Unreal Tournament Dreamcast Review
One of the few advantages of being a fan of 'dead' consoles is that, until they become collector's items, you can buy the games for next to nothing and quickly build up a huge collection. Recently, I have been able to pick up such gems as 'Fighting Vipers II' 'Sword of the Berserk' and 'Unreal Tournament' for £2 each. Out of the three, Unreal Tournament is by far the best so I've decided to write a short review of it.
Controller
One of the big issues concerning First Person Shooters on consoles is the controller, everyone knows that they cannot replace the mouse and Keyboard available to PC gamers. Luckily, with the Dreamcast that problem disappears in a fountain of Gibbs when you realise that there is both a mouse and keyboard available for the little white box. This gives the player optimum control to experience the amazing gameplay.
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If you didn't manage to get hold of a mouse and keyboard before they became rarer than the Unicorn, you can still use the standard DC controller. The developers of UT have given controller users certain advantages to make up for their lack of precise control; 1. your cross-hair does not have to be directly on the opponent for you to hit them. 2. If they are dirctly above or below your cross-hair you can hit them without looking up/down. 3. The rocket launcher locks on almost immediately instead of taking a few seconds.
Multi-Player
There are two ways in which you can battle other human opponents in Unreal DC. You can fight split screen style or over the internet. When you fight split screen, there is a significant frame rate drop in 3 and 4 player modes but 2 player is fine, also you can only play on small, specially made, levels. Playing over the internet is fine, but there is a slight delay because the DC only has a 28.8kbps modem.
| Sound: Sharp and clear sounds give this game creepy feeling, the guns have realistic sound effects and there is no better feeling than hearing the announcer shout "Monster Kill" as a bot explodes in front of you. |
8/10 |
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Playability: Both with keyboard and control pad, the game play is quick to react and very precise, Which is needed often in a game as fast paced as Unreal. This game has no missions, levels or puzzles. Its just undiluted fun on a disk. |
9/10 |
| Longevity: This is unfortunately where Unreal falls down, despite having several different modes of play and the multi-player options the 'Run, Shoot, Run, Die, Respawn...' cycle can become tedious and repetitive quite quickly. Also, first-person shooter games are hardly rare and this one is pretty run-of-the-mill. |
5/10 |
| Graphics: The Graphics on the DC version are as good, if not better than the highest resolution mode on the PC version. (i.e. Great) The character models are detailed with a reasonably high polygon count and the textures are sharp. |
8/10 |
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Overall: A very fun FPS with great graphics and game play, but unoriginal and can easily become repetitive.
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7/10 |
Screenshots
Sorry about the quality, my digital camera is old.
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