October Game of the Month

Review Excerpt

See screenshots of Unreal Tournament 2003 (PC)
In traditional shooter fashion, Unreal Tournament 2003 offers up a disposable background story that you can forget as soon as you start playing. The real point of the game is simply to viciously frag your opponents. One thing that UT2003 does have in common with the original Unreal Tournament is the generally top-notch level design. And along with the level design, another obvious strength of UT2003 is its visuals, which are simply outstanding on a technical level, even if they're sometimes lacking in overall artistic vision. Another highlight of UT2003 is its rousing, martial musical score, which would be right at home in some epic sci-fi military film.

On one hand, it's not the really exceptional game it could have been--there's just not enough diversity, depth, or innovation in the gameplay. But on the other hand, Unreal Tournament 2003 still delivers plenty of what you want from this type of game: exciting, nonstop combat in wild settings, all brought to life with a stunning, state-of-the-art graphics engine that leaves its competition in the dust.

We expected a lot from this visually impressive shooter, and all things considered, we got a lot. Unreal Tournament 2003 is the follow-up to the superb team-based shooter Unreal Tournament, which was released in 1999, and though the new game is missing the very popular assault mode, it still has plenty to offer. Aside from its excellent graphics, Unreal Tournament 2003 is a great, fast-paced shooter that works well in cooperative and competitive games, and even though it's a terrific game to play over the Internet or on a LAN with some buddies, it's also just as good for single-player play as the original Unreal Tournament was, thanks to its good bot AI and cleverly designed maps. First-person shooters have gotten a lot more complicated since the early days of deathmatching over a modem, but Unreal Tournament 2003 attempts to be something of a return to classic head-to-head gameplay, while also featuring good team play, especially in its new bombing run mode. Sometimes you don't need lots of complexity or realism to make a good shooter--sometimes a good, solid game that's fast and fun to play is all you need.

Thanks to Gamespot.com for the info