I'm sorry but I grew up on UT99 and UT2004 seems to be missing the very essence of what is "Unreal Tournament" to me. One thing that have always made me love UT99 were the bots - the characters looked good and the excellent voice acting made them very lively and fun to play with - it felt almost like playing with a bunch of friends / human players. Sadly, this is where UT2004 fails a big time. Too many of the new bot models are ridiculous, ugly or even repulsive, making me hate to play with (or against) them. Also, their voices suck - they sound either too cold and emotionless or way too crazy / alien-like, making it very hard (if not impossible) to create (or meet) a likable character. Another thing I've always loved about UT99 was the music. There were so many memorable and energizing tracks, it made me feel like a superhero, blasting my way to the monster kill :) Not here... The music is just too plain and generic, contributing to the overall boredom. And that is my main complaint - I really tried to give it a chance - I've played the single player campaign for about 6 hours - but I just got bored and unmotivated to continue - something that never happened to me with the original UT. I don't like the bots, I don't like the music, I don't like the campaign team emphasis and money micro management, I don't like the atmosphere and feeling of this game - it just feels too cold... I'm sorry, but I'm not even going to try to dig deeper into the new Onslaught mode (which, as I understood, should be probably one of the best parts of this game) - as this game failed for me in the most important part - pure deathmatch.
It's a great game, well worth the money (I got it in sale for $8). The only thing that bothers me somehow is the strange sound design. I mean - the game has really nice background music - yet the problem is, you almost never get to hear it! It starts playing very rarely and fades out way too often and quickly without any obvious reason - so 95 % of the time you are left with only ambient sound effects, which are quite dull and they definitely don't make up for an atmosphere the music could provide. The only music you actually get to hear quite often are the battle tunes which start (sometimes) when you spot an enemy. But these are all quite similar and they get kind of repetitve and annoying after a while. What I'm really missing are some not so dramatic tunes playing while you are just exploring or when you're visiting a friendly towns. Again, the towns usually DO have some very nice theme songs - the problem is they start playing maybe in 1 of 10 visits and most of the time you're just wandering through them in (almost) complete silence, which really sucks :( Fortunatelly, the rest of the game is great. Lot of features, lot of items, lot of possibilities to make every character unique... As others mentioned, the story is quite linear and it's mostly about the combat. But I don't mind. It's challenging and still far from Diablo style. What you need here are tactics, not just fast fingers... So, if you want some D&D style tactical hack & slash, this one is probably one of the best options available.
