Weapons
In general, the time switching between weapons is faster, which we found to be a big plus. As for those who say the UT 2003 weapons have been 'nerfed' up a bit, let's just run through 'em, shall we?Translocator: almost cool! They almost got it! Now, instead of someone with a high degree of 'translocator-fu' being able to virtually dominate a game, the xloc runs out of steam, and needs to be recharged. The colorful trail it leaves is a nice touch, too, and the remote camera effect absolutely rocks. Still, there's one thing we didn't like. We found ourselves really having to arc it to get any distance on the throw. Looking up to arc = time away from watching where your enemy is = death. We'd like to see a little more velocity at low arcs here.Assault Rifle: primary fire is pathetic, relatively useless, as in previous games in the Unreal series. We would almost rather have had dual Enforcers. The alt-fire grenades help save this weapon, although we'd like to see a bit more range when tossing them initially, rather than having to 'power them up' to get some distance on them. In online play, they ended up being primarily a short-distance weapons, which we found strange for grenades.Shield Gun: nice, people will soon forget the Impact Hammer. The alt-fire is great, and the overall visual effect of the gun is wonderful. The shield effect lasts too long, though (run backward with the shield on in CTF-Citadel on one of the lower bridges, and you're home free), and we'd like to see more damage when you shield jump.Minigun: good damage, both primary and alt, but the delay before shooting seems to be too long. This makes it less effective in many online situations, perhaps by design. We'd also like to more easily see where the bullets are hitting. Still, there's something quite satisfying about a minigun frag that you just can't deny.