UT2004 demo tonight
As promised. (Now updated with file locations.)
Atari sends word that the promised demo of Unreal Tournament 2004 is due out this evening. Depending on when you read this, you may already be able to get hold of the demo from www.unrealtournament.com or any of your usual haunts.
According to Atari, the full demo includes five playable game modes - Deathmatch, Capture The Flag, Bombing Run, Assault and Onslaught. Of the five, only Assault and Onslaught are new to UT2004 - Assault being the attack/defend the base style gametype reinstated here having been shed between the original UT and UT2003, and Onslaught being a capture-and-hold derivative set on epic levels where vehicles play a key part.
This pretty much ties in with what Epic Games' Mark Rein told fans who attended an NVIDIA-sponsored chat session at the end of January. At the time, Epic also revealed that the demo would include one 'team' of characters, Thunder Crash, but no mutators (pint-sized tweaks to the ruleset that can be applied in groups to change the feel of any gametype).
Unreal Tournament 2004 should be released in March (19th according to various sources), but don't be too gutted if it slips some. It is, after all, a first-person shooter.
Update - Sure enough, the demo has been released. You can get it from the official site, 3D Gamers, FileFront, WorthPlaying and other download sites, most of which are also hosting the server files too.
