Well I still have UT2004 on my computer and I recently fired it up and started playing it again. And the game is beautiful. I don't know why when they made UT3 that they thought grungy was a better look but the UT2004 maps look great. Who want's to look and bland walls and garbage filled floors. It's like they thought "Hey lets throw dirt on the walls, floors and ceiling, that will make things look way cooler." And the bots seem to be stupider. I tried to like UT3 but when I go back and play UT2004 I can't kid myself and say UT3 is a better game. Not for me anyways and that just one mans personal opinion. I even think the characters in UT2004 look better.
Interestingly, maps went more and more dirty all over the series. In Unreal, everything is washed out. In UT99, everything is... washed out just as well. In UT2003 you now get all those wet, rusty etc. effects - this might be because of Static Meshes and Emitters that allowed them to do so though. And in UT3 you get... Even more dirt.
And you're not the only one who thinks that characters look better in UT2004. There you get a variety. And in UT3, you have... the DemoGuy... And Krall. That's about it, everyone else look like the DemoGuy or Krall.
I went back and played UT2004 and I can't stack up to the better players even more than before. I got aggravated that I die a lot in UT3, but then I went back to UT2004 and I can't hardly even get a kill in that game.
That's easily explainable. You need different abilities for the games. Basically that's the same with all the U-series games - they are all very different and feel differently too! So if they made the expansion with even some kind of another movement, it would still be cool. All you need is to get used to it.
Hmm, speaking about movement... They could bring back Mantling and Prone from U2!
I agree with you completely. UT99 and UT3 are just much more satisfying experiences, the movement has good weight to it, the weapons are all extremely powerful. 2k4 was a step in the wrong direction, but yea its all been said before.
UT3 is a great game underneath all of it's issues. It just needs some time back in the oven and some better maps and content. That's what I'm hoping for with this expansion. You hear that Epic? I haven't given up on you yet!
No it wasn't. I don't get why you all think that something is always worse than other things. They're not. Unreal was great. UT99 was great. Unreal II was great. U2XMP is great. UT2003 was great. UT2004 is great. UT3 is great. But they are all very different from each other, so people just like one or another. Sure, all have some issues, but they aren't enough to make it an overall "bad" game. Like, Unreal II is considered to be not good, but why? Because they rushed. They didn't complete MP, and that left the game with small replayability. U2XMP was never finished too, yet it's still fun as it has MP! But if they didn't rush again, they would have made it even better. So they *really* shouldn't rush. U1 was developed in like 3 years - and it was fantastic back then. You can create miracles if you have enough time. And I guess they should take their time and make UT3 playable on lower end PCs for now...
And yes, UT3 is nice, only if it was playable both online and offline!..