Unreal Tournament 2004 Reviews (Macintosh)

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With the recent announcement of the next Unreal Tournament, it’s nice to take a look at where we’ve been to see how far we’ve come. And, if the title is any indication (Unreal Tournament 2007), you’ll have plenty of time to fill. I can’t think of any better way to fill it than with many, many Onslaught matches with Unreal Tournament 2004.

Ultimately, network play is what UT is all about—the single-player mode is merely practice for the endless line of competitors waiting for you in online games. We still enjoy the past two iterations of Unreal Tournament—and now we can't recommend UT 2004 highly enough.

Unreal Tournament 2004's formula is simple and yet extremely effective: Take all the best that previous versions of the game had to offer, add a few new touches (but not enough to re-invent the game) and then make sure there's so much content included with the product that your hard drive chokes on it. It's a simple formula, but the execution is so thorough (almost verging on the excessive) that UT2K4 has become the best of all the Unreal games to date.

With the new vehicles comes a host of new weapons – in order to ensure that on-foot players aren’t totally defenceless – and the AI of the allied and enemy bots has been seriously improved to the point that this game is now as fun offline as it is online. If you like first-person shooters, you’re going to love Unreal Tournament 2004!

With improvements to almost every aspect of play, Unreal Tournament 2004 is a great game. However, its complexity will tax a Mac running at anything less than 933MHz.

I'm almost talked out. UT2K4 played smoothly on my G5. Frame rates (25-70 fps) seemed comparable to what I've seen with a 3 GB Pentium IV machine. Good news for Mac gamers. The game is stable and I noticed no real problems with the game itself, except the mic & server problem, as previously mentioned. Unreal Tournament 2004 is a gem of a first person shooter. For challenging FPS action, strategy, and fun, you can't go wrong with this title. The learning curve for the new game types may seem steep, but Instant Action mode allows you to get practice prior to venturing online.

It's been quite a few years since the first Unreal engine hit the scene and brought a new level of beauty and detail to 3D gaming. Since then, we've seen the engine evolve into the Unreal Tournament concept, which has finally matured into something that truly feels like a sporting event with Unreal Tournament 2004 (UT2K4).

Unreal Tournament 2004 is a superb all action game which although a little dated now, still retains a huge popularity among UT fans.