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As action-filled at Unreal Tournament is right out of the box, it's hard to believe how much more Excessive Overkill for UT adds to the game. Excessive is a collection of mutators that seriously enhances gameplay, up to and, in some cases, past the point at which your computer can even deal with the game. As the name would imply, it's simply excessive!
In Excessive, you start out with all weapons, all ammo and 300 health. Trust me, you'll need it! You can play Excessive with standard maps, where you'll notice that all weapon and ammo pickups, health packs (except the Keg 'o Health) and health vials are appropriately disabled. Self-damage is turned off, as are head shots. You'll automagically get a Damage Amp every 5 minutes, along with some witty comments across your screen.
The weapons themselves (as well as the translocator) have been seriously augmented. Here's a rundown of what you will have at your immediate disposal:
- Impact Hammer:
Primary: hold down for 5 seconds, and you suicide with a redeemer explosion!
Secondary: same as before, but a hit always results with an instant kill.
- Double Enforcers (no single enforcer):
Primary & Secondary: rate of fire and damage greatly increased.
- GES BioRifle:
Primary: rate of fire and damage increased.
Secondary: charges much faster, and will spew out a LOT of globs. Meaning very many.
- Shock Rifle:
Primary & Secondary: rate of fire and damage increased.
Special Move: explosions are bigger and do more damage, and will trigger other Shock Rifle plasma projectiles in the area. In other words, they will chain react.
- Pulse Gun:
Primary: rate of fire and damage increased, and now fires 3 plasma spheres.
Secondary: damage increased, and tip now causes explosions where it strikes for even more damage.
- Ripper:
Primary: rate of fire and damage increased, and now fires 3 razors. Also, razors no longer stop when they hit a target, but will keep on flying until they max out their time or wall hits.
Secondary: rate of fire and damage increased, and kickback increased a LOT.
- Minigun:
Primary & Secondary: rate of fire and damage increased, and now fires exploding
bullets for even more damage.
- Flak Cannon:
Primary: rate of fire and damage increased.
Secondary: rate of fire increased, and now spawns flak chunks in random directions, which explode on impact.
- Rocket Launcher:
Primary: rate of fire and damage increased, and rockets travel faster.
Secondary: rate of fire and damage increased, and grenades explode quicker.
- Sniper Rifle:
Primary: rate of fire increased, and fires exploding bullets for even more damage.
Secondary: same (zoom).
The translocator is also souped-up, allowing you to teleport huge distances with one throw. This single feature really speeds up gameplay, and makes CTF matches quite interesting, as the team trying to get their flag back have a few extra seconds with which to respond to the issue. The Redeemer remains unchanged (how powerful do you want it, anyway?) Ammo will regenerate every .6 seconds (the amount varies by weapon).
Armor, thigh pads and shield belts are available and retain their original properties in Excessive. Your health will regenerate after damage at the rate of 5 points every .6 seconds. This also changes the nature of the game, as if you can sneak away for a bit after incurring severe damage, you'll be back to full-strength in no time.
Excessive comes packaged as separate mutators, although you'll probably want to play the full Excessive gametypes, which load up all the weapon powerups. There's even an Excessive server browser built in, which uses Beppo's browser code, so you'll be able to quickly find Excessive servers. If you have GameSpy Arcade, you can pick up the Excessive UT Custom Service for Arcade at the Excessive web site. With the service installed, you have one-button access to all the Excessive UT servers out there via Arcade.
Gameplay is simply intense. Some players have complained that it 'takes all the skill out of the game', having all that firepower. Actually, since running the mod for a number of FragPU events, I can tell you from personal experience that there is quite a bit of skill involved in Excessive, for the very same reason. In Excessive CTF, flag assaults are nothing more than suicide runs, if you don't have your strategy down and some good teamwork. Defending the flag is also difficult, if you're playing against a team with some skills. All of the Excessive gametypes require exceedingly fast reflexes, as the increased damage and firing rates will reduce you to pieces in no time if you're not on top of your game.
After playing Excessive for awhile, go back to regular UT. What you'll find, inevitably, is that you're better at it. Your reactions are quicker. You may even find it a bit boring and slow, and want to move up from 'Hardcore' to 'Turbo', maybe even increasing the game speed slider a bit. I have to admit, Excessive has spoiled me, and now regular UT and even other mods have a difficult time affecting me. It's just that intense and demanding.
There are a couple of issues with Excessive. First, it requires more internet bandwidth than regular UT, as there's quite a bit more going on that needs to be transmitted to each player. You can count on a good 50% bandwith loss as compared to regular UT, and you'll notice on busy servers that there's some packet loss to be contended with. Also, the Shock Rifle effect, as gorgeous and powerful as it is (perhaps too powerful), can bring even the fastest computer to its knees, dropping your frame rate to the single digits.
Not all maps play well with Excessive. If they're not zoned carefully, you can end up with situations where you're supposed to die, but don't. CTF-deCyberBridge is one example, where you can fall into either of the bottomless pits, but survive indefinately. This, due to self-damage being turned off.
High-poly, high-detail maps will also cause problems, as Excessive will test your frame rates in and of itself. Beautiful maps like CTF-Warlords don't fare well with Excessive, as the rendering demands will test even the hottest computers and video cards.
In the final analysis, Excessive is a fun, demanding and outrageous mod that will certainly leave an impression on you. I hope that Mr. Pants and Cicero find a way to continue development of this nutsy mod, dealing with the issues above and some of the minor bugs that remain (in CTF, if you want to order someone to get their flag, you have to select 'Attack'). You're almost guaranteed to have fun with Excessive, which intensifies UT gameplay in just about every way imaginable.
Mr. Pants' Excessive Overkill Website
Excessive Overkill Forums
Download Excessive UT
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