Quote: On my computer, to reach comparable framerates of UT 2004, I have to reduce the setting so much, that it looks plain ugly. In this sense the graphics are worse than in 2004 for me.
Well that's a strange argumentation. Claiming that a system that runs a nearly 4 year old game at the same fps level as a brandnew game doesn't make much sense. You don't need 100fps for a fluid game...
If your system doesn't give you such high fps in UT2004 it's a different situation but especially then you shouldn't expect too much from such a recent game. Many many things nowadays are done via shaders and if your computer isn't very powerful on this area it might look even worse than "older" titles. But you shouldn't blame UT for that - it's a common problem (ever compared Crysis on Low and Far Cry on High?)...
I can't really comment about that Mech thingy anymore because it was quite a while ago when I played the demo. I just remember having a bot getting into the mech which then was relatively easy killed (of course it's a big advantage but that's the reward of getting in first)...
The menu really is a bit too "complicated" but I've seen worse things and you don't really spend much time in there...
