "it's almost ready" for many months, I can say from playing the final game that it doesn't disappoint. The game extends the tournament style gameplay pioneered in the original Tournament, and brings it forward to now and beyond, with an enhanced game engine, more balanced gameplay, and largely improved level design and detail.

I eagerly installed the rather whopping 2.4Gb full install onto my system. The full game (unfortunately delayed some 3 weeks for Australia!) follows quickly on the heels of the demo release that appeared nearly a month ago. For those that are wondering what the differences are - the final release remains pretty true to the demo except of course for the full range of levels and single player tournament. Spanning 3 CD's, the game consists 2 install CDs and a third for the various goodies such as the Unreal Ed version 3 for map editing, KAT tool for editing character physics, Unrealscript editor, skin painter, and Maya 4 personal learning edition.

The game takes a progression ladder approach to the single player mode, where you must defeat each opposition team to be able to unlock the next level. You also have the opportunity to choose different characters for your team based on their different stats such as agility, aggression, and strategy. Later on you also have the option of trading some of your players for others, and specifying either before or during play various team strategies.

Personally while I found the concept intriguing, the management side of things is fairly basic. You would think with the right team you'd only have to make a couple of kills, and your teammates would get enough kills for you to push you over the line. However, Epic has balanced it up slightly so that really unless you do reasonably well individually, your team isn't going to come through either. While it might be nice to sit and admire the scenery from the sidelines, you can't just let your team-bots do all the work if you want to progress.

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