I have always been a fan of the Unreal Tournament series. UT2003 was less than innovative but I loved it just the same. When I heard UT2004 was coming out I got a bit hesitant. The number system (2003, 2004) started to sound like a sports series. Each year a release would be made making minor tweaks or adding something new. Nothing revolutionary or anything, I was afraid that would happen to Unreal Tournament.
Boy, I was wrong. I started to get psyched around the fall when I heard about the Assault mode and specifically the AS-Mothership map. I thought "wow this is getting badass more than just a map pack." Then the demo came out and I was pretty much floored by it. I couldn't believe how polished and perfected the vehicles were, the node system was genius making the action extremely intense and eliminating that common "watch for the sneak" type of gameplay frequent in capture and hold gameplay.
To me it is the pinacle of multiplayer online gaming. It has something for everyone it truly does. A lot of my friends got drawn in by the Onslaught mode, friends that never liked the Unreal games before. A few of my hardcore Deathmatch buddies are thrilled with the 33 new DM maps and the more polished 'mutant' mode. Another friend of mine is a co-op junky so the more refined form of Invasion is right up his alley. Anytime I launch UT2004 and check my buddy list somebody is playing some gamemode and I just hop right in. I myself like them all nearly equally. I find most people have a niche gamemode but are certainly open for playing other modes when we get a group going. Theres nothing like a 6v6 onslaught match with 11 friends complete with Smacktalk and strategies on the fly over the voice communication.
The communication modes are also very well done, the headset included with the Special Edition version of the game is really high quality. Missing text commands no longer happens with the 'steven hawkings' style text-to-voice option. It makes it all the easier to get in a game and actually have some loose form of teamwork going on without having to plan it all out before hand.
In short everything that was ever 'stand out' or useless in a multiplayer game is here. It has voice, text to voice, buddylists, on-the-fly map guides so you don't get confused on a game mode, perfect vehicle/weapon balance, multiple challenge levels, more than one gametype, a slew of awesome maps (105 to be exact), impressive visuals, silky smooth running engine, lovely netcode and I could go on.
Theres so much polish on the game that the whole experience is just perfect. When you hop in a Jeep your name appears on the license plate, run over someone and the announcer says "Road Rage" or "Vehicular Manslaught". Tons of awesome little details and additions to make those great moments even greater. When you run into one of those rare situations where you can pull off an awesome move it knows it. Like if you nail a Raptor (aircraft) with the main gun of a tank (which is very hard to do since the gun doesn't point up all that high) the announcer screams "Eagle Eye" and makes the whole thing that much cooler.
Never in a multiplayer game have I had more "Whoa..." moments than with UT2004. The set up for the vehicles, the overall coolness of the universe and weapons, the goals and map layouts just set up for some insane events that sometimes you stare at your monitor and just think "Oh my lord..." Flying off a cliff in a scorpion buggy with 2 massive razor blades extended from the back of the car and cutting a player in half on the way down, diving off a tower and catching a falling vehicle and getting in it on the way down, slicing enemies into pieces with the fan blades of the manta hovercraft, that unstoppable feeling of being in a goliath and just wreaking havoc in all areas, fully loading up the Leviathan tank and becoming a rolling unit of certain death and swinging the whole match around. Hell before I even got the game, the demo alone provided me with more moments like these than any other game.
The whole experience adds up to something so polished, tuned and damned awesome to play that the only word I can think to fit it is "perfection". The tournament is back and more badass than ever.
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