On Friday I downloaded the demo for Unreal Tournament 2004 and I've got to say -- this is one freaking cool game!
The last version of Unreal that I played with any regularity was the original Unreal Tournament. I toyed around with 2003, but found it clunky and uninspiring. Yeah, it looked prettier than the original Unreal Tournament, but it didn't offer any jaw-dropping improvements.
The 2004 edition does. On my dual 1.42 Ghz PowerMac (yes, PowerMac -- that's right, UR2k4 is being released on the Mac and PC simultaneously) with 1 gig of RAM, Unreal 2004 is fast and good-looking. Previous versions of the game had an "Assault" mode in which teams competed to secure various mission targets. This time around, there's also Onslaught mode. It's similar to Assault, but it adds something new: vehicles!
When playing in Onslaught mode, you spawn in familiar first-person shooter mode within your team's citadel. You can then snatch up some weapons and jump into one of several vehicles and race toward unclaimed "link nodes" scattered around the map. The goal is to claim these nodes and have your forces build a link. Once built, that allows you to capture yet another link, eventually leading to an assault on the enemy's home base.
Among the vehicles there's the hellishly-powerful Goliath (a tank), the high-soaring Raptor (a fighter), the speedy Manta (a one-man hovercraft), the ponderous Hellbender (a heavy truck with a large mounted machine gun) and the difficult to maneuver but still quick Scorpion doom buggy. These vehicles represent a radical departure from earlier games, and make moving around the massive Onslaught maps not only doable but fun. There are a bunch of new weapons too, like spider mines and guided missiles, which help level the playing field against the vehicles.
Fans of FPS don't need to worry about the vehicles turning Unreal into a driving game though. Yes, they are important, and yes, they are fun to play, but you can't win a game solely through vehicles -- Mobile Infantry's as important as ever in securing and holding enemy locations ... the vehicles just give you more options.
So far I've only played the game in local mode on my computer, but one of my gaming buddies and I hope to give the online portions of the demo a spin later this week. We're eagerly looking forward to online play -- one of the things that drove us buggy about the original Unreal is the profound lack of teamwork found in its deathmatch-style modes. With Onlsaught mode, Unreal 2004 is all about teamwork, and that should make it a far richer game than its predecessors.