Onslaught is a terrific balance of large-scale and full-on intense action, but it's only one of UT 2004's shining facets. No matter where your tastes lie, there's a plethora of maps to choose from. The official collection of maps has ballooned to around 100, nearly half of which are new. It's true that the majority of these are for deathmatch and capture the flag, and some of the "new" maps were released as free bonus packs for UT 2003 owners, but there's no denying that this is a sizeable collection of quality content.
All told, Unreal Tournament 2004 features more than 100 different maps across its 10 different modes of play.
If the map collection seems meager in any area, it might be due to the fact that there are only six assault maps (compared with nine for onslaught). But it's not hard to overlook this because the assault maps are by far the most elaborate. Not only do the assault maps take place in busy, intricately designed environments--like a rebel base that runs you through a half-demolished cityscape, a couple of sci-fi military installations, and an unusual space-based mothership--but the game walks you through the objectives and lays out the backstory for the futuristic events depicted. As in UT and Return to Castle Wolfenstein, teams attempt to attack or defend a series of objectives, and the asymmetrical and scripted nature of the maps seem to have really freed the designers' imaginations. UT's "style" is perhaps that it has no set style, and these maps' disparate settings run the gamut from the Mad Max look of a desert convoy attack to the more standard sci-fi fare (with more than a few mentions of Unreal II's mercenary corporations).
Naturally, UT 2004 is best as a multiplayer game, but the offline modes can't be overlooked. The instant action bot matches are a good way to learn the new modes and maps and are quite enjoyable, since the bots do indeed work together as a team and exhibit only rare hang-ups in the larger, more unwieldy vehicles. The additions to the single-player tournament campaign are still little more than a footnote, however, mostly adding the concept of earning credits, which are used for hiring better teammates or for betting in challenge matches. It's also unfortunate that it takes several rounds of deathmatch, capture the flag, and double domination matches before you get anywhere near assault or onslaught. But the real accomplishment is simply that the bots work well and are fun to play against. That's a feat few, if any, other games can claim to match.
The Unreal engine has become an institution in PC gaming--its various iterations have been licensed as the basis for a variety of other games--and justifiably so. UT 2004's graphics are simply outstanding. It's not just that the game runs fast and smooth, that the textures are crisp and distinct at even medium settings, or that the designers have tossed together an eclectic mix of interesting characters and environments. It's that it all adds up to making the action that much more visceral. UT 2004 doesn't lack flashy effects, but there's nothing extraneous that might bog down the frame rate on PCs that meet the recommended requirements. And some of the best effects are of the interactive variety anyway. The vehicles add a lot to the mayhem, with physics effects that can have buggies exploding skyward, only to land on hapless defenders. Damaged vehicles noticeably appear so, too. The gore effects and rag doll-like death animations still look plenty convincing, if unchanged from last year, apart from a new, little skeletal anatomy lesson when some weapons melt players down to the bones. Then there are all the little surprising touches, like how player names appear on vehicle license plates.
The years of optimizing and refining pay off with UT 2004's reasonable system specs, except in one way: The game requires a whopping 5.5GB of hard drive space. It's just a natural result of all these maps and the great-looking textures that make them look unique, one from another. But since drive space is cheap nowadays, this should be less a barrier than an inconvenience. Installing 5.5GB of content takes time, especially in the standard North American version, which comes on six CDs. In cases like this, a DVD is more than welcome, and at least there's a special DVD edition available for a limited time.
Unreal Tournament 2004 is the new king of online shooters.
It's hard to fault UT 2004's production values in any area. The audio isn't as distinctive as the visuals, but it's great, and features crisp sound effects and an appropriate soundtrack. There's also a long list of built-in voice communication options, starting with voice chat features that make it easy to chat with teammates as long as you have a headset or microphone plugged into your PC. Fortunately, for sanity's sake, there are options to ban annoying or abusive players you might meet in public servers. Another useful feature is text-to-voice, which can be set to read off typed messages so you don't have to divert your attention from battle to read team orders. The effect is robotic but not in an overly annoying way, and it even spells out ordinary gaming abbreviations like "gg" for "good game." The game is a technical tour de force in other ways--standing up to UT's prominent position over the years--with 3D audio features and native cross-platform support (Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X), which ensures a diverse base of game servers, in addition to some extra players. It's hardly an afterthought to point out that the game is stable or that the glossy color manual and clear tutorials make getting into challenging multiplayer matches or solo bot battles that much simpler.
Unreal Tournament 2004 will remind you how satisfying explosive, extremely fast action gaming can be. The smooth engine and core gameplay inherited from UT 2003 make a great foundation, and the onslaught and assault modes take the whole package up another notch. And, to help you come to grips with a multiplayer world increasingly focused on teamplay, the voice chat features can make any team game better by facilitating real tactical coordination. Then, just when (or if) you start to tire of all the official maps (and combinations of maps with the library of preset mutators), there are community tools to make creating and installing custom content as straightforward as possible. No other multiplayer-focused action game has this much to offer.
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