I was visiting a gaming message board yesterday, and some people were talking about Unreal Tournament 2004—mostly giddily proclaiming that their pre-ordered copies were on the way, posting screenshots of their FedEx tracking reports and all that other silliness. But there were some substantive posts too, discussing the features of the game, and these intrigued me. A lot of people said that UT2K4 “felt” a lot more like the original UT than UT2K3. Since I loved the former and hated the latter, I thought it might be worth checking out the demo, just for kicks. So I downloaded it.

First of all, I want to thank nVidia for providing us with a blazing fast mirror, which served up the demo at the maximum speed of my cable connection. Once I installed the game, I decided to play a few practice matches with the bots. First I tried Assault Mode, which is basically an objective-based “attack vs. defend” mode that plays out like a famous battle scene. It was fun, but I continually found myself getting disoriented and confused. I’m sure I would have gotten better after playing the map a few times (even just playing the second round helped me improve quite a bit), but it wasn’t as fun as I’d hoped, so I tried Onslaught next.

OH HELL YES. Onslaught is incredibly fun! I won’t discuss the objective or how it’s played, but I will say that it is the most fun I’ve had in a botmatch in a long time. And I thought botmatches were usually boring. The gameplay definitely had the classic UT feel, and the only problem I had was not remembering the order of the weapons (since there are so many), resulting in my rarely being able to find the one I wanted in a harried situation. Other than that, I was hooked. The best part? The vehicles.

There really is an astounding array of drivable / flyable vehicles in UT2K4. There’s hovercraft, jeeps, Hummer-like things, some really cool attack aircraft, and there’s also mounted mech-like turrets and other stuff. The best thing is the way they flip end-over-end and shower the ground with debris when you destroy them—incredible eye candy, and immensely satisfying too! I spent like an hour just playing one Onslaught botmatch after another. I’d imagine this is even more fun with real people, although I’d prefer to play alongside some folks I actually know, which is what turns me off to online gaming most of the time. I hate random smacktards. And playing one-on-one with a friend isn’t really worth it, since you really need a whole army of people for a game like this.

Still, I really liked the UT2K4 demo and am actually contemplating buying the full version…but the reality is, money’s tight right now and I’ve already got two other single player games, Far Cry and Painkiller, coming out one right after the other. So I’m going to put this decision off for a while. But anyone who’s looking for a game like this, you can’t go wrong with UT2K4. Even if 2K3 wasn’t your thing. Seriously.