Unreal Tournament - Game of the Year

Review by Rick Rudge

I have had an opportunity to play one of the best 3D First-Person Shooter (FPS) games on the planet. "Unreal Tournament" is like "Quake" on steroids. The graphics are sharp, clear and beautiful while the action is fast and furious. "Unreal Tournament" has quickly become one of the top FPS games out there, with tons of web pages and an on-line community dedicated to it. I would go as far as to call it the "G3 and G4's Killer App."

You play the game through the eyes of a soldier, wandering around in 3D space. You see what he or she sees. In front of you is the particular weapon you are carrying at the moment. You look around using your mouse and you see various weapons, ammunition, health and protective armor lying around. You move around using the arrow keys (or whatever you choose to assign for them). As you run over them, the various devices are picked up and the "Heads Up Display" reports them as added to your arsenal and gives you your health status.

Beyond that are unbelievably intricate landscapes, panoramic views of space from an orbiting space station, caves, castles, dank sewers, factories, etc. The images are so beautiful. If you didn't have a bunch of people shooting at you, you could really enjoy the scenery. Naturally, there's a lot of brick and cement work, but there are also beautiful landscapes and planets on some levels. Even the soldiers have a lot of interesting detail work, but there are people shooting at you. You need to take them out of commission before they kill you.

You are also hooked up for sound. You can hear the radio chatter from your opponents or from your team. There's lots of taunting and orders being shouted. You can also type in messages and orders to your teammates. Naturally, you can also hear all of the shooting and explosions around you in stereo. Although you can't see where the enemy is, you can get an idea where firefights are coming from. You can also hear elevators/lifts and doors open and close around you to get an idea where people are and head to those directions.

You move the mouse over to the soldier that is shooting at you and start clicking your mouse until your opponent falls over dead or is completely blown apart (gamers call this fragging); or maybe your opponent frags you instead. You fall into a heap and hear your opponent taunting you as he goes over and picks up your weapon. Click your mouse again and you re-spawn, ready for more of the same.

Unlike "Quake" and "Doom," where you have to move down a set path and move onward to the next level, "UT" is non-linear. You can move into any room and go wherever you want. It comes down to simply kill or be killed. You need to learn the maps where weapons and health are kept and you need to know the benefits and use of specific weapons to survive.

"Unreal Tournament" has many different games in one. There's "Tournament Deathmatch," "Rocket Arena," "Last Man Standing" and "King of the Hill" for you Army of one-types. There's also "Assault" where you take turns assaulting and defending a base. This and "Capture the Flag" and "Tournament Team Match" are great cooperative team-play games. Some games have to be played in a certain amount of time while others are based on the number of frags or the most flags captured.

In addition to various types of games, there are various maps to choose from: air fields, castles, towers, ships and other maps. If you want, you can download other maps from the Internet.

You can also add skins to the game. This makes it possible for you to alter your looks, sex, voice, and uniform, although this doesn't give you any advantage or disadvantage over other players.

Finally, there are mods, which is software that modifies the game. The "Unreal" engine has started being used in other 3D games for the Mac like "DeusX." There is quite a large on-line development community installed on the Internet. Admittedly, the editing software for these mods only runs on PCs. Sorry, "UT" was ported over from the Wintel platform. However, the mods, maps and skins are all cross-platform, and in fact, you can play on-line on the Internet or at Local Area Network parties against Wintel and Unix contestants.

You can find all kinds of information on the Internet. There are tons of web sites filled with Frequently Asked Question files to check out. One web site in particular, specializes in Macintosh users of "Unreal Tournament" with all sorts of programs, postings, files, and hyperlinks. Go to:
http://osx.beyondunreal.com/

There is also an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel where you can get together with your fellow Mac users, chat, and arrange for an Internet game: irc.enterthegame.com (type /join #osx to join the channel)

Like I said in the beginning, "Unreal Tournament" is the killer app for the G3s and G4s. The game is a real pig for computer resources. You need to have at least a 250 MHz Macintosh (G3 or G4), with 120 Megs of RAM dedicated to the game (above and beyond what RAM you have for your OS). You can play from the CD-ROM but it's faster from the hard drive. A full-install on your hard drive is about 700 Megs of storage space. The 3D visuals really push your video card too. If you ever needed an excuse to get the fastest and the best Mac hardware, "Unreal Tournament" is the reason.

Mark Adams from Westlake Interactive (the folks that originally ported "UT" over to the Mac) has been working on his own time to make a Carbonized version of "Unreal Tournament" to run native on the new Mac OS X. So far the results haven't been very satisfactory, but the Macintosh/UT crowd is patiently waiting to see what he develops.

You can play "Unreal Tournament" by yourself in "Practice Session" mode using the game's bots as your teammates and opponents. The bots are just soldiers, using Artificial Intelligence (they're very game-smart and can kick your butt). They are totally configurable to be as good or as bad players as you want them to be.

Naturally, the ultimate game play is getting on-line with living, breathing players. You can connect via the Internet or LANs for LAN parties (and I hope to see some organized in the future through PMUG). "Unreal Tournament" will connect you and find a server for you, but that's all the help that you get. Human players can be merciless, especially the players with faster broadband connections. Although they shouldn't really "Frag the Lagged," it does make you an easy target.

This is one of those bloody, gory, violent games that the government and child psychologists have warned you about. The verbal taunts coming over the speakers by your teammates and opponents are filled with macho and even sexist bravado. However, "UT" is a highly addictive game and a great time-waster (the mark of a great game), and I have experienced some of the most friendly, kind and helpful "UT" players on the Internet.

Various "Unreal" games are sold at just about every Macintosh dealer, but I recommend getting "Unreal Tournament Ñ Game of the Year" edition. This version has all of the latest and greatest that "Unreal Tournament" has to offer, plus it has some of the latest maps, skins and mods that work really well and, finally, it costs less than any of the other versions out there. I found mine for less than twenty bucks at Fry's.

You can also download the Mac version of the "Unreal Tournament" demo for free on the Internet. Be prepared for a long download time.
http://www.unrealtournament.com/downloads/
The same demo is also available on the January 2002 issue of the "MacAddict" CD-ROM.