The best multiplayer game out there - still. (Unreal Tournament (PC))

Member Name: Lucius86

Product:	Unreal Tournament (PC)
Date:	15/05/09 (55 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Brutal FPS combat, great playing maps, mutators, some of the best music out there, really fun!

Disadvantages: Now graphically dated, not as many players as there were online, but still enough for a few games!

One of my friends sent me a link on YouTube the other week to a few of the music tracks from the original Unreal Tournament - and it just had me gushing over a game I played for 6 years solidly online all over again. If there is one game out there that I have the fondest memory for, this is it.

Unreal Tournament (now known today as UT99) was made by Epic games, who were known back in the olden days for the original Unreal - a landmark graphical game that showed off the first real-time dynamic lighting and large open vistas in an FPS. The multiplayer was severely lacking however, and this is why UT turned up, in direct competition with Quake 3. I am not sure if we will ever again have a battle as bloody as these two huge juggernauts in the gaming industry ever again, but only a fool would say UT99 was not the surprising victor.

UT99 is a fast paced FPS designed purely for multiplayer combat. You could play offline against bots of varying difficulty levels (which are still surprisingly better than most AI in today's games), or pitch your skills online or a LAN. There were a number of game modes, ranging from traditional free-for-all games such as deathmatch (everyone kill everybody else) and last man standing (instead of highest kills win, the aim is not to die!), to team based battles.

It was these team-based games that helped make UT99 the classic it is. Unlike Quake 3, which was based entirely around the ultimate deathmatch game, UT99's team based games became an instant hit. Capture-the-flag was probably the most popular online, where two teams battle it out against each other to capture the opponent's flag whilst protecting their own. There was also assault, where a defending team must defend an objective from the attacking team, with each objective being different depending on what map was being player. In addition there's regular team-deathmatch, plus domination, where players must work together to control certain areas of a map for as long as possible. CTF and Assault were fan favourites, and playing these game modes today make me realise a lot of modern games forget what their primary purpose is - TO HAVE FUN!

I used to play UT99 CTF in a clan with the instagib mutator. Mutators allow you to alter the game mechanics drastically to add more variety and throw in a few laughs. Insta-gib replaced all weapons with a one-shot kill rifle, whilst others included low gravity (all jumps are much more floaty), big heads (the better your doing, the larger your head becomes), or rockets only. These mutators still live on today in the more recent UT games, showing how popular they are.

Mutators are not the only legacy game play element alive in the modern Unreal games - a lot of maps are actually taken from this; that's how good they were! CTF-FacingWorlds, DM-Deck17, DM-Hyperblast to name but a few, but the quality of maps in UT99 meant people were always playing a variety of them online, not just one or two. And considering the game came with over 50, the amount of replayability was staggering.

Unlike recent UT incarnations, this game is more brutal and personal than any of the others put together. UT2003/2004 had you shooting at tiny pixels in the distance, as the world was huge, the characters were small. UT3 improved the scaling issue, but now every character looks like they are wearing cars for armour. But UT99 had it spot on - the action was fast, in your face, and personal. I still have nightmares from the bot Loque killing me every single time. You were not shooting little specks in the distance, or just a suit of armour. It was more gladiatorial, something that is sorely missing from recent Unreal Tournament games.

Graphically this game is now very dated, but at the time it was only bested by Quake 3. The music is still some of the best techno tunes around, and the taunts by other players are almost as legendary as the game itself.

If you want to know why people keep on talking about how good UT99 was, the best way to find out is to buy it and play it. There are still servers online today with plenty of players, and now pretty much every single computer made in the last 8 years can play this game no problem. You owe it to yourself to play a bit of history.

Summary: A hallmark PC FPS game. This game has stood the test of time, an all time classic.