Game Review Unreal Tournament Shaun West CIS 487 Fall 2002 General Information Title Publisher Developer Type Price Unreal Tournament Infogrames Epic Games First Person Shooter FPS Approx 19 99 System Requirements Minimal A 200 MHz Pentium class computer Windows 95 98 2000 or NT 32MB of RAM A PCI local bus video card A Windows Compatible Sound Card A CD ROM drive 120 megabytes of free hard drive space Recommended A 233Mhz Pentium II processor 64MB of RAM A 3dfx Voodoo II or Riva TNT 3D card 450 megabytes of free hard drive space Peak Performance A Pentium II 266 or faster processor 128MB of RAM A 3dfx Voodoo 3 or Riva TNT2 video card Overview Unreal Tournament is a First Person Shooter FPS That is you view the action from your player s point of view and you run around within the game levels killing any enemies you see before they have a chance to kill you In Unreal Tournament or UT like most FPS games the preferred weapon is some form of gun laser or rocket launcher There are many forms of game play each with its own requirements to win Story Line and Player Role First Person Shooters are not known for their excellent storylines and UT is no exception It is the year 2341 and the powerful Liandri Mining Corporation runs a brutal no holds barred tournament where the most powerful warriors in the universe fight apparently to the death You are one of these fighters and your goal is to make your way through the tournament and in the end defeat Xan Kriegor the Tournament Champion Once the game begins the action moves to the forefront All that matters is moving through the tournament s levels and reaching the end Because it is just a tournament the story doesn t change There are no plot twists or surprises just death and carnage Installation Installation is simple and straightforward The game is provided on CD and installs just like any other program There is a simple wizard which allows you to choose the install location and displays install progress User Interface The in game user interface is quite easy to follow Everything is controlled with the keyboard and mouse and information is displayed through the Heads up display HUD The HUD consists of transparent windows floating in various locations on the screen Keys are generally in optimal positions and easy to remember but they can be remapped At the bottom of the screen kills weapons and ammunition are displayed At the top left a window displays text messages corresponding to what everyone in the level is saying In multiplayer mode this displays actual player chat while in single player it is basically just built in taunts and commands On the top right corner is your health This is shown with a cross representing your hit points and a vest representing how much armor remains Depending on the type of game being played additional information may be displayed along the right border of the screen such as the number of flags that each team has captured Game Play Game play is simple Kill or be killed You won t go through a level without killing something As with other FPS games a kill is called a Frag The game tracks the number of frags that each player has and will display them all at the end of the round In some game modes this number matters while in others it is more for the player s own records Items are found throughout each level You can find items for healing armor invisibility increased jumping ability and teleportation Different weapons are also scattered about in various locations Weapons include the Enforcer your basic gun BioRifle Shock Rifle Pulse Gun Ripper Minigun Flak Cannon Rocket Launcher Sniper Rifle and Redeemer Each weapon has its own unique way of dishing out death For instance the shock rifle can fire a powerful laser blast while the Pulse Gun fires fast continuous pulses of energy The massive redeemer causes devastation over a very large area though you have only one shot with it and you have to be careful not to blow yourself up There are various modes of play including DeathMatch Team DeathMatch Capture the Flag Domination Assault and Last Man Standing DeathMatch is basically a kill everyone in site as quickly as possible scenario Whoever achieves a preset number of frags before anyone else wins the match Team DeathMatch is just like DeathMatch only with teams In Capture the Flag you must capture the opposing team s flag a preset number of times to win In Domination your team must hold as many control points as possible for as long as possible to gain points In assault there are two teams an attacker and a defender The attacking team must achieve various objectives within a set amount of time to win The defender must stop the attacker from achieving those objectives in the set amount of time In the end the roles and reversed and the attacker becomes the defender Last Man Standing is a little different from the other modes in that you have a limited number of lives Whoever is left standing after everyone else has expended all of their lives is the winner There is no weapon or item collecting You begin with full armor and all weapons To add additional playability to the game UT provides mutators These are basically modifiers that change some element of the game such as weakening gravity so you can jump higher and further Another example is Fat Boy where players gain wait as they score frags and lose weight as they die Scoring As mentioned above scoring depends on the game mode Though every game mode keeps track of the number of frags each player has achieved In DeathMatch games your score is the number of frags you ve made In Capture the Flag you score obviously by capturing the opposing team s flag Points are awarded in Domination for holding the control points In Assault score doesn t matter so much All that matters is achieving the objectives And Last Man Standing is also a scoreless game Your goal is simply to stay alive as long as possible Art and Sound Unreal Tournament is about four years old and the graphics and art still look pretty good The game s graphics are textured 3d polygons as is the case with most modern FPS games The art gives the game a bit of a dark feel as it takes place in a future where corporations rule and extreme gratuitous violence is a multi billion dollar industry The majority of sounds you ll hear are the screams of dying fighters taunts and the sound of weapons fire and explosions You can also hear footsteps which is good because you can more easily determine when someone is
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