14 DAY TRIAL // The Unreal Tournament series has been around for a very long time, but while it managed to define arena shooters alongside experiences like Quake, it entered a cone of shadow as developer Epic Games opted to focus on new franchises like Gears of War, while outputting a not-so-impressive Unreal Tournament 3 a few years ago.
Now, with the adventure of the Unreal Engine 4 technology, Epic is once again focusing on a blockbuster title, in the form of the all-new Fortnite. At the same time, it's tasked a smaller team with creating a new generation of Unreal Tournament, filled with the same weapons, powerups, and design philosophies that made the previous titles such a blast to play.
The game is now available as a free download although it's in the very early pre-alpha stage, meaning very few maps, rudimentary connectivity, and plenty of work-in-progress textures.
Even so, we took it out for a spin to see if Epic is really onto something great. Does it manage to deliver or should the new Unreal Tournament stay in the shadows? Let's have a quick look.
The new game is a love letter to the past titles
Unreal Tournament, for me, meant the pinnacle of the arena shooter genre and even here at Softpedia a lot of us enjoyed playing a few matches of Unreal Tournament 2004, one of the best entries into the series, during the lunch break.
After going through the tutorial and quite a few different matches, it's safe to say that the new game is almost the same as UT 2004. From the movement system, to the satisfying weapons or the map design, everything is the same and that's not even remotely a bad thing.
Everything feels fast and fluid
The weapons feel great, from the flak cannon to the sniper or the still satisfying Redeemer. Hit detection is quite good and there's always the change for you and your target to kill each other at the same time. The movement system is fluid and you can still perform plenty of tricks by wall dodging during hectic firefights.
The maps use both vertical and horizontal design, being spread out enough not to generate mindless massacres, but also with enough levels to ensure that you can snipe and be sniped from above or below. The spawn points are well spread out at least from the few maps I've played although some zones, especially those around special weapons, will be more bloody than others.
As of right now, a lot of maps have placeholder textures but there are exceptions, like Outpost 23, which looks amazing but also takes a toll on the game's performance, as you can expect to find plenty of freezes or lag spikes while on it. Even so, if you lower your settings, the framerate gets very fast and once again reminds you of the hectic Unreal Tournaments of old.
There are quite a lot of people online, and while you can play on Epic's official servers, you can also create your own matches with special settings and modifiers like Instagib.
Check out a few screenshots with the Unreal Tournament pre-alpha below.
Update: In case you were wondering, we weren't able to record any video while playing the new Unreal Tournament. Fraps caused the game to crash while Nvidia's ShadowPlay resulted in messed up footage. Streaming on Twitch also caused crashes.
