EFFORTPOST Secret Level ep 4: Unreal Tournament: Xan review, Concord is not the only delisted game here

Back when the trailer for Secret Level dropped I was intrigued, Love Death Robots but with vidya franchises sounds cool, but when the Unreal Tournament logo showed up I was ing hard. UT is one of my favorite multiplayer franchises and I was surprised to see it show up here, especially that Epic Games desperately wants you to forget what the Unreal Engine's namesake comes from.

I don't watch a lot of shows but this one got me interested ad I gave it a watch. What did I think?

Now on to the review:

The episode is basically an origin story for Xan, the final boss of Unreal Tournament. I did think the backstory was a nice touch considering that the games don't really delve that much into plot. There is a lot of appearances of classic maps which I think is a cool touch. Unfortunately the short did not contain this cool remake of the original intro that Blur did as a teaser:

The weapons featured are the enforcer pulse gun, ripper, rocket launcher, sniper rifle, minigun, redeemer, flak cannon, and impact hammer. The impact hammer and ripper had the most screentime and were portrayed pretty accurately. I did like the bit where the Facing Worlds map devolved into a sniper battle. like it does when actually playing the game. A complaint I have is that the artstyle seems not quite up to par with the original, mostly taking inspiration from UT3. I get that the animators took some creative liberties but I did not like how the sniper rifle looked more like the Halo 4 lightrifle than any of the UT rifles.

However my main complaint would be the fight scenes and choreography. They were well done and look nice to the casual viewer, but as a big player of the game I don't feel like they got the feel of Unreal Tournament's combat right. The game is a fast paced arena shooter, not quite as fast or mobility focused as Quake, but still about running around the map racking up kills. The sort features a lot of scenes with the characters standing still and taking potshots behind cover. the action looks nice and the casual, viewer probably wouldn't care about this sort of thing, but the action does not feel like the game. Also they never featured any iconic equipment items like the shield belt

Of course it wouldn't be a true Unreal Tournament adaptation without the most famous part of the series. the announcer:

They use all of his cool lines and this was a welcome touch, it really takes me back and gets me pumped up.

Overall I liked the episode, but mostly because it was some form of UT content in 2024, not to mention how the series has been treated by Epic recently

Oh and about the controversial Pac-Man episode, it was ok, but this version is a better twist on the formula:

Next week I will review the Megaman episode

General Unreal Tournament '99 discussion:

I was also wondering if any Dramanauts would be up for a game night where we play some matches. !fightclub anyone?

You can get the game here or here , please buy the game legitimately if it ever gets re-released.

Let me know if any of you guys are up for a game night or if we should play 2004 instead.

!g*mers !boomers