One new feature in UT2003 is adrenaline. You must collect and stock these oversized pills floating all over the maps. When you collect 100 adrenaline points you can perform keyboard moves which let you turn invisible, increase your speed, boost your health or do extra damage. These can have a major impact at crucial moments in the team games like CTF. Without adrenaline you can also perform a selection of jumping and dodging moves. You can double jump off walls in UT2003 which is a valuable new addition that will help skilled players dodge incoming fire and get around maps quicker than before. Weapons in UT2003 differ quite considerably from those found in the original Unreal Tournament. Many of the weapons in the original where extremely powerful, now the weapons in UT2003 seem much more balanced and as a result less powerful. For example the sniper rifle is nowhere to be seen in UT2003, instead it has been replaced by the lighting gun. Firstly the sniper rifle let you sit undetected, the lighting gun will glow while charging up and when you use the sight only the very centre portion of the sight is clear which means it is pretty hard to use, plus it's not really a stealthy weapon anymore as people can see you quite easily. Other weapons have also been toned down, this is probably to stop those inexperienced plays hogging corridors and hallways by filling them with tons of heavy fire. You won't see the same level of weapon abuse on the internet as you did in the original game. There are some completely new weapons in UT2003 such as the ion painter. Basically paint something or preferably someone with the ion painter and then you will be rewarded with a huge blast that comes from the gods, this is possibly the ultimate in overkill. The level design in UT2003 is generally great you will be treated to a wide variety of colourful maps built with one thing in mind, action. You will charge across bridges spanning over huge gorges, battle through spooky forests and leap across mile high skyscrapers. Unfortunately there are some of those grimy industrial maps but you will still find various maps that you will enjoy. Along with the level design the graphics in UT2003 are fantastic and outstanding on a technical level. This latest version of the unreal engine is capable of pumping out a serious amount of polygons with highly detailed textures. You will need a powerful computer to enjoy the visuals in their full detail. As mentioned before the game moves very fast indeed and you shouldn't find any slow down with a decent PC. Another highlight is UT2003's musical score. It's a combination of symphony and pounding heavy metal chords, it is the perfect music for this type of game. The rest of the audio is satisfactory but not mind blowing the gun shots tend to sound slightly weak and underpowered. This is quite a large factor or even a flaw as all you do in this game is run around and shoot people. The announcer is pretty annoying when he comes out with such taunts as "try turning the safety off" plus the old and generally unprintable tauntes from the original Unreal Tournament. You may want to kill this cheesy announcer even more than you enemy after a while, but thankfully you can turn him off. Well so what do we think of Unreal Tournament 2003? For starters let hope next time out there will be some more effort put into the game play modes and the weapons. Otherwise Unreal Tournament 2003 plays great, it looks absolutely stunning when its running in all of its glory, it delivers tons of "in your face" bloody gore, features some great playing arenas which also look bloody lovely and
. And what, what else do you need for a fantastic game that will deliver hours upon hours of deathly fun? 8.5 Out of 10 |