Hooray! Glad to hear you're up and running again!
United Offensive is, at least in my opinion, really quite different. It
does offer alternative game modes, rather than simply being a couple of new maps or weapons.
The obvious difference is that there are tanks and jeeps. The new maps are huge in comparison to the old ones (which means sometimes you can suffer from lag), and there are new weapons too such as:
- anti-tank weapons (Panzerfaust, bazooka)
- machineguns mounted on tripods (takes you a few seconds to get down on the ground and set it up, but then you just mow people down!)
- the Germans have a new Gewehr rifle that holds ten bullets and can be fired more readily than the KAR
- the Russians have a Tokarev rifle, similar but inferior to the Gewehr
- the British pistol is now the Webley, which I love!
- satchel charges that can't be thrown as far as nades but do a heck of a lot of damage!
- smoke grenades to hide you as you run
- eventually, if you do really well, you get to call in artillery strikes!
One aspect of UO I wasn't sure of is that you tend to "earn" things. When you first start, you spawn with your chosen gun, pistol and one nade. After you have got 10 kills you then spawn with another nade and a smoke grenade. At 20 kills you also get satchel charges. You're ability to kill therefore goes up exponentially: if you started well and went around killing everyone, you'd start spawning with more weapons that gives you even more killing potential.
There are also little modifications like when viewing through a sniper scope you don't have a black surrounding covering the rest of the screen but a more realistic effect.
There are new game modes. They are:
- Base Assault - each side has three bases, and the object is to use tanks and artillery to blow them apart, then send a soldier on foot down into the basement to plant charges and blow them up. Imagine Search & Destory, but the objective is covered by a concrete shell that has to be blown up by tanks first! I love this game type.
- Domination - three points to be controlled (symbolized by raising your side's flag) and if you control them you get points. Just like the same game mode from Unreal Tournament, if you're familar with that.
- Capture the Flag - don't need to explain that one!
- All the usual CoD ones exist too, so you can play Team Deathmatch or Headquarters with smoke grenades and the new weapons
When I first got UO I have to admit I was a little frustrated by it. As soon as you spawn, everyone rushes to grab the anti-tank weapons and then grab a tank or jeep. If I was too slow, I'd then trek across the map by foot, which takes ages and I usually would run around a corner into an enemy tank that blew me away!
I went back to ordinary CoD, but recently began to get bored of that and tried UO again. I love it now! If people play fairly then it's great fun, although sometimes the matches turn into stalemates.
Depending upon your monetary situation and how much you like CoD, it could be well worth investment.
