Past EED rants

Labels

Live leaderboard

Poker leaderboard

Voice of EED

Wednesday 18 September 2002

UT2003 impressions [lurks]

UT2003 demo is out, woot! So we downloaded it, nice how it's under 100MB so in no time Slim had hosted a server and a few of us (those that can be arsed) got in. It's faster than UT. It's fast and frantic as it should be. The weapons are really nothing amazing, much of them identical over UT. There's less spam and weapons generally need a few hits to take people out, so it's a little more skillful than it was before.

It's pretty to look at but it's also very confusing. I'm having difficulty seeing things correctly, not sure if it's a framerate issue or not. The provided maps, of which we've only tried Deathmatch so far, are bloody huge. Designed for loads of players. Great for public servers but a little less great for us trying a bit of a muck about.

So far there's a sense that it's fun but it's not groundbreaking and actually in some ways is pretty disappointing for a sequel. I guess we need to turn to CTF and the other weird game modes to see if there's any lasting playability there. Nothing wrong with having a mindless blaster game though for that 20 min quick blast on a public.

It strikes me we'll be more concerned with E&B today though, since this starts for real today. We'll try get up a UT2003 public server and check out CTF with a load of players before writing this off wholesale though.

8 comments:

  1. I can't say that I've been particularly fussed over the whole UT2003 demo release; after all we played UT to death and got pretty fucked off with the whole combo spamming malarky - or games where 90% of the player population were snipers.

    So can't say I was expecting anything special, and if I'm honest, UT2003 *isn't* anything special. Its much smoother to play than its predecessor, has *enormous* levels and a really rocking sound track, but it feels more like a mission pack than a game in its own right.

    It'll hold my interest if the CTF is executed with any degree of skill (which in fairness, CTF for UT certainly was) - so I'll keep my eyes open for that.

    Definitely worth the download though, good fun for a pick up and blast sesh.

    ReplyDelete
  2. So there you have it readers, UT2003 gets the official EED 'mixed bag' reception :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's got the teleporter gayness, ctf WILL suck.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Played a bit today. CTF seems a bit better, tho translocator gayness is still there. DM is, well DM. Comes accross feeling like Q3 with better graphics rather than UT. Odd. Bombing run is nice. This will probably be the #1 on-line twitch shooter of choice for 12 months, mainly due to lack of opposition in the iD department. I hear D3/Q4 will have some sort of sucky lobby system to start games. No more joining servers at will.


    Bombing run is very, very cool. While you have the bomb, you can't switch weapons or fire, so one of my fave tactics is passing the ball to an enemy and then retrieving the bomb from their still twitching corpse :) I reckon this will be the game of choice for clans as good tactics will see a good 0wning. My be sucky on publics though if pe0ns won't pass the bomb. The 'karma' physics engine looks good with nice 'ragdoll' flling death.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Right, I was utterly wrong. UT2003 is very very good indeed, yet the goodness doesn't show up right away. First play it seems like a faster UT with less spammy weapons, but there's lots more to it than that. Much of the extra bits are tied up in the special moves system, where you can do sonic stylee double taps to execute certain moves.

    ReplyDelete
  6. You'll still suck at it.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Then theres the addranalin system, which is like your own personal powerup. Get this to 100 and you can execute fannytastic special moves that let you do all kinds of leet shit. And finally there's the nifty weapons, like the shield gun and the link gun that are unlike anythign I've seen in an fps, they rock, and are genuinely intuative to use. Oh, and bombing run is superb, loads of team strategy to it, ace.

    ReplyDelete
  8. We should play it of course, and not give up in a bl33ting mess the first time we get 0wned.

    ReplyDelete