Unreal Tournament 2004 is now, officially, one of the most downloaded game demos of all time, with more than 1.5 million downloads in the first week of availability. The demo first hit the Internet on Wednesday, February 11, and was distributed on a worldwide scale.
Unlike many recent demos, UT 2004 has had the priviledge of an abundance of mirrors, a choice of which can be found in the MegaGames Unreal Tournament 2004 Page. The full version of Unreal Tournament 2004 is expected to be available at retail in March; pre-orders are now available at all major game sales outlets.
According to statistics tracked by Web sites offering the demo, more than 1.5 million users accessed the demo in the last week alone. Graphics card maker, NVIDIA, which hosts the demo on its own nZone gaming portal, reports that more than 140,000 gamers have downloaded the demo from their server. Megagames have also listed the game as their top download last week.
UT 2004 is developed by Epic Games in conjunction with Digital Extremes. The official demo includes five playable game modes, and offers fans their first taste of the two new gameplay styles: the introduction of the hyper-charged Onslaught mode and the return of the fan-favorite Assault mode, which last appeared in the original Unreal Tournament. The demo also features established game types like Deathmatch, Capture the Flag and Bombing Run.
Some of the new features showcased in the demo include:
Onslaught Mode: Onslaught is an epic-in-scope team-based challenge that pits two teams in bitter warfare across massive terrain maps in a frag-filled battle to destroy, capture and hold key power nodes. Vehicles play a major role as war-hardened flying and driving machines transport combatants to the "front" and serve as mobile platforms to launch devastating attacks on the enemy.
Assault Mode: In the completely redesigned Assault mode, gamers are challenged to complete a variety of mission objectives to attack or defend bases in a bigger and badder version of the "Unreal Tournament" classic; many Assault maps require the use of vehicles as a critical gameplay element.
Vehicles: UT 2004 features a variety of land-, space- and air-based vehicles, including buggies, tanks, hovercraft, aircraft and more.
Voice Technology: Integrated voice communications, including voice-over-IP technology to allow real-time chat during gameplay; voice recognition, allowing players to issue orders to computer controlled bots; and, text-to-voice conversion of typed chat.
Until the game launches in March you can read the detailed MegaGames preview.
