One final aspect of Unreal Tournament that has been much talked about recently is the Operating System like interface. I used this to connect to a server and change various setting like controls and mouse sensitivity and it was refreshingly simple. Everything is accessible through a simple mouse driver menu at the top of the screen - connecting to a server, changing the look of your character, customising bots and so on. Even first time users will find the system intuitive, as it is similar to the windows menu system. This new feature should be a welcome addition for starting users who don't want to mess with a console, and even veterans who are sick of remembering countless arcane commands to do simple things.
As this was only a short hands on look at the game that I got at The Playing Fields there were some things that I can't yet pass comment on. As it was on a LAN, I can't comment on the speed of netplay in Unreal Tournament, although if netplay in recent Unreal versions is anything to go by it should be pretty good. The other game types apart from deathmatch were also on show but I didn't manage to give them ago. They none the less looked pretty fun and polished like the rest of the game. Needless to say though, once the game comes out Sharky Extreme will have a detailed review giving you all the information on the game and how it plays that you could possibly want.
When Epic announced that they were working on a multiplayer version of Unreal, the critics quickly got their knives out and started cutting right into them. "You're competing with Quake 3? What a joke!". "Unreal multiplayer was terrible, and you've decided to make it into a full game?" And so on. However, a year on even the critics are beginning to see that Unreal Tournament is shaping up to be something pretty damn good, and after giving it a blast at the Playing Fields last week, I can only agree.
Pete Closs
Games Editor
PS: Special thanks to Mat Bettinson of PC Gaming World.