"It
has solid, intuitive controls, good visuals and sound, and a ton of
extra modes. It’s definitely worth spending some time with."
When first
popping Unreal Tournament (UT) into my PC I was more than a little
skeptical. After playing my fair share of console first person shooters
I couldn’t help but wonder how clunky and awkward the controls to this
game would be. Moreover,
how close of a port would one of my favorite PC titles get? Thankfully
UT for the DC is largely a well-done port.
The controls are wonderfully streamlined, the levels are kept relatively
intact, and all of the extra game modes are still intact. It’s really
quite a solid console FPS.
The
most important aspect in getting an FPS right on a console is keeping
the control scheme intuitive what with all of the subtle nuances that a
player has at their disposal while playing such a game. Often things can
become overwhelming when a developer tries to put every last little
tidbit of controlling detail, then on the flip side console first person
shooters can get overly simplistic controls, limiting what players can
do. This game is right in the middle. Players can do all of the
important maneuvering without having to deal with too much, or too
little. The controls are streamlined and very, very intuitive.
Surprisingly
the game’s visuals are not very intuitive because, well, such a thing
is just plain nonsensical. But if the graphics can’t be intuitive, at
least they can be good looking. The environments aren’t hugely
detailed, but the characters are where the detail is. There are
some
nice skins on the different characters of the game. Moving about the
levels is a very nice experience because the way the corridors ebb and
flow really leads you around, with plenty of alternative areas/routes,
although the levels do feel a bit small here. The one problem is that
there is some slowdown and choppy animation when a lot happens on-screen
at once, which is very distracting.
Filling
out the aural part of the gaming experience is a very nice soundtrack,
that while jam packed full of techno, is oddly ambient. It’s nice, but
still sort of unusual. Sound effects too are
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very good, with appropriate
thumpiness, and bots yammering their own special brand of trash. It’s
everything one would expect to hear from a first person shooter.
Rounding
out this cavalcade of gun blasting goodness are the extra game modes.
Not only is there the tried and true Death Match, there’s also Capture
the Flag, Domination (where you need to maintain control of the map),
and Assault (taking turns attacking and defending installations). The
extra modes really help add depth to UT, and with some ruthlessly smart
bots on the scene it’s even better.
UT on
the DC is surprisingly good for a console FPS. It has solid, intuitive
controls, good visuals and sound, and a ton of extra modes. It’s
definitely worth spending some time with.