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Get a good hit and you will see the game’s rag doll physics don’t only apply to the soldiers as jeeps explode high into the air and airborne craft spiral helplessly into the ground. And while the addition of the AVRiL may encourage sniping, the vehicles themselves encourage team play - jump in the larger vehicles and you will quickly realise, it takes one person to drive and another to fire.

Step away from these remarkable and dynamic additions to the game play and you will see the rest of the game is equally polished. The graphics have undergone a rigorous overhaul and the audio is snappy as ever with the original UT announcer making a welcome comeback. Musically you may be limited to a lean diet of heavy and nu-metal but these types of games are never going to sit well with acoustics of a more measured nature. Built in voice communications allow you to plug in a headset or microphone to chat with team mates, and text-to-voice is a system that will speak aloud typed messages from other players so you don’t have to keep looking away in the midst of battle.

AVRiL apart, the basic weaponry remains largely the same, although the link gun is now more multifunctional that ever as it now repairs vehicles and your own power nodes while capturing enemy power nodes faster.

As you would expect, the other traditional game play modes are still top notch. Capture the Flag and Bombing Run retain their own unique challenges and Assault contains a number of varied maps including one set between two huge moving transporters. Look closer and you will also see the game carries a tremendous amount of detail. Jump into a vehicle in Onslaught and see your name appear on its number plate, melt a player with your link gun and get an anatomy lesson as his skeleton is revealed before you.

A notable mention must also be given to offline play, because although primarily designed for online carnage, the single player game does not disappoint with impressive bot AI and the ladder structured team events which are carried over from its predecessor.

A further feather in UT2004’s cap is that its system requirements are relatively low, requiring just a 1GHz machine and a GeForce 2 graphics card to get off the ground. I would however recommend 1.5GHz plus based machines for the smoothest game play. If I can pick a fault however, it is the massive 5.5GB of hard drive space required for the install. But saying this, with most hard drives costing less than £1 per GB, this should not be a problem for most users and you do get over 100 maps for your troubles. And to lighten the load Epic apologises for its shortcomings in UT2003 by including a £7.50 voucher in the box redeemable on return of your UT2003 play disk. They also offer two versions of the game, one on six CDs and another on a single DVD with native support for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. You can buy the 6 disc version for as little as £20.99 online, so throw in the voucher and this is one £13.49 bargain.

Verdict

I greeted this game with a great deal of scepticism but it has proven every one of my fears to be unfounded. If developers could guarantee such vast improvements in every annual update, I think I would be wishing my life away.

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