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UT2004 Shows Upgrades, Spaceships, Onslaught
Thanks to GameSpy for their hands-on preview of Unreal Tournament 2004, checking out the PC FPS title that's due out this Xmas. This latest upgrade "...will ship with vehicles, new weapons, two new game modes, and more new maps than all the maps UT2003 shipped with", and a new space level has you "...piloting small Wing Commander-style space fighters [before] the action switches to more traditional-style combat." The novel 'onslaught' mode, in which competing teams use vehicles and special weapons to "...control a series of nodes connecting your base to theirs" was the "clear favorite of the day" for the author, and IGN PC has another hands-on report that suggests these new modes introduce a "surprisingly satisfying strategic layer" to the upgrade.
Now for office apps I can understand needing that number crunching power and storage, but for a game? I can understand needing a good graphics card, which is why I bought an S3 Savage 4 for Unreal Tournament, but those specs will just price it out of the market for people like me.
I can't understand one bit why they're releasing this. Hardly anyone plays the first one, and what servers are up are generally populated by bots, more often than not.
If the Star Wars mod wasn't in the works, I'd probably have traded in the game LONG ago, and may still do so. A complete waste of $50. I certainly don't plan on making the same mistake twice.
Personally, I think vehicles will be the next fad in FPS games. Meaning, all the latest releases will have them, but they won't improve gameplay significantly. They seem especially problematic in ground-based FPS games. Usually you can kill people by merely running over them or even just brushing them.
Several games have actually suffered from the inclusion of vehicles, such as Tribes 2. The vehicles ended up detracting from the gameplay and turning what could have been an exciting game into one where you often had to wait to get on a vehicle to get around. If I wanted to rely on other people to give me a ride somewhere I need to be I'd put myself back in high school.
Done right they can be fun, but they should be very careful that the vehicles add something unique to gameplay and don't become essential. The second they become decently powerful they become essential to survival, and then it becomes no fun when you have to board a vehicle to get somewhere.
I do agree that the current crop of FPS games is mostly very lacking in the gameplay area, but I don't see vehicles improving the picture much. Tribes 1 provides enough challenge for me to keep playing it to this day.
The first such game will involve levels like a star base and planetside bases that must be conquered, with offensive capabilities being divided between troops, spaceships that can assault troops/other spaceships or transport them to bases, and base weaponry that can attack spaceships or troops just outside the door.
As bandwidth becomes cheaper and more available, eventually games similar to Master of Orion will be played out in this manner, with a few people performing 'governor' functions, others 'commander', and the rest being pilots or troops. And that's just going to rock.
I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.
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With all these 'killer' games coming out, I've lost all sense of release timeframes.
Does anyone know a site that regularly updates release dates for pc games? Gonegold.com used to have a nice little chart, but it has now Gonemissing..
1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.
You realize, Planetside does most of this.
It's a haphazard stringing together of components, but it's all there.
No. It just has some vehicles and a lot of bugs.
Despite all its other problems, not the least of which are the incredibly steep system requirements-- BF1942 has FANTASTIC vehicle integration. And because of it, I love that game. Normal FPSes are so boring now.
I strongly suspect that BF1942's success has spurred the "vehicles in games" fad. Tribes tried, but it was lame. In BF, the games are integral. I think it helps that they're all semi-realistic vehicles that people used to driving cars can intuitively drive and use. None of this "8-passenger hoverplatform with cannon" stuff that don't behave like reality.
Integration is key, intuitive and predictable control is key, and a range of vehicles to hide the learning curve (from jeep to fighter plane) is key.
UT2K3 servers don't have very many people playing. There are almost as many as UT still has. Maybe they should think about where they failed between UT and UT2k3.
You mean like a McGriddle?
Read the Newspost, too.
Before you go off on the "mindless drone linking PA again" tangets, I noticed this before the PA folks did, and they just happened to make a comment about it. Check out IGN.com's front page. They've whored themslves out worse than the Gamespy folks did to N-Gage and Infinium.
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
This is my impression of UT and UT2003 after playing both extensively:
UT2003 offered little in terms of gameplay over UT, and moved away from the science fiction-fantasy theme toward a more gothic, testosterone feel reminiscent of Quake. This gave existing UT players little reason to upgrade to UT2003. It simply wasn't worth the extra $50 for essentially the same thing with better graphics and slightly better AI. Those who like UT didn't get enough incentive, and those who were turned off by the move in UT2003 toward gothic, aggressive themes were even more upset.
I admit that UT2003 as it was first released was a disappointment. But things have gradually improved since then. Different announcer voices and other tweaks--among many things released through patches and bonus packs--have eliminated major sources of the obnoxiously aggressive feel of the original UT2003.
UT2004 looks to be just another step in the gradual transformation of UT2003 from an upgraded version of UT into something more distinct. I'm really looking forward to it, as it seems to introduce entirely new styles of gameplay and reintroduce others that were sadly forgotten.
In this regard, my complaint about UT2003-2004 isn't that it failed or isn't as good as the original UT. UT2003 is better than the original--better graphics, better gameplay, much better AI--and UT2004 looks to be even better. My complaint is that the progression has been so gradual. I guess they have to make money like everyone else, and releasing UT2004 in bits is a way to release something to the fans and make money while continuing development. The other alternative--to wait even longer to release a distinctly better game--would have evoked the opposite criticism from many--vaporware too long in development.
Will the opengl wrapper be tuned, i'm wondering if they did that, for the performance in Linux.
It's very nice they make it available for linux, no question about that, a bit tuning would be nice.
Ummm.... haven't you heard of Planetside? It's a well balanced and beautifully designed MMOFPS (the first of it's kind I believe). In a sense, it's similar to Tribes 2, in that there is a wide range of vehicles, troop configs and roles (engineer, grunt, heavy armour, medic and hacker). The full version has a $15 subscription fee and even though I was initially dubious about the fee, I found that it was well worth the money. I remember boring my mates silly in the pub with anecdotes from the front. Since there are no NPCs and no scripted events, all the action is caused by people. Storming an enemy base, with about dozens of other players, complete with heavy armour, troop carriers and air support is a serious rush. I think that in the future, we'll see more games like this, but for now Planetside is in a league of it's own.
Just imagine what Halo would be without vehicles... sorry, but vehicles improve gameplay a lot
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