Unreal Tournament (Dreamcast)


Unreal Tournament (Dreamcast) – Review

In recent years, the PC platform has been deluged with an infinite number of first-person shooters. As the market for single-player games in this genre became saturated, the developers of these games decided to expand the side options of multiplayer deathmatching and make entire games out of them. The Dreamcast, however, had not been blessed with this genre of games until the release of Quake III Arena (Q3A) many months ago. That conversion was an excellent title, no doubt, but it fell short in many ways. Compared to the numerous play modes and 32-player deathmatches on the PC version, the limit of four players per match left something to be desired. Now that its PC rival, Unreal Tournament, has finally arrived for the Dreamcast, will it eclipse the id shooter?

Unreal Tournamentis a game focused entirely on multiplayer FPS competition, with no plot to be found. The game features three play modes: Deathmatch, Capture The Flag, and Domination. Deathmatch is simple to play: anything that moves is your enemy, and whoever kills the most players wins. In Capture The Flag, two teams compete to capture each others flags and return them to their respective bases. In Domination, two teams try to control three special points. For each five-second interval that one of these locations stays under a teams control, a point is added to that teams score. The single player game consists of working through the Tournament ladder, by which you can unlock levels to play in Practice Mode, customized to your liking. Practice offers you split-screen play, the ability to play Deathmatch in teams, and a variety of interesting mutators, or modifications. Instagib, for example, removes all weapons and power-ups from the board, and hands every player a mutated shock rifle that kills anything it hits. Low Gravity allows players to jump high into the air and slowly glide down. Although not all of the mutators are direct hits, they certainly add a lot of variety to the game.

The games ten weapons are excellently balanced. Unlike Q3A, your default weapon is strong enough to rack up many kills against opponents armed with more powerful explosives and machine guns. Each weapon has two functions. For instance, a Flak Cannon can shoot out volleys of metal shards or explosive grenades that detonate on impact. A Shock Rifle can fire a quick blast or a ball of energy that can be exploded by hitting it with the primary function blast, and so on. The computer AI is intelligent and skilled, although ordering them around during a team game can get clumsy when you have to pause the game to give them orders.

The heated combat of Unreal Tournament takes a long time to get old, and the diversity of its levels, modes, weapons, and mutators helps the longevity considerably. Fiddling around with the mutators adds a lot of replay value, and the grand total of 69 levels means experimenting will take a while. The levels are, with one or two minor exceptions, perfectly scaled to their player limit, and two-thirds of them can handle six or more players.

Graphically, Unreal Tournament doesn't reach the amazing level of Q3A, but it holds its own very nicely. The frame rates are for the most part solid, although playing in split-screen slows it down considerably. The sound is excellent as well, featuring lots of trash-talk and some radio communication, not to mention some nice techno music.

I really like this game, but it all boils down to two issues. The first is the issue for any console FPS: control. Unreal Tournament was originally designed to be played on a mouse and keyboard, so of course the Sega mouse and keyboard provide an unparalleled level of control and accuracy. What really hurts is that this game is almost unplayable with the Dreamcast controller. It simply doesn't have enough buttons or the right kind of control stick to handle this game, and no amount of auto-aim can change that. Whats more, two of the measly three control settings use Goldeneye-style movement, which is awful for high-speed deathmatching. With this kind of pitiful control, in addition to the fact that the keyboard and mouse take up two controller ports, the split-screen modes are almost worthless.

What should make up for the lack of good split-screen modes is the online play. Admittedly, Unreal Tournament's online mode has less lag and more capabilities than Q3A, but it still has that nasty, split-second weapon stall that throws off almost all of the guns. Thanks to this, all of the non-explosive weapons are just about useless. The team-play modes are interesting. After all, when other people are counting on you to deliver, the tension is electric. Unfortunately, the game forces players to choose their color before entering a game. The servers have no auto-balance, no way to switch teams in the midst of a game, and the internet interface doesn't show which team is outnumbered. Thanks to this huge flaw, four out of five team-play games you enter will feature lopsided teams of 4-2, 5-3, and even 6-1! Needless to say, this isn't very fun. A good match of CTF can be enjoyable, especially with precision-heavy mods like Instagib on, but after a while, its a waste of time going from server to server, endlessly looking for balanced teams. As for the deathmatches, for some reason, they lack that special something that Q3A brought to the table in terms of visceral online competition.

Even with these problems, Unreal Tournament is a shot of adrenaline burned onto a disc, while it lasts. What is regrettable is that the online experience is watered down and screwed up, and there is little to no use in the split-screen mode. How much you enjoy Unreal Tournament will be directly proportional to how much you enjoy playing bots with a mouse and keyboard, by yourself. Rating: 8 out of 10.

Unreal Tournament (Dreamcast) – Second Opinion

Unreal Tournaments arrival on the Dreamcast is kind of a double-edged sword. Its great for the 3D-card-deprived to be able to experience the immensely popular PC shooter firsthand. Yet despite being a well designed game, gamers must ultimately tread through a watered down version of the PC incarnation. Its certainly nice to see a respectable number of options—domination, capture the flag, tournaments, and the like—but all the options in the world are useless unless the core gameplay concepts are implemented effectively. While Unreal Tournament for the Dreamcast does remarkably well for its platform, it still lacks the depth and refinement of its PC cousin.

Critiques of Unreal Tournament inevitably juxtapose it with Quake III, and rightly so; both games, at least superficially, are quite similar. Upon further inspection, however, Unreal Tournament and Quake III are actually quite different. Quake III features more outlandish level design and faster action that revolves primarily around players ability to capitalize on the strengths and weaknesses of each weapon. The weapons in Unreal Tournament, on the other hand, can be mastered with remarkably little practice. The gameplay, then, relies more on strategic utilization of the levels than a quick trigger finger. Because Unreal Tournament is more reliant on strategy than Quake III, the draw of the gameplay lies in outwitting (rather than outgunning) human opponents in online play. Since crafty bots are more difficult to program than accurate ones, the single-player campaign cant hold a candle to the online competition. The enemies will give chase, fish you out of hiding places, and horde power-ups, but it still becomes easy to outsmart the CPU bots after a little practice.

Of course the original Unreal Tournament wasn't popular because of its single-player features, but rather its online play. Unfortunately, this is where the Dreamcast version falls markedly short of its PC counterpart. Most of the modes are intact—domination, capture the flag, tournament, and deathmatch—but the eight-player limit and lag-plagued combat detract from the suspense that made the original so popular. As T.S. said, there are a lot of issues that plague the online play. Some of them, such as the discrepancies in team designation, should have been obvious to developers. Others, such as the immensely frustrating lag time of the Dreamcasts 56k modem, are simply unavoidable. Like T.S., I found that the online play was too slow, too small, and too buggy to be worth the effort. The single-player mode was far more enjoyable simply because of its quick pace and balanced gameplay.

Unreal Tournament also lacks the punch and personality of Quake III. The environments are bland, often flat, and generally uncreative. The characters lack any distinguishing traits; most are just Joe-Marine-type faces wearing differently colored armor. The weapons are more balanced and more creatively designed than the arsenal of Quake III, but lag renders most of the accuracy-intensive weapons useless in the online mode. Lastly, the game cannot seem to decide on a time frame. One level takes place in a space station, the next in an old castle, and the next in a bland warehouse. Contrasted with Quake IIIs always otherworldly levels, it seems that the developers couldnt decide on a consistent theme.

Unreal Tournament for the Dreamcast is certainly an enjoyable game. The single player mode features respectable (though not quite cunning) artificial intelligence. The multiplayer modes are filled with options and usually maintain a steady framerate. Only when it is compared to the original PC game, particularly in the online mode, does Unreal Tournament seem watered-down. Its a solid game, but one that is not well suited for the Dreamcast. Rating: 6

Unreal Tournament (Dreamcast) – Consumer Guide


Parents should definitely know that this game is focused solely on guns, killing, and countless images of splattered guts and gore.

Multiplayer gamers will not be pleased by Unreal Tournaments controls. The Dreamcast controller is simply not suited to this type of game, so split-screen action is not a selling point.

Dreamcast Q3A fans, however, will have a blast with this one, as it features tons of levels, modes, and mutators that give the game a lot of lasting value.

PC gamers have no reason to give this a second glance, considering that the PC version is better in every imaginable way to this port.

Broadband gamers will need to buy a Sega Broadband Adapter to play using high-speed internet access, but since Sega isn't selling it anymore, good luck finding it, let alone paying the $100+ asking prices on the market.

Gamers on a tight budget beware, for Unreal Tournament plus a mouse/keyboard combo will cost at least $60.