So there's Unreal Tournament 2004, sequel to Unreal Tournament 2003 released 18 months ago. Was it worth the wait? Definitely! I've been playing a lot of UT2004 these past couple of weeks and haven't enjoyed an on-line FPS this much since Team Fortress on the Half-Life engine. There's everything what you want from this type of game - exciting, fast-paced & furious & frantic.... nonstop combat and impressive atmosphere!

Single Player
The single-player game in UT 2004 remains relatively the same as it was in previous incarnations. Basically, it's just the multiplayer offline. Included for single player gameplay are two distinct modes, a storyline style tournament mode and an "instant action" mode. You draft a team of players and fight other teams in a series of matches. After a match, you pay money to treat your injured players, sign free agents, etc. Instant Action on the other hand is the offline "stress reliever"' so to speak, simply select a mode of play, customize the setup options and let loose on the computer A.I. Fortunately, the enemies (bots) are fairly good and use all the firing modes on weapons and take advantage of the special movements. Although the main intention for anyone buying this game would be playing it online or on LAN, I would suggest polishing your skills first in the single player tournament. There's nothing worse than hopping online in a new game and having no clue where you are or what you're supposed to be doing.

Multiplayer
As a multiplayer game, UT2004 is absolutely the best out there. The all new Onslaught mode rocks and Assault mode is back too! UT 2004 features over 106 maps in total, including 57 brand new maps for all existing game play modes. The retail modes include:

• [NEW] Assault - One team attacks an objective, the other defends it. Attackers must accomplish several objectives in order to win the round. Defenders must prevent the attackers from achieving those objectives in order to win. Teams can exchange roles after each round. You can set the number of rounds in a match, and the time limit for each round. Accomplishing objectives for the attacking team may involve reaching a key location, using machinery or computers in the level, or destroying a critical piece of hardware.
   
• [NEW] Onslaught - Teams battle for control of the expansive map. You'll need strategy, strength and an almighty arsenal to win. Each team starts the game with its own vehicles. You can't steal an enemy vehicle unless the enemy unlocks it by first getting into the vehicle. But if your enemy leaves his tank to pick up some ammo, you can steal it. You start the match, run to a vehicle then run to a power node. After a few minutes, the teams will have reached the choke node in the middle and this is where the heavy fire begins. Imagine tanks, jeeps, jet fighters and tons of guys running around and fighting. Everything here is quick paced and heavy on the action. The first team to successfully secure all of the power nodes and destroy the enemy's power core wins the match.
   
• Deathmatch - Kill or be killed - winner is first to reach target number of kills
   
• Capture the flag - Each level has two team flags. In order to score, one team must pene-trate the opposing team's defenses, "Capture the Flag," and return it
  to their home team's flag. If the flag carrier is killed, the flag drops to the ground for anyone to pick up. If your team's flag is taken, it must be returned before your team can capture the opposing team's flag.
   
• Team Deathmatch - Just like normal deathmatch but you are no longer alone. The team that kills the most enemy players is judged the winner.
   
• Double Domination - Each level has two Domination Points. In order to score, you must cap-ture both Domination Points (by running over them) and keep them in your team’s possession for 10 seconds. After scoring, the Domination Points reset to neutral and will become available to Dominate again after another 10 seconds.
   
• Bombing Run - Each level has one ball in the middle of the map. The objective is to pick up the ball, deliver it to the enemy base and fire it through their goal. You must also defend your own goal to prevent the enemy from scoring. The ball is dropped when a player is killed and can then be picked up by anyone on either team.
   
• Mutant - A Mutant game starts out as a free-for-all deathmatch. However, as soon as one player makes a kill, he becomes the Mutant. Everyone else stops fighting (you can't hurt each other anymore), and guns for the Mutant instead. You score points by racking up kills while you're the Mutant: Normal Kill: 2 Points, Double Kill: 3 Points, Multi Kill (and above): 4 Points. Mutants get all (non-super) weapons, lots of ammo, and have invisibility, agility and berserk. However, the Mutant's health slowly runs down and can only be replenished by killing other players. Also, the Mutant's position appears on everyone else's HUD. If a player kills the Mutant, they become the new Mutant. As an optional twist, the player with the lowest score is the Bottom Feeder - he can also go kill other players to score points. As soon as the Bottom Feeder's score isn't the lowest, a new player becomes the Bottom Feeder. The Mutant gets five points for killing the Bottom Feeder.
   
• Invasion - Band together and defend your position against waves of incoming monsters. Each wave lasts between 90 seconds and four minutes. You cannot respawn if you die during a wave. However, as long as one player makes it to the end of the wave alive, everyone respawns for
  the next attack. Monster difficulty is controlled by the bot difficulty option in the Settings Menu.
   
• Last Man Standing - All players start the game with all weapons when they respawn, but players have a limited number of lives. There's an option to get health back when you kill someone. Win by being the last left alive

Similar to UT2003, you can at least tweak the gameplay a bit using mutators, a special "mini-mods" that you can activate when you set up a server.

Weapons, Vehicles
Weapons are fairly similar to UT2003, however have been tweaked slightly. The familiar weapons like the Flak Cannon, Lightning Gun, Link, Monigun, Rocket Launcher, Shock Rifle, Bio Rifle and Redeemer are back in action, but there are some improvements. The standard issue Assault Rifle gets a boost with an alt-fire grenade launcher which fire sticky grenades that stick to players, vehicles, and everything else - and yes, you can hold two of them at once! The sniper rifle returns, in addition to the Lightning Gun introduced in UT2003 for those that prefer the direct head shot. There's a new weapon called the AVRiL which is basically an anti-vehicle rocket launcher. Designed to be used strictly against vehicles, the AVRiL allows infantry a fighting chance. Once the AVRiL has aquired lock, it fires a solid-fuel missile which will track the target as long as the reticle is held on the vehicle. While AVRiL is a powerful homing missile that is deadly against all manners of vehicles, it's pretty useless against other people on foot. Included with the new arsenal is a Mine Layer, which deploys spider mines, which are great for anti-vehicle that come into their vicinit and even better at anti-personnel.

As I mentioned above (Onslaught mode), the biggest addition here is the use of vehicles and stand alone gun turrets. Like games such as Halo, and Tribes 2 you have the ability to control various vehicles that will help you move across the map and totally control the points that you must take over. The vehicle control is tight and very effective. Unlike Halo that used the mouse for turning the vehicle, this one keeps the controls fixed to the WASD keys, leaving the mouse to control the camera. There are a variety of wheeled and airborne conveyances, including the Goliath tank, the Manta land speeder, the Leviathan super tank, the Hellbender and Scorpion (essentially SUVs powered by testosterone), the Raptor, the Leviathan, the Phoenix, and Humand/Skaarj Spacefighters. Some vehicles support multiple passengers to handle the extra firepower. All vehicles are well balanced out here. Yes, they are important, and yes, they are fun to play, but you can't win a game solely through vehicles. Besides moving vehicles, you can also take control of the gun turrets located on different points of the map.

Graphics & Sound
Graphically this game is still very good looking. Textures are well designed and character models are gorgeous. Also the colors, animation, and effects are sharp and detailed. Overall, UT 2004's graphics are simply outstanding. However, with the likes of Far Cry, S.T.A.L.K.E.R, DOOM3, and Half Life2 on their way, UT2004 may start looking a little dated a little soon. The sound effects and the soundtrack of this game are both top notch. Rockets whizzing past you in a surround sound with fast-paced game music playing at the background really improves the experience. There's also a long list of built-in voice communication options, starting with voice chat features that make it easy to chat with teammates as long as you have a headset or microphone plugged into your PC.

Overall
In all, the gameplay in this one leaves nothing to complain about. It's one of those rare games that have something for everyone. Also, you don't need a high-end system for the game to run, a mid-range one will do just fine. Even at maximum settings (1024x768/32) on an Athlon 2500+ PC with GF4 Ti4600/128 card the game was perfectly playable for me. These things aren't terribly expensive anymore, and it's well worth the price to make this game run smooth enough where you'll have steady framerates for online and off.

UT 2004 was definitely worth the wait and it's probably the best $40 purchase you will make busy for a long time. If you liked Unreal Tournament, or Unreal Tournament 2003, this is a must-buy for you!

Related links: homepage, Windows demo, Linux demo, Epic's bonus map pack, community bonus pack volume 1 / volume 2.

System Requirements
Minimum: Pentium III or AMD Athlon 1.0 GHz, 128MB RAM, 32 MB Windows compatible video card, Windows compatible sound card, 6GB free HDD space, modem: 33.6K baud (for modem/Internet play), Internet (TCP/IP) and LAN (TCP/IP) play supported.
Recommended: Pentium IV or AMD Athlon 2.0 GHz, 512MB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 4 or ATI Radeon Hardware T&L card with 128 MB VRAM, Sound: Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS, 6GB free HDD space, Broadband Internet connection Note: FYI, UT 2004 comes in 6 CDs (5 for game installation and 1 for extras), which amounts to around 5.6 GB of hard disk space without counting the extras. And no there's no option for minimum installation.