In Game sound
Aurally, the game is a little more of a disappointment. Most games these days are best experienced with a surround-sound setup, and this should be no exception. However, the game’s inbuilt surround is of a decidedly shoddy quality (compared to, say, Neverwinter Nights), and its sound engine overrides the 5.1 upmixing provided by my sound card (which helps to make stereo games such as System Shock 2 even scarier than usual). Sound effects are nothing to write home about, and music is the standard fare you’ve learnt to disable so you can run Winamp.
Unreal Tourney was much loved for its innovative array of weapons. >From the lowly Enforcer pistol to the mighty Redeemer thermonuclear device, each weapon would appeal to a particular personality type and skill set. UT2003’s weapon set is in most cases based on those of UT. However, whereas UT’s weapons are each balanced towards different gamers (I’m a flak-canon spammer if you must know), those in UT2003 have lost much of their power in an effort to make them more balanced – and succeeded only in removing much of the skill in their use. Explosions are smaller, damage lower and fire rates slower, resulting in weapon choice being almost irrelevant for newbie gamers, and leading to less mastery for experts.
