Its been just a little over a year now since the Xbox was released and there hasn’t been a first-person shooter that has yet rivalled the epic, Halo: Combat Evolved. While Unreal Championship (UC) comes extremely close, it falls short in only a few areas. For those of you who are desperately awaiting the arrival of Halo 2, UC will quench your thirst for first-person shooter goodness.

It’s Unreal!
In this latest entry, developer Digital Extremes is emphasizing the new sport theme they’ve implemented into the game. The single player mode consists of your basic ladder system found in the original Unreal Tournament in which you fight bots through a series of matches. This time, however, you must choose a team of five competitors to assist you in the unholy bloodbath. Unlike its PC counterpart, Unreal Tournament 2003, UC’s characters have individual abilities and weapon affinities, so choosing teammates is a strategic task. You are then thrown into an arena and given a preset amount of frags that you and your teammates must accumulate in order to win. Eventually you will open more ladders consisting of Capture the Flag, Double Domination, Bombing Run, and Survival.

New Stuff
Bombing Run is the new game mode that replaces Assault from the original UT. In Bombing Run each team begins at their base. In the middle of the map is a “bomb” which one team has to get to before the other. The objective is to get the bomb and shoot it or jump through the opposing team’s goal for 3 or 7 points, respectively. The unfortunate part is the ball carrier cannot wield a weapon at the time and is, therefore, rendered helpless. The fortunate part is the ball carrier can rely on quickly replenishing health, via the ball-carrying gun, and team cover-fire.

Double Domination replaces the ridiculous Domination from the original where you must capture and hold one point on the map to score. This time there are two points on a map that you and your teammates must hold for 10 seconds in order to score a point. Sounds easy, right? Wrong! It can become extremely cumbersome, especially when you are in control of a point, only seconds away from scoring, and an opposing team member comes and blows you into smithereens. It is recommended you do not try this game type on the “Godlike” setting unless you really want to be frustrated.

As far as new weapons are concerned, there aren’t a whole lot—that doesn’t matter, though. Most of the old favourites are back and have been faithfully reincarnated. There are four weapon replacements in the game: The Lightning Gun (replaces the Sniper Rifle), Tag Rifle (replaces the Redeemer), the Assault Rifle (replaces the handgun), and the Shield Gun (replaces the Impact Hammer). The Lightning Gun is pretty self-explanatory; it fires a bolt of electricity and inflicts moderate damage if shot at the torso or if shot at the head can result in an instant kill. The Tag Rifle is the big boy of UC. With the Tag Rifle you aim at a spot on the map and hold the trigger until the weapon has fully targeted the ground. The Ion Cannon in the sky will position itself over the target and fire a big beam to the ground, creating a massive nuke-like explosion that will obliterate anything within its blast radius. It’s great fun, but it would still have been nice to have the Redeemer there, too. The Assault Rifle is ten times better than the handgun(s); you have an incredible rate of fire with the optional grenade launcher for backup. If all else fails, there is always the trusty standby, the Shield Gun that can be used to shield you (duh!) or if charged up can be used to deflect incoming projectiles like rockets, or simply to kill folks. The “rag-doll” physics is also a new inclusion to the game. Instead of your opponents just being blown to bits, they will be blown away realistically, hitting objects along the way that will create an interesting demonstration of physics at work, unlike the static death animations in most games.

Graphics
The graphics in UC are amazing. Every in and outdoor environment, character, and weapon is beautifully rendered with Epic’s latest Unreal technology—this game really shows what the Xbox is capable of. The levels are huge and simply outstanding, riddled with fine attention to detail. Things like very realistic looking grass and trees in some levels adds immersion to the game. Some environments are so big, you’ll probably die or get killed quite a few times because you don’t know where to go. This happened to me a couple times, but after playing in it once or twice, you’ll feel right at home. The characters and their animations is another highlight of this game. The “rag-doll” physics adds great death animations to the high-poly models. The drop in framerate can be a little distracting, though, and is something that we shouldn’t be seeing on the Xbox.

Sound
The audio in the Unreal franchise has always been great and UC is no exception. The music is a composition of hard rock-esque music and ambience. It does a good job of setting the mood for the given level. The sound effects for the weapons are appropriate and sound great, especially with a good sound system. As in the original, the good ol’ taunts are back along with your basic team orders, some new and old. While the taunts aren’t half as good as talkin’ trash and barkin’ commands online with other people, it adds communication, which is a must in a game of this type.

Control
First-person shooters are generally easier to play with a mouse and keyboard than a controller, but the control scheme in UC is terrific and well thought out. The left analogue stick or d-pad is used for your movement while the right one is used to look around. Switching weapons is a snap that can easily be accomplished by hitting the X and B buttons. A double-jump can be performed by pressing the left analogue stick or the A button. All taunts and orders are done by pressing the Y button and shooting by the left and right triggers. Everything moves at blazing speeds so getting use to the x and y sensitivities can be a little challenging, but practise makes perfect. If you’re unsatisfied with the default controls, UC allows you to change them to suite your playing style.

Gameplay
This is not a thinking man’s kind of game; it’s mindless in-your-face action. Don’t get me wrong here. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s very straightforward and with the inclusion of split-screen multiplayer games, there’s plenty of fun to be had. “Mutators” such as Big Head mode, Instagib, and Low Gravity allow you to customize unique properties of a match. It’s options like these that add extreme variety to the game. If playing against someone on one Xbox or over a LAN is not quite what you want, if you have a high-speed internet connection you can jump into the action with Xbox Live to face the best of the best.

Overall
Unreal Championship is definitely an experience that should not be passed up. There are tons of maps, characters, guns, and game modes to satisfy even the serious first-person shooter fans that prefer an engaging storyline in their game. While UC doesn’t have that, it has about everything else you’d want in a fps. With Xbox Live you’ll be able to download new content including maps, characters, and more. The lack of innovation, however, is the one of the downsides of the game, but Unreal purists shouldn’t mind at all. Everything in the game shines from the graphics to the sound to the gameplay. Unreal Championship is definitely worth every bit of your hard earned money.

Verdict: 9.6/10.0 - Excellent!