Unreal Tournament

The Dreamcast is not dead! Dan Elektro plugs in Unreal Tournament and gets blown away...

Sometimes in life, you have to give a little to get a lot. So it is in video games, too: Unreal Tournament for the Dreamcast omits one key gameplay mode from the PS2 roster, but fills the void amply with improved multiplayer matches and online play, making this version a stronger game overall.

Shoot To Thrill
Unreal Tournament, which originally gained fame by going toe-to-toe with Quake III Arena on the PC before porting to the PlayStation 2 late last year, plops players into a future where the most popular event isn?t the Super Bowl or even Temptation Island?it?s a gladiatorial bloodsport played with rocket launchers, laser rifles, and sawblade shooters.

Game modes include Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture-the-Flag, and Domination (blast everybody while trying to occupy checkpoints). The popular Assault mode where you try to storming a base is curiously absent. In its place, however, is one trick the PS2 version couldn?t pull off: online play. In addition to 56K modem play, Unreal Tournament is one of the first few games to support Sega?s broadband adapter. You might still see some with lag with 56K connections, but probably not with a cable modem or DSL. Of course, if you don?t want to play online, there?s always split-screen mode?and that?s another area where the Dreamcast version outperforms the PS2 edition. Whereas the latter suffered from fatal frame-rate hits in four-player mode, the Sega edition handles split-screen matches noticeably better.

Button Holes
Control is the one place where the game underachieves. The four controller presets are nice, but why just four? Why not let the user set his own configuration? The Dreamcast keyboard and mouse, however, allow greater customization for maximum precision and comfort). Also, as in the PS2 version, you can?t control bots on the fly?you have to pause the action to tell your teammates to guard the flag or attack the base.

Unreal for Real
Throw in some wild game-rule-altering ?mutators? and pleasantly brief loading times, and Unreal Tournament delivers a high-speed, high-adrenaline package that never even has the chance to be boring. It packs more personality than Quake III Arena. Assault may be absent, but Infogrames didn?t miss anything else.

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