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A little disappointed...

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 23 / 26
Date: October 13, 2002
Author: Amazon User

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.

Somewhat of a disappointment after the original

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 21 / 26
Date: October 03, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I bought this title (hereafter UT2003) the week it was released, with great excitement. I loved the original Unreal Tournament (hereafter UT), and I eagerly looked forward to the new release, as surely it would be even better, right? Perhaps not, after all...

Many will love this game, others will be disappointed. Unfortunately, I fall into the latter group. It's a good game, that much is undeniable, but I feel it's not up to the standard set by the original.

UT2003 is very demanding on the hardware, expecting a 733+MHz CPU, lots of memory, lots of disk space, and a decent video card. Granted, most of us have it, so the majority of players will not have an issue with it. For those still running a 450MHz PC, time to upgrade if you want to run this one.

The basic idea behind UT2003 is just like the original UT -- kill everything that moves and enjoy the splatter of blood and guts. The effects in this game are creative, well thought out, and well implemented. On a 1.8GHz PC, it's fairly smooth.

That all said, the graphics are not quite as nice as that from the original UT -- and UT was less demanding on the hardware. The images and clarity of such were better in the old game than the new, and there was much less slowdown when the graphics and action got busy. As an experiment, I loaded 16 players in a single player UT game and 3 in the single player UT2003 game. Hardware was 1.8G CPU, 512 Meg RAM, and 32M video. The UT, with 16, ran noticeably smoother and the graphics were better.

Another issue I encountered was in loading a profile. I made a mistake and tried to load a profile twice. UT2003 went into a loop that would not let me get to the task switcher or do anything that would allow me to break the loop. As a result, I had to hit the reset switch. *sigh*

Sound, specifically voices, are noticeably worse in UT2003. The voices are a little muffled and hard to understand (they are supposed to sound like intercom transmissions, but even so they are poor). The effects of explosions and gunfire are all right, but still not up to the original standard.

Yes, I prefer UT over UT2003, and I will probably just continue to play it instead. In my opinion, it is a better game when it comes to graphics and game speed. The creators of UT2003 made a nice game -- it is unfortunate that it could have been MUCH better.

Unreal Tournament Preview

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 29 / 41
Date: May 17, 2002
Author: Amazon User

The game itself is very similar to the original Unreal Tournament in gameplay, meaning it'll still have single-player, deathmatch, and team-based levels. Many of the current weapons from the original game will also be included here. However, the graphics of the environments, characters, and even the weapons have been remarkably improved.

The environments in particular have taken a major facelift. Indoor arenas still look cramped and mechanical as if you're in the middle of some robotic manufacturing plant. The pipes on the walls jut out prominently and grills and steam vents are everywhere. All in all much more detailed and realistic looking. The outdoor environments are particularly nice with a combination of grassy and rocky hillsides, detailed trees and waterfalls. Even running into dense brush will make blades of tall grass obscure your view. It was interesting to see this combination of nature and machinery as players access mechanical elevator platforms at the base of a hillside. In another level, players could blast away at each other inside and outside a snow-covered city in the middle of a blizzard. Another level took place high up among a large forest, something you might see in Lord of the Rings or Everquest.

A demo of the terrain editor showed how users can easily build terrain. Think of an outdoor environment being a multiple of layers. The first is solid rock, the second is the rocky surface that adds texture, and the third layer is the grassy surface. Users can easily select a layer and simply paint the environment as they see fit.

The creators have focused strongly on balancing the weapons based on feedback from the user community (of course they always say that, right?) For instance, it'll be much more difficult to camp in a corner and snipe away as the gun now shoots a bolt of electricity, making it much easier to tell where the camper's at. The rocket launcher seems relatively unchanged, however shooting three rockets at one time leaves some really nice trails. The ripper disappears this time around (did anyone ever use this anyway?) and is replaced with a new gun that can power up a shield in front of the player that'll absorb damage for a brief period of time. The way around this is to shoot something behind the player. Instead of the flak gun spraying shrapnel, it now shoots a canister that explodes in flak (might help to get that guy with the shield on). Another gun (the goop gun perhaps?) seemed to give off its own light which served to illuminate dark areas and was a nice lighting effect. The drawback, of course, is it could probably give away your position too. The minigun returns (with exploding bullets), and the shock rifle also sends out an exploding ball of energy which could prove devastating in cramped quarters, but the slow movement will probably render it ineffective in a large outdoor environment. The Redeemer is scheduled to return, but it was still in development. Finally, the pulse rifle shoots really nice looking streams of blue electricity at the player that's surprisingly reminiscent of the weapons in the movie Ghostbusters. Word has it teams can also combine their energy streams for even greater impact. Hmmm... wonder where they got that idea from?

Mods and mutators will be included in this version which, unfortunately, leaves the door open for invincibility cheats and other hacks, but the developers felt the door needed to be left open for us to create our own improvements. All in all, the gameplay remains much the same (good!) but it'll be an all new look and feel and I'm sure current UT fans will love it.

The Greatest Multiplayer Shooter Made

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: February 18, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game isn't as fun as good-looking, but it's still an incredible ride to play! The graphics are the center stage in this title. If you have a high-performance PC, the graphics are breathtaking! From the scenery to the smallest details, Unreal 2003 looks great! The sound is good, with the music being the best. Otherwise, the players become repetitive and the announcer is just plain annoying to hear. TURN HIM OFF!! The conrol scheme is typical, and movement is the same as most other PC first-person shooter titles out there, which is good. As for characters, the aliens are corny, the robots are too human, and the geneboosted humans you love to hate! The real surprise lies after beating the Single Player mode, and getting Malcolm, Brock, and Lauren. The fun part of the game is just killing and killing sprees! The downside is repetition. Of course, the game doesn't really get old with all the environments and characters to play as. Overall, get the game just for the beautiful graphics and levels. You'll feel like you are really travelling from planet to planet and space station to space station!

A letdown compared to the original Unreal Tournament

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: December 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

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.

Graphics over Gameplay Deja-Vu (again)

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: October 12, 2002
Author: Amazon User

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...

I've played the beta, this is my reaction...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 16 / 24
Date: July 22, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I played the UT2003 beta about a month ago, and I was blown away (in more ways than one). Unfortunately the beta wouldn't let you see the game in high resolution, it only had 640x480 support. But I've never before seen a game look that good in 640x480 mode. The smoke effects from the rocket launcher are incredible.

Now for the bad news... You'll need a fairly high-end PC to run it. My friend tried to play the beta on his computer, and it was literally a slide show (even at 640x480!). He has a Pentium 3 800mhz processor, 512 MB SDRAM, and a 64 MB ATI graphics card. It ran very smooth on my computer, but I wonder how well it will hold up when I up the resolution in the retail version... At LEAST a GeForce 3 Ti 500 is highly recomended. My system is P4 2.0ghz, 512 MB RDRAM, and a Geforce 3 Ti 500. If you have anything similar to mine, I'm sure it will run great, but I'm not sure about high-res (1280x1024 and above).

The sound is awesome. The AI is superb (though there was a glitch or two in the beta, I'm sure they'll fix/have fixed that before release). I'm really looking forward to the next generation of Unreal, and also looking forward to future games that will build on this updated version of the UT engine. The only game I've seen that looks better than this is DOOM III, but I'm sure the release of that is a ways off. This will more than keep you occupied until then!

Technologically sophisticated, but no mojo

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 10 / 12
Date: December 31, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Let me begin by saying I am a big fan of the original UT. I probably have over 2 gigs of levels, music and textures archived to CD. I was looking forward to this release with great anticipation, and now all I can say is "where's the beef?" True, the graphics are stunning and the player skins are great. The concept of Bombing Run (rugby for psycho killers) is cool. BUT THE GAME PLAY AND LEVELS ARE UNSATISFACTORY. The original UT had levels that were as much fun to explore as to play in. UT2003 levels are boring after only a few run-throughs and are much too small. Weapons look too much alike, with the exception of the rocket launcher, flak cannon and sniper rifle. Speaking of the sniper rifle - it's not even a rifle. The original rifle in UT was cool BECAUSE it was a little retro compared to the other weapons. Part of the fun of the original UT was getting yourself into a well-concealed position and dominating the gameplay from a distance. The new Buck Rogers rifle gives away your position every time you use it, making this impossible. AI appears somewhat improved in the new release, but this does not make up for the rather sterile overall feel of the game. As other reviewers have noted, the graphics look cool, but the game really doesn't play well except on a bleeding edge, high-end machine. Like others, I run through a mid-high level P4 with a GeForce2 Ultra, and even at middling resolutions, I have frame rate issues. I give it 1 star for gameplay alone, with a bit more for the spiffy graphics.

UT 2003

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 13 / 18
Date: November 13, 2002
Author: Amazon User

What a controversial release! Some people love it; others hate it. I'm somewhere in the middle.

As someone who prefers actual adventures to pure games, I'm probably not the prime target audience for something like this. I miss the puzzles, and I miss the creatures. Strange as it sounds, constant action does get monotonous after awhile.

The prematurely titled Unreal Tournament 2003 builds upon the original and as it comes a couple years later, it's only logical that the technology will have improved. Graphics are stunning. Physics behaves better (maneuvering in low-gravity scenarios is *much* more manageable.) There are a lot of little design tweaks and touches here and there. The scenery is gorgeous; it's almost sad that you never have time to really admire it.

Returning game styles are Deathmatch, Domination (each team must struggle to control separate "power points"), and Capture the Flag, while the Assault game from the first UT has been replaced by something called Bombing Run, which is a bit like football...with guns. Some of the weapons have changed. I was disappointed to see that the ripper -- easily the most fun, not to mention vicious, weapon in the previous game -- has been deleted, while the ridiculous biorifle remains. (Does anyone actually use that except as a last resort? Even the low-level machine gun is better.) There's also a rather weak lightning gun, but on the other hand a really nice kind of pulse rifle has been added. The flak cannon seems more effective in this game.

The biggest disappointment about UT 2003 is that it seems, well, small. I finished the game pretty quickly. Granted, I played on novice level, but I'm sure better players than I can finish on higher skill levels in about the same amount of time. Although the final round was tough, it didn't carry any impact; in fact, I didn't even realise it *was* the final round. It's all rather anticlimactic. There isn't even any rewarding animation once you've finished.

Perhaps UT 2003 is better thought of as an update. It's a fun game, and it will help tide most of us over until the next Unreal, but it doesn't feel particularly significant on its own.

A disappointment

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: December 29, 2002
Author: Amazon User

UT 2003 was hyped to the stars ever since it was announced (late 2001) but it has failed to impact the way us UT fanatics hoped. The maps on the whole are quite samey and more positioned to show off the graphical capacities of the new game engine than to be fun to play long term.

Some maps, like Plunge, cause any computer not made in the last six months to have a seizure. There are a lot of details put into maps to make them look pretty but there is no thought of the player model who just gets caught up on all the extra junk. (Speaking of player models, I haven't spoken to anyone who likes the "Space Hulk" clones.)

Some old favourites have been re-modelled, like the once impressive "Facing Peaks" but as in this case, they have added too much detail till the map looks as ugly and tacky as Vegas.

I would say save your money until this game comes down in price and is released with all the (many) patches that it needs and hopefully has a working editor that doesn't crash to the desktop every five minutes.

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