Related Links:
MacGamer's Ledge Unreal Review
MacGamer.com Unreal Tournament Game of the Year Edition Review
MacGamer.com Unreal Tournament 2003 Review
MacGamer.com Unreal Tournament 2004 Review

Reviewed by: Dave Peck (Hunt'n)

Game Information:
Title: Unreal Tournament
Category: First Person Shooter (FPS)
Developer: Epic
Est. retail price: $49.99
Demo available: Yes at MacSoft
Advisory: Teens to Adult

Minimum Requirements:
Processor: PowerPC 603 at 200 MHZ of faster.
Networking?: LAN, Internet
3D Acceleration?: Rage Pro or better 3D card recommended.
RAM: 64 MB
Display: Color monitor capable of 640x480 resolution
Copy Protection?: Requires CD
Other Requirements: MacOS 7.6 or newer, 120 MB hard drive space, CD-ROM Drive

Reviewer recommends:
G3 Processor (includes G3 upgrade cards)
105 MB available RAM or more
12X CD-ROM drive
System 8.6 (did not test on MacOS 8.1)

Reviewed using:
Blue & White 300 MHZ G3, ATI Rage 128 card, 128 MB RAM, MacOS 8.6
Powerbase200, upgraded with Sonnet 233 G3 card and 3DFX Voodoo3 2000 PCI card, 138MB RAM, MacOS 8.6.

A major shift has occurred in the newest shooters, where online multiplayer competition has become the primary feature and the heck with the solo story. It's predecessor, Unreal, is still impressive. But Unreal Tournament (UT) leaps ahead by providing a great solo practice environment for multiplayer tournaments, either solo or online. How does one play a solo-tournament?......All will be revealed.

Hardware Demands:
The publisher's minimum hardware requirement is a PowerPC with 200MHz 603 processor, 64 MB RAM, MacOS 7.6, 120 MB hard drive space, and CD-ROM drive. Recommended hardware is a G3 or faster, 96 MB RAM, MacOS 8.0 or higher, 120 MB hard drive space, CD-ROM drive, and a Rage Pro or better 3D accelerator. 3D acceleration is highly recommended, but not required.

Unreal Tournament runs smoothly on my 300 MHZ Blue & White G3, using a standard ATI Rage 128 card. With audio and video options turned down, UT ran ok on my Powerbase200 upgraded with 138MB RAM, a 233 MHZ G3 card, and 3DFX Voodoo 3/2000 card.

My iBook with 160 MB RAM also did ok, but I could tell it's resources were being tested with slower frame rates and some pauses. The Rage Mobility chip that comes with the iBook is not as fast as the Rage 128 that's comes in iMacs. And because of the limitations of the iBook screen, it's not very pretty. For pretty and fast, the better choice would be the Graphite iMac I saw in action at our last gaming meet.

The standard install on my G3, took up 93 MB of hard drive space. This leaves all of the maps and most of the texture on the CD. The full install requires a whopping 512 MB, and it still asks for the CD to run. That's fair as this is primarily a "networking" game.

The game's "Get Info" box lists the minimum RAM requirement as 8 MB. I was puzzled at first until the explanation arrived from Westlake. I would like to thank Mark Adams for his assistance in gathering info for this review. The real minimum RAM figure is more like 80 MB. Westlake decided to label the minimum as 8 MB so when the novice iMac user cranks up the game for the first time, and they don't have enough RAM, including Virtual Memory, they don't get a cryptic error message. Instead they will get a message asking for more memory.

I've always looked at the minimum RAM figure to really know what the game needs. This decision defeats that purpose. My suggestion would be to have the Get Info's Memory window display accurate information and add an explanation for novices in the game's setup documentation. The recommended 105 MB of RAM is a more realistic figure for optimum performance. If using a iMac with 64 MB RAM, you'll be relying on a hefty dose of Virtual Memory. My experience is that relying on a little Virtual Memory with a fast processor (G3) works fine. But the more VM you need, the slower any game will run.

Background:
The warriors filed in, Macs in tow, for the January meeting of the Minnesota Apple Computer User Group's Gaming Contingent. Excitement was tempered with a hint of sadness as this was the first meeting where no Marathon would be played. New kings were to be crowned. They're names? Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 Arena.

If you don't know, Marathon by Bungie Software, is the beloved FPS that exploded on the Mac gaming scene in 1993. There were others before it like Wolfinstein, but Marathon took over, despite the then hefty requirements of a PowerPC processor. Unbelievably, we've been playing Marathon for 7 years. That's one heck of a run for a game that runs on a PowerPC 601, 66 MHZ processor. In contrast, the PC side of the world was dominated by Doom, the cartoon. What better way to differentiate the Mac and PC gaming crowd? Bungie, by the way, has a couple of hotly anticipated projects underway for release this year.

After a long dry spell for Mac FPSs, the heat was turned up a big notch last year when Unreal was brought to the Mac by Macsoft and Quake II arrived, courtesy of Id Software. This year, a blow torch focuses on Mac gaming with the near simultaneous releases of Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 Arena. Graphics and game play have reached a point not thought possible a few years ago. Both games are beautiful, delivering great visuals. And most importantly, they soar to a new level of solo and multiplayer game play. My focus is on Unreal Tournament.

Game Synopsis:
Here's the story. About 2200 (past tense) there was trouble with violence in the deep space mining colonies. The New Earth Government decided that no-holds-barred fighting tournaments would be a great way for the miners to let off some steam. The Andrews Mining Corporation, who sponsored the events, charged admission and quickly discovered that the tournaments were very profitable. Bla, bla, bla, bottom line, you now have an excuse to kick the virtual stuffing out each other in FPS tournament play!

Ooo-rah!

The Game:
Unreal Tournament provides the environment and structure to get yourself into fighting shape and conduct knockdown, drag-out fire fights with 16 of your closest enemies or all by yourself. The environment consists of 50 outstanding levels from dingy urban environments to the reaches of Outer Space. More maps are sure to come from independent map makers. UT's greatest achievement is a game structure using the Unreal engine, that allows for solo practice and tournament play using UT's cool Artificial Intelligence (AI) characters known as "bots". They seem almost human. And they are a huge improvement over the schizoid things that bounced around the landscape in the original Unreal bot matches.

Practice Sessions (solo play) access all of the levels using up to 16 bots in free-for-all DeathMatches and the team games listed under tournament play. You can practice against or with them, independently or as teams. Bot skill levels are set before the session starts. Make them dumb or God-like. At the lower settings they are really easy to frag. I'm too scared to try God-like. To keep you on your toes, a handy game preference allows your bots to improve as you do. UT practice allows you to independently find your skill level and steadily improve without the frustration of getting your butt handed to you online. I'm not saying that's never going to happen, because real humans are still the most dangerous and sneaky opponents out there. And it's definitely an adjustment when you finally go online.

The Unreal Tournament solo game allows you to progress up the Tournament Ladder, fighting bots in the different game types listed below. A ton of fun! Tutorial levels introduces each category with some basic instruction. In tournament play, the bot's skill levels can't be altered, but the early levels start off with a small number of them at low skill settings.

• DeathMatch- A free-for-all. The most frags win.
  
• Domination- Two teams fight for possession of several control points scattered around the level. Points build for time in possession.
  
• Capture the Flag- Two teams, each with a flag. Score points each time you steal the other teams flag and return it to your base.
  
• Assault- Two teams, one defending an objective and one assaulting. After the objective is taken, roles switch and the former defenders are now the assault team who try to take the objective in less time than their competitors did.
  
• Challenge Ladder- The final Tournament challenge. A free-for-all Deathmatch against the hardest bots in the tournament.
  

UT Weapons will be familiar to those who play Unreal with some variations and new hardware.

• Impact Hammer- New. Run up and touch someone. One or two hits is all it takes.
  
• Enforcer- Handgun. Extra cool when you get two.
  
• Shock Rifle- Energy beam.
  
• Ripper- Son of Unreal's Razor Jack with larger ricocheting blades. Great for around the corner shots.
  
• Rocket Launcher- 1 to 6 rockets.
  
• Flak Cannon- Hot jagged shrapnel.
  
• Bio Rifle- Exploding sludge.
  
• Sniper Rifle- Scope is great for long distance shots. A favorite of mine.
  
• Minigun- Rotating barrel machine gun
  
• Redeemer- New. Stand back it's a miniature nuc!
  
• Pulse Blaster- Plasma bursts.
  
• Chain Saw- New. Direct from Texas! Is this really necessary?
  
• Translocator- New. A transporter to get to those hard to reach places. A disc is shot to where you want to go.

UMODs- Unreal Mutation Devices are game modifiers that add nice little effects. UT comes with 14 (or so) installed and more can be downloaded from online. Check out Epic's web site and Planet Unreal

My favorite is "Soul Harvest". See the picture at right. When someone is fragged, their soul floats up from their body. Harvest it by running through it and you get another point. "Giants" make the good players huge and the challenged players become midgets. UMODs such as "Chain Saw Melee" restrict the type of weapons available in an arena. The "Rocket Launcher" UMOD worked, but I could not get the Chain Saw to work.

My experience is that if the game server (host) has a UMOD enabled, all participants must have that UMOD installed in their game or they can't join.

Tournament Statistics for solo or multiplayer games over LAN and the internet can be automatically kept using ngStats software. It's included and support is built into UT.

I don't have much in the way of criticism. Having recently played the Quake 3 Arena demo, I heartily recommend both UT and Q3A. One very nice feature that UT would benefit from is Q3A's handicap system. It's the great equalizer and does a great job of reducing the frustration level of challenged players. Q3A also has the ability to zoom-view all weapons. Is that fair? UT has 50 some maps to Q3A's thirty-some maps.

UT Map making will be a disappointing subject for most Mac users. A nice map editor called UnrealED is available for the PC, but you guessed it, a Mac version is not available. As Unreal/UT maps are interchangeable between PCs and Macs, any enterprising map maker with a PC at their disposal can produce maps. As UnrealEd is considered a beta product, it's documentation is so-so. But there is alot of 3rd party info online that discusses how to use it. I do have access to a PC and had to buy the PC version of Unreal ($14.95 at Walmart) because the editor requires the textures and items that come with the full game. I'm in the process of seeing how hard it is to convert some of my favorite Marathon maps into UT maps. If my efforts succeed, you'll be hearing about it at MGL.

The Interface:
A windows affair, but I'm getting used to it. Game preferences (video, audio, etc) are not as many as in Unreal, but they are adequate. The onscreen Heads Up Display is conventional in appearance with important info around the edges. Besides standards such as health and armor level, it nice to know your rank and score in the current competition.

Two new preferences:

• Instant Respawning- when a player is fragged in multiplayer he/she is instantly respawned back into the competition without hitting the "fire" button. I suppose this is to keep someone from camping on a lead.
  
• Dodging- When enabled in the preferences, a double tap of the left or right move button jerks you sideways. I like it!
  

Screen shots can be taken using F9, an undocumented feature. By the way, I worked hard to get the screen shots for this article! Think about where F9 is compared to the standard keyboard/mouse setup. Fifty percent of the time I missed the action or was fragged trying to get a pretty picture!

The game allows taunts, and auto-taunts. Some of these taunts are for mature ears only. They can be turned off. Auto taunts are good for the same reason, team commands are not so good. Team leaders can issue commands via keyboard entry. A single keystroke, "v", pulls up the commands/taunt list and then you must select the desired command with the cursor! Not such a hot deal when your being shot at. In team play, some commands will have to be issued, so pick your time and place carefully. I've noticed that in the beginning of a bot match, before you hit the "fire" key to start the action, commands can be given and the bots seem to respond to them.

There is some confusion between the in-game "Control" preferences, where you enter the keyboard commands and the Input Sprockets (IS) interface. This is because on PCs, keyboard and mouse inputs are treated the same, but on the Mac, the Input Sprocket inputs for pointing devices are different, and this is a game ported from the PC. I use an ADB Kensington TurboMouse with my G3. It will appear like you can program your mouse keys into UT''s "Control" preferences, but they don't take. The end result is that IS settings prevail over any mouse buttons you program into the game's Control preferences. It does not help that the IS choices are limited. This problem has appeared in other recent games I've played. The IS mouse button choices are only as varied as the Westlake has made it. I would like to program "select best weapon" into one of my buttons, but it's not available. More choices would be better.

For advanced users, there is a way to program any of the keyboard commands into your mouse buttons. When time permits, I'll do a formal article with screen shots to be posted at MGL. But for now, here is the idea. Continue at your own risk!!

In the System folder, within the UT folder, there is a user.ini file. Make a copy of this file in case you screw things up. This file holds all the settings of the game. For any command that is not available to Input Sprockets, start up UT and in the Options/Prefs/Controls menu note the desired command's key. I wanted "Select Best Weapon" as a mouse button. Initially it does not have a key assigned so I programmed one in. (Be careful you don't use something already in use.) On my TurboMouse, I've got 4 buttons. I wanted to know how the game recognizes those buttons. So I programmed the letter "R" as "Select Best Weapon". For those who are real observant, "R" used to be the "Say" key so I had to find something else to use for "Say". Back to the task at hand. The interface allows two key assignments for each command so I highlighted "Select Best Weapon" a second time and pressed the top left button of my Turbomouse. It registered as "joy6". So now Select Best Weapon showed as "R or joy6". Then I quit the game and opened the user.ini file with Simpletext. I scrolled down the list and found that R= switchtobestweapon. I continued scrolled down the long list and found that "joy6" was already showing as "joy6=switchtobestweapon". Wonderful! That was not supposed to happen automatically. If it hadn't, I would have typed in "joy6=switchtobestweapon". That's it. I saved the user.ini file and restarted the game. It worked! I imagine at this point, it's important not do do any more programming with Input Sprockets of that particular mouse button, or you may inadvertently change it. One more caution, the first time I tried this, the changes did not take immediately, even with quitting the game and restarting. Later I went back and the changes were in the user.ini file. I don't know why.

For cheaters, check out the codes at MacSoft.

Bug Report:
None noted, but check at MacSoft's web site for the latest.

Conclusion:
Unreal Tournament is an outstanding FPS worthy of your purchase. Its got great levels and beautiful graphics. Its improved Artificial Intelligence provides for maximum fun offline, while sharpening those necessary skills, to deal with those nasty humans you'll eventually run into online. With bunches of new maps and a strong emphasis on team play, I can't imagine a better way to spend my Winter gaming day. Please have a blast with this great game!

On the "Plus" side:

• Great FPS game play
• Support for team play
• Beautiful graphics
• Awesome weapons
• Screen shots (F9)

On the "Minus" side:

• No movies to record your feats
• Windows interface
• Limited Input Sprockets choices
• Awkward command interface
• No Mac map editor

*Individual category scoring is for reference only and is not necessarily calculated into the "Worthiness" score.

1/25/00