Assault rifle

The assault rifle is your starting sidearm in three Unreal games: Unreal Tournament 2003, Unreal Championship, and Unreal Tournament 2004.

Primary Fire
The primary fire of the assault rifle is a fast, but highly inaccurate, machine gun-style fire. Each bullet does 7 points of damage per hit.

Secondary Fire
The alternate fire launches a grenade at your foes, much like Unreal Tournament's rocket launcher, but less bouncy. Hitting a foe with one of these directly does roughly 68 points of damage. However, you only get four or less (depending on server settings; competitive servers use 1-2 grenades) of them, unless you pick up more ammo or another assault rifle (which gives you both bullets and grenades).

It should be noted that the grenades can be chucked a long way. Grenade trajectory is based on your player model's current speed, so it is possible to side-dodge forward and fire a grenade all the way across a map like DM-Antalus. However, firing a grenade while dodging backwards retards the trajectory, so be sure to adjust your aim accordingly.

Akimbo
Dual assault rifles are still wildly inaccurate, but the sheer rate of fire means more of it will hit the enemy. Flinging grenades at them is a good way to get them to back off, too.

It's also actually incredibly useful for destroying moderately armored vehicles in a pinch - and if you've got about a dozen grenades, you can smoke a Goliath with them.

Strategy
While the assault rifle is too weak to be relied upon, it can be useful. The grenades can be very powerful in the right hands, and if not in the right hands, they can still be spammed around the map just after spawning for lucky kills. In team games, especially TDM, assault rifles should be given to teammates who have just spawned but cannot get to a better weapon. While not powerful, dual assault rifles can be helpful until they can find a more suitable weapon.