Played Unreal Championship for a couple of hours Tonight. (1 Viewer)

[Dave Scarpa]

Hey Guys I got the call tonight late from EB's
so I had a chance to play some Unreal Championship
tonight. It's real late and I'm tired but I'll give
some Initial impressions.

Like the Programmers fessed up to there are som areas
that are incosistant in frame rate, but it is not on
all the Maps and genrally they are pretty smooth, nothing
to affect gameplay a whole lot. The 5.1 is awesome, maybe
mech is a bit better but this is very good.

The Menu system/Lobby is still not all that great but it's
better than Mechassault , at least you can stay in for more
than one game.

Lag well this is definately peer to peer and the way the
manual describes your connection performance it looks like
it always will be. That said connect speed will very with
the amount of players but I played both 4 player and 12 player
matches and they were all very good. Although alot of 16 player
matches had ??? in their speed displays.

Graphics are gorgeous 480P and Widescreen.

Control is pretty tight an mimics what else but Halo of course.
I find myself quite comfortable with it and it is tweakable.
But the default setting is Good.

All in all this is a very fun game, the team chat is selectable
and therefore a step up from Mech. Everybody I chatte with like the
game alot.

Well off to bed if I did'nt have to work in the morning I'd still
be playing.

 

[Chris Flynn]

Even though I have UT2K3 for my PC, I still plan on picking it up.

I'm glad to hear that the framerate problem is infrequent, and doesn't affect play that much. I might have to pick this up on Tuesday with Splinter Cell or Metroid Prime.

 

[Lee L]

Reviews have been inconsistent on this but since you have seen it, are there vehicles in UC?

 

[GlenHaag]

From the IGN review, they stated that there were not any vehicles.

Glen

 

[Jon W H]

This may brighten fellow UC owners.
From Xbox Nation: There are also plans to provide downloadable content, so you'll be able to snatch new weapons, skins, and maps. (Infogrames has repeatedly hinted that it may make vehicles available for download as well...)

 

[Leo_P]

I got UC and the XBL kit today and I'm hooked! I mean, I got it BAAAD!
This is my first foray into online gaming and it is SWEET!
UC is a good game regardless of it's online capability. Nice graphics, tight controls and NO slowdown that I can detect. No complaints with the game.
My only problem is how do you put people on your friends list? Do they have to be playing in the same room with you? Can't you just type someone's gamertag in?
Anyway, my gamertag's: A CLAN OF ONE. My UC handle is: KILLER. Feel free to add me to your friends list. I'm always down for a good fight. BTW, I LOVE capture-the-flag and good old-fashioned Deathmatch.

 

[Jay Mitchosky]

...how do you put people on your friends list? Do they have to be playing in the same room with you? Can't you just type someone's gamertag in?

There are two ways, but I think the easiest is to enter in the desired gamertag(s) from the Xbox dashboard. Go to the Xbox Live option then Account Management. Choose your account and then among the selections is Friends. There you can enter the specific tag(s) to add to your list, which will be displayed in XBL enabled games.

Alternatively you can sort through players listed in the XBL Lobbies of a given Live game and assign Friends. My guess is they need to be in the same room. So entering in the dashboard is the best.

 

[Leo_P]

Thanks a LOT Jay.
BTW I neglected to address UC's sound. In a word: AWESOME! For us HT buffs, it sounds real nice with an enveloping soundfield and impressive directionality! (What does that even mean?)

 

[Michael St. Clair]

Take this with a small grain of salt, but it has been reported at TXB that when you host, Full-Screen Anti-Aliasing is disabled.

The implication being that UC is client/server, with the hosting console being the server, and that the additional load was detrimental to the host's framerate unless AA was turned off. One person felt that the framerate was better when hosting, but of course he didn't say how many clients had joined his game

Not passing any kind of judgement on anything, just passing info along to anybody who may be interested.

 

[Jon W H]

How do you turn on/off Full-Screen Anti-Aliasing? I haven't been able to find it in the options when letting people use my LAN connection as a dedicated server. Currently, my "Dedicated Server" is getting a rating of 90, in the top 5.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

Jon,
If my understanding is correct, it would only turn off FSAA for you, not for the others. And when running 'dedicated', you actually aren't playing, right?

 

[JustinT]

Picked this game up yesterday and played it for a few hours.

My only complaint is that the framerate suffers considerably when 4 players are on the same screen in multiplayer (even without bots). This dissapointed me a bit, but with only 2 players per screen it is fine.

I haven't had a chance to play the 1 player version yet, but we played all the multiplayer modes, which were quite fun.

Anybody played it online yet? Does the framerate suffer when there are lots of people playing?

 

[Sean Moon]

Loving this so far. Ran into some HTFers on Live, but their games were full.

Good game, the speed problems and frame rate are kinda annoying, but it is workable.

I am disappointed that Facing Worlds was nowhere to be found on this game. There is actually a very low number of maps available in comparison to the PC UT and UT2K3.

 

[Jon W H]

Jon,
If my understanding is correct, it would only turn off FSAA for you, not for the others. And when running 'dedicated', you actually aren't playing, right?

Michael, apologies for not returning sooner. Busy with studies.
Yes, that is correct, I just get a nice text play-by-play when running a "dedicated" server. (Ok, truthfully, it's boring to watch after a couple of minutes - which is why I do it only when I am occupied with something else.)
I found that out, too, about FSAA. But if the "dedicated" server doesn't turn off FSAA, then the players don't benefit much from turning off FSAA on their XBoxes either, if I understand that correctly. Maybe that isn't available (yet.)

 

[Chris Beveridge]

This is one of the very few games that makes me feel old. While I can get along just fine in halo, I do nothing but die continually here without scoring one kill. I just can't even seem to get the view to stay steady without ending up staring at the floor or ceiling after moving a bit.

It's definitely back to the PC version of this one for me.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

I found that out, too, about FSAA. But if the "dedicated" server doesn't turn off FSAA, then the players don't benefit much from turning off FSAA on their XBoxes either, if I understand that correctly. Maybe that isn't available (yet.)

Yeah, only the host would benefit when hosting a non-dedicated game; and that benefit would only be relative to how much the hosting bogs down their client as well (which would likely depend on the number of other players).

I'd say there is a fair chance that there may be a secret cheat code to turn off FSAA and boost framerate all of the time. They should have made it a standard menu option.

 

[Jon W H]

Chris, did you try adjusting your input sensitivity?

 

[Mike Pattee]

How are you guys liking UC? I'm thinking of taking mech assault back and this is one of the titles i'm considering.

 

[Jon W H]

, Mike. Lots of fun!

 

[Masood Ali]

Mike, having played both UC and MechAssault, I've found myself enjoying the latter game a little more.

My gripes with UT have to do with the feel of the game more than technical aspects of it. I've gotten so used to the slower pace of Halo's deathmatch mode that I've turned myself off of Quake3Arena style run-and-gun fragfests. UC (and UT2K3) are unique from Quake3Arena, but less so than the original UT. I never really enjoyed the super-quick pace because I never felt in total control of all my shots (this was compounded by the fact that dual-analogs are less accurate faster paced shooters, and thus more suited for games like Halo).

For MechAssault, the dual-analogs feel much more at home; shooting feels more solid, and the pace is more fun (IMO). But again, this is the opinion of someone who likes slower paced shooters.