Fragging: The real story...

By Martin Kingsley

That is one fine-looking game!

Ever since the beginning of modern PC gaming, there has always been a debate raging, and while the titles may have changed, the argument is always the same: Wolfenstein VS Doom, Quake VS Unreal, Return To Castle Wolfenstein VS Medal of Honor.

But there is one battle that has never been resolved, a battle of the titans: Quake 3 v Unreal Tournament.

And for over three years a war of massive proportions has been fought the world over, on everything from fibre optic LANs at 8am to copper cabled backrooms during the witching hour.

Even now, the very mention of "Quake" in some parts of town is enough to trigger a running street battle.

With the news that both Quake 4 and Doom 3 will be strictly singleplayer affairs that are to be packaged with only the most base of fragging facilities, it seems that with UT2003, Epic Megagames will dominate the multiplayer arena for the foreseeable future.

It's a big call, but after seeing what can be done with UT2003, nothing else comes close. Nothing.

Why? To start, it's stunningly beautiful. There is no greater source of eye candy on the home market. Environment maps, bump mapping, a Hitman 2-standard physics engine, stunning particle effects, real-time reflection mapping, skeletal animation, curved surfaces… The list goes on and on.

The best thing is that it's adaptable: Even a Geforce 2 will make this game look good, but on the new Radeon and Titanium Geforce 4 cards, UT2003 pops eyeballs like it's going out of style - it takes a superhuman effort not to drool on your keyboard.

Itchy-trigger fingers are a blessing in this game

The physics engine, while somewhat taxing on system resources, makes things even better to look at. It takes over when you frag someone, and then tosses the body around accurately according to the set of numbers it comes up with.

This allows for some amazingly cool gunfights, like blowing your best friend over the edge of a safety railing and into a giant fan.

You can also reenact your favourite Jackie Chan bloopers, complete with slow-mo. Smashing someone into a tree face first has never been so much fun!

The armory at your disposal is definitely suited to the task at hand, too.

That is, to crush, kill and destroy. Old favorites like the ASMD Shock Rifle, Flak Cannon and Minigun stand proudly next to newcomers such as the Link Energy Gun, Lightning Rifle and Tri-Barrel Rocket Launcher.

Other new toys include the Ion Painter, a seemingly harmless low-power laser cannon that launches "painter" protons at the target, which triggers an orbital satellite equipped with quantum cannons, cooking the target in short order.

The weapons sound hard and chunky, which is always a good thing, and the polycount is insanely high, with crisp textures and smooth animations.

The game modes have changed somewhat since the last Tourney. The "Domination" mode that I personally loved has been replaced with the much more fast-paced "Double Domination", which is just another version of "King of the Hill" with two hills.

The team-based levels are serious fun

Along with the CTF and normal deathmatch modes comes "Bombing Run", similar to the Q3 mod known as Gridiron, where you must take a ball and get it through the opponents goal while hoping to God that your teammates are covering your proverbial.

As with its predecessor, there is not much of a singleplayer game beyond training for the multiplayer element, although there is one added twist.

You can now manage a team, and take them all the way to the finish, recruiting new members based on their statistics whilst dropping those that can't cut it.

The biographies and very cool character art bring personality to what would otherwise be lifeless polygonal models; Once you see Harlequin, you'll never look at clowns the same way again, and as for Mr Crow… Well, better to leave some things unsaid, hmm?

The bot AI is quite convincing on the lower levels, but once you jack up the difficulty to the highest notch, these guys are just plain dangerous. They flank you, provide covering fire for each other and work together to give you the beating of your life.

Not that your teammates are a bunch of slouches, because they have one advantage over their enemy counterparts: They can be ordered to protect, go on offense/defence etc and, if left to their own devices, will proceed to prioritise their objectives and complete them with extreme prejudice.

I'll be the first to admit that bots are great. They're certainly better than most of the people you meet on the 'Net, and they certainly don't throw tantrums when you beat them, before trying to take your head off with a .45.

Has a new era dawned on multiplayer gaming?

But sometimes bots just don't cut it, and you've gotta go out there and experience the thrill of Player vs Player insanity.

When you do, it's important to note that while there are only a relatively small amount of servers up at the moment, if you can find a local one, you will be pleasantly surprised by the lack of lag on the server, which is a credit to UT2003's online code.

However, don't even think of touching the overseas servers unless you've got cable, because you will be flattened by the overwhelmingly huge ping!

As with its predecessor, UT2003 was born to be modded. Included on the 3rd CD are the following:

1. A cut down version of Maya 4, with all the character meshes included.

2. Upaint, a skinning program allowing you to edit skins on the fly.

3. KAT, an editor used to modify how the MathEngine "ragdolling" applies to the different skeletal models.

4. The complete set of character skins

5. The sound effects for all the arenas.

As you can see, it's all good as far as modding is concerned, and UT2003 already has a number of impressive looking mods in the works, including a promising Vietnam War TC known as Mangled Horizon.

Considering the success of the original Tournament on the modding front, and the endless possibilities of the revamped engine, seeing plenty of 1st rate Total Conversions and other Mods is a certainty.

Now, you may complain "we've seen it all before!"

My reply: Yes, we've seen it before, in its predecessor and in its arch-nemesis. But this is done with style, and style counts for a lot.

The gameplay rocks hard and the graphics rock harder. Multiplayer is fun as hell, providing you don't try to invade California, and just you wait until some Mods arrive on the scene. Mark my words: There's no stopping the powerhouse known only as Unreal Tournament 2003.

Game: Unreal Tournament 2003
System: PC
Players: 1-32
Online: Yes
Developer: Epic Games
Distributor: Infogrames

Rating: 90%

(Ratings Key/Explanation)

Unreal Tournament 2003 is on the shelves now.