Rocket Arena:UT is a mod for
Unreal Tournament which seems to be modeled after the original
Rocket Arena, for
Quake games, although I never played
RA for Quake.
Included with RA:UT are some features which make it better than its predecessor; The first of these would have to be
Unreal. Since Unreal Tournament is a game built on the
Unreal Engine, it looks prettier, and plays better on my
box than Quake games.
Also in RA:UT's favor is the bot support.
I could be wrong on this, but
UT tends to have bots
vastly superior to Quake bots. Why?
Quake bots are the same in every game and skill level. The only
difference is that their
aim improves as you up their ability.
However, the bot support for RA:UT still is a
fantastic disappointment, because Unreal/UT bots are driven not by need for
silicon love or
cyber sex, but instead for want of powerups. Since RA:UT features no
pickups of any kind, the bots'
true level of incompetence is immediately made clear. There is a
substitute for pickups that only the bots can detect because they are
invisible, but they are not very effective. However,
botmatches can still be
enjoyable, even though a fair measure easier than
playing online with human opponents.
Is RA:Quake better than RA:UT? Probably. But I never bought any of the Quake games, so
I guess I'll never know.