Review: Psi Weapon Dreams v1.01

(This mutator was tested on a 1.8 P4, 256RDram, and 64mb GForce3 machine)

Sure its just a weapons mutator. But I have to say that I have never seen a basic UT weapons mutator with more eye candy than Psi-Shock’s Psi Weapon Dreams. Loads of hard work has gone into each weapon. The new models are pretty good and Psi-Shock has taken the UT elements and crafted them into outstanding visuals. These “eye crack” visual effects do put quite a bit of strain on your system, though. But if you have the muscle, Psi Weapon Dreams will not disappoint.

Overall, the weapons are well balanced and each have their own unique strategies. Weapons like the Prism Gun and Soul Reaver with intense lasers are good for high damage at a distance. The Future Shock and Peace Maker both make use of flak shards and different grenades, which makes them good for close quarter/room clearing. The ChainGun is very effective at short to medium range combat and the alt fire grenade can be devastating at close range (or in an enclosed space). The EMP rifle’s energy projectile is useful for indoor or close quarter outdoor combat. The triple projectile alt fire can be just as dangerous to you as it can be to your enemy, so watch out. Your starting weapon, the Nail gun, is pretty good. The primary fire is accurate, headshots are possible, and the burst alt fire can be effective at close range. The Lightning Force has a primary fire similar to the Quake 3 plasma rifle, but with a tiny bit of splash damage. The alt fire emits a lightning bolt that will stay on an enemy, provided they don’t move to far away. The damage of the alt fire isn’t a whole lot, however. I’d like to see it upped just a bit. The Buster Rocket Launcher is good at close to medium range combat. Try firing the alt fire with max ammo. The Redeemer is replaced with the Dream Reaver. The primary fire launches a fast projectile that deals splash damage on impact and releases a bunch of bouncing shock beams the kill instantly. The secondary is the same as the primary, only slower and more beams are released. While it is awesome to watch the projectile explode and the beams fly out, your FPS take a major hit, even more so with the alt fire due to the greater amount of beams. It is lethal, but I’d like to see a decrease in the draw on your system when the weapon is used. A couple of the weapons have special “overcharge” firing modes when they have full ammo. But you’ll have to get the mut and try it out to find out which ones have this unique ability, he he.

Speaking of FPS, one of the major issues in Psi Weapon Dreams is, of course, all of the eye candy gobbling up your power. In this version (1.01), most of the models have been tweaked so they not only look better, but the polys have been slashed, resulting in better performance. For the most part, the game will run alright with PWD active. Of course, the more players, the more weapon firing and the greater the draw on your system. However, Psi-Shock has anticipated players with slower computers wanting to use PWD, and has taken appropriate action. In the mut’s menu, there is an option to draw the effects with more detail. I’m assuming that if this option is left unchecked, than your performance will not suffer as great a hit (there is also an individual option for the Dream Reaver effect, but even with this option unchecked, my FPS still took quite a hit). There is also an option for “Souls” and “Gore Heaven,” leaving both of which unchecked increases performance a bit. Souls refers to the little wisps that float off of a dead player’s body once he or she dies. A neat effect, but not critical, I leave this option unchecked. Gore Heaven is pretty self-explanatory: check it and you get more blood and more gibs. If you feel you need to, you can uncheck this for only marginally better performance, as this option doesn’t drain that much of your power.

Also included in PWD are some new pickups and relics. The Blue Health Pack adds 20 health and the Blue Health Vial ads 5 health. The Fire Health Pack and Fire Health Vial add 40 and 15 health, respectively. Max health is set at 250, which is good, considering the power of some of the weapons. The Psi-Weapon Charger is just like UDamage, the Giga-Health Pack adds 400 health, and the Advanced PSI Shield Belt recharges. The Psi Strength, Speed, and Defense relics are exactly like the old ones, but Psi-Shock encourages their use as the original relics don’t work well with PWD. The Psi Vengeance relic has a longer range and does not always kill (which means lesser damage, but only a little less, he he). Psi-Shock has also included a new model, which looks awesome, but requires the latest version of Advanced Model Support.

Needless to say, the eye candy in this mutator is most impressive. Lots of hard work has gone into PWD so far, and future versions will hopefully bring more additions. I’d like to see more done with the relics, like more damage/faster speed/better defense at the expense of, say, health or something like that. On a few of the weapons, ammo is a problem. Perhaps and increase of the Prism Gun’s or the Soul Reaver's ammo. PWD is all-around pretty bug-free, but the FPS problem will most likely be an issue for most people playing this mut. But for those of you with the muscle to handle all of the impressive visuals, PWD will “shock and awe.”

-Dade

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