Bio was more powerful in UT2003. Still, it usually kills in one shot, and the blob maintaining is a cool feature too (when you shoot a blob at another blob, it gets bigger instead of exploding!). Sure, it's more powerful and less of a ranged weapon in UT1, but actually it feels like the Impact Hammer as it deals a lot of damage from a small distance. I like having a more useful weapon that isn't too lethal. And it's name is officially "flak", as Zenith Cannon
That was a quick example. You can use a variety of weapons to take out someone, but they will be useless as soon as the position changes, requiring thinking to kill an opponent. Adrenaline adds a lot to the thinking element, you have 6 combos to choose from so you have to choose one wisely (in UC2, though, there are a lot more), and even more were planned to be included, including the infamous Invunerability that is featured in UT3. Any idea what Retribution might do? By the way, if you see scoreboards, very rarely the top players are shock lightning pros, checked one scoreboard today and the top player that had 1-4 places in all gametypes was mostly a Rocket Scientist, a little Flak Monkey and absolutely not HeadHunter or Combo Whore. So weapon variety really matters. Plus, I always prefer teamwork, where absolutely all kinds of weaponry are needed to keep the position.
The lockdown effect was not unwanted, but it was really random. And spammy, like you already agreed. That's why it's lessened.
Sure, they are different, but what about some other theme? Look at the original Unreal. There were absolutely loads of styles, and they could switch very rapidly - look at Terraniux that is a crashed spaceship, Noork's elbow that is natural terrain only, and Temple of Vandora that is an ancient ruined temple. And all of these maps go one after another. Now that's a change in styles! There is really a very small amount of nice terrain maps in UT (that adds to your high pace theme - I don't like that!). The Terrain(Generators/Info) in UEngine 2 is really advanced, as well as FluidSurface(Generators/Info), making it easy to create realistic maps. Look at UT2004 (yes Leo, and UT2003
) DOM-SepukkuGorge. You won't see anything near it's naturality in UT1. A lack of terrain and vehicles that use it is the primary thing that keeps me in UT2004. It's just fun to ride some vehicles in a large scale terrain map, simply feeling the terrain (and hunting DareDevil! announcements
), and the same theme is carried to the online, we have a really good time in Assault racing servers there, where you don't need to do anything more than relax and just beat some natural barriers that stop you from advancing... Also, look at
DM-TokaraForest - you have to admit that it mixes all the interesting elements of catwalks of Deck16, terrain and visuals of UEngine 2 and fighting plus still adding a relaxing element. Actually, you won't be shooting too much in that map - you'll just peacefully walk admiring the trees and shadows cast, stop briefly to shoot at someone and continue admiring the visuals. Really, I'm more of peaceful man than a fragger
And yes Leo, DM-TokaraForest is in UT2003 too. By the way, look at the flame generators, they even look realistic in UT2004, absolutely not like in UT1 that is just a volumetric brush. Actually, the ol' UEngine 1 is capable of emitters, so this can look better once the UT SDK comes out
And even now Unreal I can use the realistic emitterwork, just that a lot of machines with U1 have low specs that would be challenged by that kind of emitters. But we'll see, maybe I should see if someone made something like that already. Wow, a long post
). Still, if you spectate, you have to admit that the spectate button is supremely useful 
