Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A little disappointed..., October 13, 2002
The hype surrounding this game was pretty incredible for a PC release. The first UT was so mind-blowing at the time it came out, not only for single-player but also online play. Most importantly it was somewhat original and a lot of fun.I must say the graphics for UT2k3 are top-notch. A lot of attention was brought on the possible requirements for a game with several times the polygon count as its predecessor, which is understandable. My PC has a Duron 1.3Ghz processor with 512MB of RAM and a Geforce256 graphics card. It runs UT2k3 reasonably well with average settings, which shows you they put a lot of effort into the 3D engine to accommodate computers with less-than-fantastic specs. The body physics and movements are very realistic, especially when your opponents fall to the ground. I have problems with a few of the game's main features though. The weapons are just too boring for the caliber of game that UT2k3 was hyped up to be. A few of them seem so out of place, like they're from a poorly designed mod. I don't know how the GES Biorifle made its way AGAIN into the final version. The minigun now does much less damage than the one in the original, which never seemed too powerful anyway. The rocket launcher is no longer able to fire more than 3 shots at a time, and lacks the true '2-function' mode as the first. Many die-hard gamers were angry about the Lighting rifle but its not so bad...I don't like the look of the zoom-in scope though. On the bright side the flak cannon is still a good weapon for close quarter combat and the link gun is also useful at times. The assault rifle is a good alternative to the handgun in the first but the grenades are too weak in my opinion, and hard to aim. The shock rifle is also back and is a decent choice. But my biggest complaint is the sound effects. NONE of the weapons have the authoritative bang of the first, which were often too loud at times! The rocket launcher lacks the distinct vacuum effect of the missile's tube like the first UT. The grinding and 'lead-intensive' sound effects from the minigun were also removed, which drew inspirations from Jesse Ventura's character in Predator. And the annoying high-pitched announcer that declares the winner and killing successes gets old real fast. The announcer in UT was perfect and deserves his old job back over this thing. I have to admit the music is amazing. It would fit well into most sci-fi movies. That's my take on the new UT. What bothers me the most is they came so close to getting it right. If you just want a new online thrill you probably wont mind as much, in fact you'll probably love this game. The netcode is almost flawless from my experience. But I was expecting the weapon selection to exceed all previous FPS standards, instead I was let down by what seems like a poor selection of armaments for future combat.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Graphics over Gameplay Deja-Vu (again), October 11, 2002
This is a solid shooter with a lot to like, including outstanding graphics and silky smooth gameplay. Improvements over the original include those graphics, better sound, a better level editor and did I mention the graphics? The game plays faster, not quite Q3 fast but certainly faster than UT and the weapons have been remodelled and "balanced", with the teeth extracted from the Flak Cannon (less flak) and the Rocket Launcher (no grenade launcher mode, maximum 3 rockets in one shot) particularly. The ridiculously overpowered sniper rifle has gone too, to be replaced with a high-powered by unwieldy lightning gun that takes time to recharge (think a rail gun with a zoom and lightning graphic and you'll get the idea).
Gamewise Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag all make an expected appearance along with a new mode, Bombing Run and the not so new Double Domination. Bombing Run is a sporty-type game in which your team scores points by delivering a ball into the opponents goal. Whilst you have the ball you cannot use any other gun but the ball launcher and you score by either shooting the ball into the goal or for more points running it in (and usually get sliced up in the process). Although a lot like Capture the flag, at least this mode is fun, as opposed to Double Domination which is merely a chore. It's a variation on the original UTs Domination that if anything makes a poor mode worse. The bots don't like it, and neither will you. A return of the excellent Assault mode or something similar to Jailbreak would have been a far better choice.
Offline play with bots is as good, if not better than ever, as the AI has improved to the point where just like real players, the bots themselves will ignore your "suggestions" and do their own thing. Death animations have improved immensely and watching a corpse "beamed out" whilst standing near is pretty enough to get you killed!
The maps themselves are something of a disappointment as there aren't really enough, those supplied aren't really that good and they take far too long to load. Maps will come, they always do (Epic are even rumored to be putting out a pack of them soon) but its a shame there wasn't enough good ones straight out of the box.
Finally there's adrenaline, which 'provides you with the extra energy needed to execute special Adrenaline abilities'(from the manual) Any more than that I can't tell you as I would have to buy the game guide to find out! This is pretty poor but only follows a general trend in gaming recently, ie keeping important info out of the manual so that more game guides will be sold...
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A letdown compared to the original Unreal Tournament, December 5, 2002
In all frankness UT 2K3 is somewhat of a letdown compared to the original Unreal Tournament. Unreal Tournament 2003 plays, looks, and sounds very similar to UT, with one major advantage: The graphics are not only sigificantly better than UT's already great looking graphics, but probably the best I've ever seen in any computer game -at least First Person Shooters. Unfortunately, this is the ONLY major advantage UT 2K3 has over its predecessor. On the upside, UT 2003 has some of the most awesome looking environments, sky effects and lava effects you'll ever see in any PC game. UT 2003 includes a new, innovative mode of play, "bombing run," which is somewhat similar to football. Also, there are a hefty 35 skins or so ranging from gene-boosted humans, to Egyptians to clowns to lizard-like creatures to automatons. On the downside, gameplay is substantially marred. Even with a 1.7 Ghz processor and 256 MB of RAM, some of the biggest and best maps (e.g., Magma, December, Bifrost, etc.) are entirely unplayable because the framerate is so horrid. When I join an online game -via cable modem connection- I experience a lot of lag and framerate issues, also. I had a far inferior PC and only 56K modem with the original UT and never experienced framerate issues online or offline. Game pace is absurdly fast, much more reminiscent of Quake 3 Arena than the first UT. For some reason there seems to be less skill required in playing this than the first UT. In UT 2K3 you just run and jump around and hope that you can aim and dodge better than your opponent. I'm afraid to say that it gets old fast and doesn't seem enjoyable like it did in UT. Speaking of maps, map designs generally seem a lot worse than they did in UT. One map is literally nothing more than a single room. Pathetic. The sound effects, astonishingly, are much worsely rendered in UT 2K3. They're not bad, per se, but they don't compare to the original's. They seem far less surreal and more "muffed." How Epic could botch this is way beyond me. The weapons don't have as much personality as UT's and they seem "watered" down and not very powerful. Even the actual game menu is a colossal disappointment: Whereas the original's was very intelligent-looking, condensed and organized, UT 2003's is one big cluttered mess which extends the entire breadth of the screen. I've seen this game menu trend (of making the menus inordinately large and clutterd as if it was more geared for a Kindergartener who couldn't even spell and had never seen a computer before than a true PC gamer and connoisseur who appreciates sophisticated and intelligent designs) extremely often in recent years, regrettably. In a nutshell, Unreal Tournament 2003's poignancy, creativity, quality, and meticulousness pales in comparison to the original in virtually every facet. It's still a good game on its own merits and fun to play. Epic has already released a patch which has addressed a lot of issues, users are constantly creating and releasing, for the public, downloadable mods and maps, etc., and there's even more incentive to play it considering that there's no competition for this type of game: I.D. Software never released a Quake 4. Unfortunately, however, this game should've been much better.
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