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Unreal Championship (Xbox) artwork

Unreal Championship (Xbox) review


"Overview: "

Overview:
Unreal Championship is more or less the XBOX version of Unreal 2003 for PC, with some changes.
Some maps are different, some elements too... Therefore UC can not simply be called a port of a PC game, but it's close.

Gameplay: (9/10)
Unreal Championship is a simple arena first person shooting game. The story: It's a tournament, you run like crazy in an arena and blast the others to kingdom come! That's it... Not much compared to the original Unreal, but in a tournament game like this, you don't exactly expect more.
Like in typical Unreal, every gun has two attacks, like a grenade-launcher/rifle combination. You can jump, run, strafe as usual and new this time around, double-jump and use adrenaline attacks and defenses.
Double-jump works by being able to jump while jumping, therefore going higher than normal.
Adrenaline is a bit more complex. You collect adrenaline points by killing ennemies or by collecting adrenaline pills around the arena. When you're adrenaline total is at 100, you can use an adrenaline maneuver. Adrenaline maneuvers works using combinations moves like those found in fighting games, you press up,up,up for a berserk attack boosting your gun strength, down,down,down for regeneration of your health and shield, right,right,left,left for invisibility and down, up, up for faster speed and overall agility.
You start-up the single player experience by selecting a character. There's about 30 of them and each have different stats. Some are faster, some can jump higher, others have tons of health or can get adrenaline faster, etc. Then you're of to select the rest of your team from the collection of characters available. AI vary according to agressiveness or ''evasive'' (which i call ''cowardice''), aiming level, agility, etc.
After selecting your team, you're of to the arena where you'll have to fight ladders (i.e. a bunch of levels in pre-determined order). There's a team deathmatch ladder (kill the most people on the other team), capture the flag (bring the flag from the ennemy base to your own), double domination (capture two points in the arena and hold them for 12 seconds), a ladder which is a variant of a football game (grab the ball then run like crazy to the opponent's goal, not being able to shoot with your gun when you have the ball), and a final deathmatch ladder when you've beaten all the others.
Overall typical Unreal pure and fun fraggin' contest...
The game is Live enabled, so you can bring your fraggin' skills to the ultimate arena: with other players via broadband (or system link)!
UC is also fast, very very fast! The game goes at a crazy rate of speed, but no worry, it's very playable using the XBOX controller. The guns don't need exact precision to deliver damage, which make the game fun and enjoyable. It's every bit as playable as Halo, even tough it's MUCH MUCH faster.
My big complaints are very rare slowdowns and the split-screen options. When i've first played the game, i didn't even notice i could play via split-screen. The trick, you've got to start single player instant action, then press start on a second controller like in a typical arcade game. It shouldn't have been that much of a hassle to program a MENU with the split-screen options right? But then the split-screen is something not found in Unreal 2003, so i'm not complaining much...

Graphics (8/10)
Very good graphics, but nothing miraculous. Considering the speed at which the game as to run, the graphics are very well done. Most of the time bright and colorful.

Sound (9/10)
Sound effects gallore on a DD 5.1 surround system. You just FEEL like you're IN the game.
As for the music, it's a mix bag. Some are very good and entertaining, other just doesn't seem to fit the fast pace of thhe action in the game and are even borderline being considered elevator music.

Overall (8.8/10)
If you like first person shooters, give Unreal at least a try. I've personnally tried Halo, 007 nightfire, 007 agent under fire and TimeSplitters and of all those, Halo is best (because of the story), but Unreal runs a close second and may even have more re-playability than Halo, which goes to say a lot.

If only they could've included more deathmatch maps (but i guess they will be available for download via Live later...)



deedob's avatar
Community review by deedob (January 29, 2003)

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