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"Unreal Tournament 2003" or "UT2003" is a first-person shooter video game designed mainly for multiplayer gaming although the game had a built in single-player mode that mimics multiplayer gaming by featuring AI-bots. The game is part of the Unreal franchise's series of games and is a sequel to 1999's Unreal Tournament. Unreal II: The Awakening was released as a sister product to the game, however, was developed for single-player only. Later, Unreal II would receive an add-on that would enable a multiplayer mode. UT2003 was followed by Unreal Tournament 2004 released in March of 2004.
UT2004 completely replaced UT2003 on store shelves and UT2004 boxes sold in the United States include a voucher that along with proof of having bought UT2003 gives a discount for UT2004.
UT2003 set a record for the number of downloads (1.2 Million) when the demo was released, which is a reflection of the popularity of the original UT. In addition, the game engine has been widely licensed for games such as Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell, and America's Army.
UT2003 has received mostly positive reviews although it has not had the impact that its 1999 predecessor had. One reason was increased competition, with Halo: Combat Evolved, Operation Flashpoint, Tribes 2, and Battlefield 1942 raising the bar for shooter expectations by including vehicles. UT2003 also received a lukewarm if not hostile reception from a great many fans of its predecessor, who accused it of altering the pace and gameplay adversely. The primary complaint seemed to be that the overall look, feel, and scale of UT2003. People also complained about changes to the weapons such as the loss of the sniper rifle, the crucially important translocator, the look of the player skins, and the server browser, which may have counted bots as human players. Consequently, many fans of the original game were disappointed. Fans of UT's Assault and Domination games were also disappointed since Assault was omitted and Domination was changed in UT 2003. Consequently, the Assault mode returned for UT2004.
Both gamers and developers agreed that UT2003 was a watered-down game in its current form, however it was not rushed in order to be released upon time (so UT2003 was not plagued by bugs that are typical of "rushed games"). There are several Easter eggs (i.e. a hidden vehicle) to hint of UT2003's future potential; it was obvious that Epic Games had very ambitious plans for the sequel to UT and the stripped-down UT2003 was due mostly to time constraints. In addition to buying more time to implement their plans for Assault and Onslaught game modes, the developers attempted to resolve many issues gamers had with UT2003. As a result, UT2003 served as a polished foundation upon which UT2004 was built up and UT2004 met a very favorable reception. Wikipedia |
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