Unreal Tournament 2004 – Recon (PC)

As Website Editor, I have very little free time to commit to full-blown reviews of games. I leave that to the professionals! However, I do have time for "single-serving" overviews of some of the games and demos I come across?and while far from in-depth, maybe my musings will be enough to help you decide whether it is worth spending your own time downloading and investigating. True, UT2004 is not the typical historical recreation of combat, but it IS combat nonetheless, and if you can set aside the sci-fi approach to this first person shooter, I think you will get your money’s worth. After all, it’s a FREE demo!

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"Main Screen Turn On!"

Bring on "Onslaught!"

The new Unreal Tournament 2004 demo (UT2004 Website) was recently released by Epic Games (in conjunction with Digital Extremes). The somewhat chunky 200MB download has really captured my interest, and one game style in particular is what I would like to share with you today. It goes by the name "Onslaught" and the map included with the demo (ONS-Torlan) basically presents a battlefield with 5 strategic points (power nodes) which must be controlled by each respective team over the course of the match. While controlling territory sounds like something out of Day of Defeat (or other FPS games), it is actually quite different.

In this variant each of the power nodes must be captured in order, and must be protected. Each side must try to capture those nodes in enemy territory and push the other team back into their base. The main power cores of each team only become vulnerable when they have no power nodes under their control out in the field (when all are enemy controlled). This leads to situations of desperation where an entire team must sit in their base, man heavy weapons platforms, and pray their reactor is not destroyed before time runs out or before they can recapture an enemy power node.

Map of playing field. Showing layout of power nodes. Each team has 2 nodes
close to their base, with a middle node being equidistant for both.

Fans of Halo will probably be right at home playing this demo, and this game type in particular. There are plenty of vehicles to make it interesting, as well as static turrets all over the place. The control of the vehicles is similar to Halo (3^rd person view), with multiple players being able to share Hellbenders and tanks (one man moves and fires the main gun, while the buddy unloads with the turret-mounted machine gun). The tank weapons are satisfying in their destructiveness, making them a blast to control! There are other airborne vehicles, such as the hovercraft-like Manta which looks like it has two box fans supporting its weight. The Raptor is a rather nice air unit, having decent primary plasma weapons, with anti-aircraft missiles available as its secondary weapon. Both air units are pretty delicate though, so watch your altitude when you are taking heavy fire from the ground or by anti-air missiles, be ready to bail out.

Game play:

Let’s get right to it. Our goal as team Red team is to expand our control of power nodes as fast as possible, while also trying to stop the Blue team from expanding theirs. As the game starts, I make a break to secure my ride, a Raptor. I have a specific destination, and I need this baby to get me there!

I grab the Raptor from inside my base?and head out to cause trouble.