Weapons (cont.) Biorifle: finally, the poor goo gun gets off the snide as the most useless weapon in the UT arsenal! The Biorifle does more damage now, and now feels as though it 'fits' in the game. Major improvement here, one we're glad to see. On the negative side, the projectile goo is not as 'glowing' as we'd like to see. This stuff's radioactive, you know...Link Gun: much improved over the UT Pulse Rifle. Primary is more devastating (is it the sound?), and the secondary animation is electrifying. This is a good, overall well-designed weapon that we found useful in virtually all short to mid-range situations. The death effects are fabulous, too, both the green glow and the skeletal remains. Hitting your teammate with a secondary fire allows him, in turn, to fire with increased power. If this second teammate fires at a third teammate, you don't want to be in front of the third teammate's beam. Truly electric!Shock Rifle: another controversial change, the Shock Rifle has been toned down a bit from the 'weapon for all situations' it was in UT. We liked the change and, while thousands of Unrealaholics are going to have to learn how to use other weapons now, the game is much more balanced with this strategic reduction of power. We were split on whether or not the combo was harder to hit, with most of us feeling it was, due to the slightly off-center position of the alt-fire ball. This secondary ball has been slowed, as well, something that has a lot of 'shock whores' unhappy. Our thoughts? Get a life.Flak Cannon: no more flak spamming, as the projectiles bounce only once, but this is still a weapon to be reckoned with. The primary fire yields just the right amount of splash damage now, and the visual effect has been substantially improved. The alt-fire grenade could use a little more distance, but the damage is, again, spot-on.Rocket Launcher: truly, the weapon of choice in the demo. This could be the best rocket launcher in any game we've seen. Primary fire is fixed to, well, fire the rocket when you press the button, something many of us didn't like about the UT RL. Alternate fire no longer lobs grenades, but cycles up to three rockets for your fragging pleasure. Most cool, however, are the swirly rockets, where you cycle two rockets using alt-fire, and press primary fire while releasing them. It takes good timing to get this to work, but a swirly rocket frag is kind of special, and worth it.Lightning Gun: another controversial change from UT, the Lightning Gun replaces the Sniper Rifle, and offers several key changes. First, the lightning trail itself exposes the sniper. It's much easier now to find out who is raining down death from above. Second, the alt-fire zoom is a relatively clear spot circle surrounded by a video effect of horizontal lines, surely designed to offer both a futuristic look as well as make it a little harder to pan from a high distance and immediately pick up on enemy targets. We liked this quite a bit. The third major change is that this gun needs to recharge between shots. We felt the recharge time should be shortened a bit.The Redeemer and the Ion Painter/Cannon are not available for use in the demo, although it is possible to view the effects. See our 'UT 2003 Demo Superweapons' article for more info.