Unreal Tournament

aka: Tournament, UT, UT99
Moby ID: 587
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

Unreal Tournament is completely different from Unreal: it is now mainly based on multiplayer, like Quake 3.

At the beginning, you have to play classic deathmatch rounds. After you have successfully won some of them, a new game mode becomes available, domination. In domination there are about three or four different areas scattered around the map to be controlled by your team. For a certain amount of seconds you control one area, a point is added to your score. The more areas you control, the faster your team's score rises. When you or the other team reaches a certain score, the game is over. The third mode is called capture the flag, every team has a flag to defend and tries to capture the other team's flag to score a point.

The fourth game mode is called assault. This mode requires completion of real missions, such as attacking an enemy base and destroying a specific object in it. Again, there are two teams, the defenders and the attackers. You have to complete the mission in a certain time, for example five or ten minutes. If you were successful, your team has to defend this time and the other team attacks. But the attacking team now only has as much time as you needed to attack.

All these modes are either playable in single or multiplayer mode. If playing alone, you have a large menu with orders you can give your bots. Also, all weapons were redesigned, and some new ones are added.

Spellings

  • アンリアル トーナメント - Japanese spelling
  • 浴血戰場 - Traditional Chinese spelling
  • 虚幻竞技场 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

89 People (88 developers, 1 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 89% (based on 76 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 325 ratings with 11 reviews)

The first fully-balanced 1st-person shooter.

The Good
Unreal Tournament has to be the pinnacle of "1st-person shooter" games. There's just too many reasons why, so I'll cover some of the reasons I think other reviewers have touched on only briefly:

  • The editor. UnrealEd is not only fully-functional and chock full of features, but the rendering system (not based on BSP tree compiling) makes it really easy to quickly "compile" and test your map. Half-Life, by comparison, uses BSP trees (which compile in about 3 minutes) and light maps (which compile in about 3 hours).
  • 45+ maps right out of the box. 'nuff said.
  • Music! The music is based on 'scene "tracking" files/editors (similar to Amiga music modules) and ranges from okay to great. Using this custom music format also allows for close to 2+ hours of interactive music per game with plenty of space left on the CD. And since the CD isn't required to play any more (see below), you get music all the time if you want it.
  • Patch level 432. With 432 and above, you don't need the CD in the drive to play any more.
  • Feigning death. You can lie down and play dead if you want to. ;-)
  • Works on low-speed machines. In addition to the many hardware tweaks you can make (type "preferences" at the system console to access that menu), Unreal Tournament also has a high-quality 32-bit software renderer as well -- and by "32-bit" I mean it renders 32-bit color (24-bit color with an 8-bit alpha channel). Many older, simple video cards can support 320x240x32-bit color with no hassle. The end result is that not only does the software rendering look decent, but you can play UT on more platforms than you can other games *cough*Quake3*cough* because UT will fall back to software rendering if your 3D hardware isn't supported properly, like in Linux or Windows NT. The end result of all this is that even if you have a Pentium 166, you can still tweak the game enough so that it runs at 20 fps on your box. And if you think 320x240 gameplay sucks, try doing it on a 32-person LAN in one of the teamplay modes. Doesn't suck now, does it? :)
  • Attitude. Some of the auto-taunts are priceless ("Sit down!", "Try turning the safety off!", "I'm sorry, did I blow your head off?", etc.)
  • Bots! If you want to hone your m@d k1ll1nG sk1llz at home before going online and getting the crap kicked out of you, you can play practice games of any type with any number of 'bots of varying skill levels. You can even give the 'bots personality, like fixing the skill level of each 'bot individually, changing their appearance, even their preferred weapon. You can even have the 'bots auto-adjust their skill level based on your performance.

But most of all, the gameplay is balanced. What does this mean? It means that each weapon has been tweaked to be just as powerful and effective at killing as every other weapon. A player can specialize in any certain weapon and, if he or she is good enough at it, can be just as lethal as any other player. Massively-powerful weapons (like the Redeemer, a miniature nuclear warhead) are offset by their refire rate (the Redeemer is an incredibly slow missle, for example).

Balanced gameplay is good. You want balanced gameplay, trust me.

The Bad
The expandability and customization features are lacking and undocumented. This doesn't mean you can't expand UT -- just the opposite, you can. But it's not made very easy for the end-user, and documentation on doing it is very hard to come by (the only docs I could find on the subject were written by other UT fans, which makes me wonder where they got the info). In fact, I didn't even know it was possible to upload your own sounds until I came across an Internet deathmatch server that had custom sounds.

With the exception of the Sniper Rifle, the weapons are not "traditional" weapons. (Last I checked, guns that 1. spew rotary saw blades, 2. emit a continuous stream of energy, 3. pummel human flesh into pulp, and 4. spew toxic green goop are not considered "normal".) This is offputting to those who are used to "normal" weapons, like those found in Half-Life/Team Fortress/Counter-Strike.

The "balanced gameplay" design falls short in one area: The original gun you start out with. It's pretty wimpy compared to the rest of the weapons. But even this is remedied if you manage to pick up another one, because then you can wield one in each hand for some John Woo-esque action.

The Bottom Line
There simply isn't a reason not to like this game! It's balanced, it's expandable, it comes with a great world editor, has tons of dedicated fans/fan sites/mods, and it has solid networking code. What's not to like? The original version at the time of this writing was $29.95 US, with the "gold" edition right around the corner with even more extras, so pick this game up! What are you waiting for, Daikatana 2?

Windows · by Trixter (8952) · 2000

Unreal Addiction

The Good
The original Unreal Tournament was one of the most out-right addictive games I've ever played. Every time I play, I find myself itching to go just one more map. Even back when I first started playing it, when I only played on a cruddy dial-up connection, I loved the game. Now I play UT2004 when I need an Unreal fix, but the original started it all.

UT came out with some of the sweetest graphics yet seen. From the detailed models and textures to fantastic lighting and translucency, it was a treat for the eyes. Even today, when I look at the game the graphics aren't bad. All that in a game that was tightly coded enough to run well on my Pentium 200.

One of my favorite parts of UT is the weapons. Epic managed to come up with an arsenal that was both balanced and interesting. There are more standard weapons, such as the rocket launcher and the mini-gun, or innovative pieces like the flack cannon and the pulse rifle (some of these weapons actually had their debut in the first Unreal). Every weapon has a secondary fire mode that adds a great deal of depth to gameplay. The shock-rifle, for instance, fires a low-damage beam as primary and a medium-damage ball of energy as secondary. To make things more interesting still, if you fire off an energy ball and then hit it with a faster moving beam shot, it will cause a powerful energy explosion that tears many enemies to bitsies. Even the rocket launcher is innovative in that rather than just firing off shots, you can hold up to six rockets before firing. In secondary mode rockets can be launched as grenades, again allowing you to fire of six of these little bouncing messengers of death. You can kill with pretty much any weapon in the game. Even the starting pistol can be effective in the hands of an experienced player.

Speaking of blowing stuff up, this game is also very visceral. The weapon effects, sounds, and character death animations all create a very gritty and satisfactory experience. There's nothing quite like filling an opponent with mini-gun rounds or blowing them away with a flack cannon shot at point blank range.

The game plays fast and hard, with plenty of over-the-top action going on at any given time if you get a decent number of players. It's exactly the kind of thing you want in a game like this.

Gameplay modes in UT reach beyond the usual deathmatch and CTF, adding in Domination (teams fight over crucial control points) and Assault (one team assaults a series of objectives while the other defends). While Domination is fun, the latter is the truly innovative addition. A good game of Assault with a group of people playing reasonably like a team can be a great experience. Of course, it can be hard to find people who play anything like a team online. But that's not the game's fault.

Then we have mutators. Playing with the various available mutators can give the game a whole new life. From low-grav mode to fat-boy (where-in a player gets more and more obese the more he kills), there's a lot of variety to be had. For a crazy time, try fat-boy instagib.

AI bots are challenging opponents to practice against before you play online. They sometimes play almost like human (sometimes better on higher levels). As with any AI, they have their moments of stupidity. But it's better than most.

No wonder it's so addictive.

The Bad
Well, my only gripe is this: There is really no great first-person experience here. There is no quest, no character progression (in the true sense), no cool scripted events, and there is only a base excuse for plot-line.

The Bottom Line
Online gameplay at its best. Buy this one and soak in all the fragaliciousness.

Windows · by Steelysama (82) · 2000

Just comparing...

The Good
Good gameplay and variety.

The Bad
I was never able to play it online with a 56k modem.

The Bottom Line
UT, if you think about Q3 comparing is graphically inferior. It do has awesome graphics, but can't compete with Q3. It's slower, like many Q3 lovers complain, exclusively because Q3 runs on Open GL. UT in Direct 3d. If you look around the web, you'll find good Open GL drivers for UT and it'll be as fast as Q3.

The stages are way better designed and varied. Q3's are good, but lack theme variety. UT also has a lot more of game types and if you say: What about mods? Comm'on! We're reviewing a game, not it's community!

Weapons? UT's got a lot more, and even if you say only a few are useful, Q3 runs around only 3! Rocket launcher, Railgun, BFG! Sometimes the Shotgun. And UT's are, at least, more creative...

So... you'll probably have lot's of fun with both games, but with UT It'll probably last longer.

Windows · by Geraldo Falci (12) · 2004

[ View all 11 player reviews ]

Trivia

German index

Unreal Tournament is on the Index of the BPjS in Germany. This occurred on 28.02.2002, over 2 years past release. More information about the topic can be found in the game group.

References

If you manage to collect a chainsaw (can only be found in custom made maps or via cheat code), you get instead of the expected "You got the Chainsaw". message actually the following message: "Its been five years since I've seen one of these." The sentence clearly refers to DOOM II, which was indeed released just a bit over 5 years earlier then Unreal Tournament was.

Version differences

The Dreamcast version does not have assault mode as all the maps save one were too large to fit in Dreamcast's memory. It is replaced in single-player by a new challenge mode, which is a series of one-on-one battles.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • March 2000 (Issue #188) – Action Game of the Year
    • March 2000 (Issue #188) – Best Level Design of the Year
    • October 2004 (Issue #243) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame
  • GameSpy
    • 1999 – Game of the Year
    • 1999 - Special Achievement in Artificial Intelligence
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 03/2000 - Best Multiplayer Game in 1999
  • PC Player (Germany)
    • Issue 01/2000 - Best First Person Shooter in 1999

Information also contributed by Ace of Sevens, Monkeyhead and Xoleras

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by robotriot.

Macintosh added by Kabushi. Dreamcast, PlayStation 2 added by Adam Baratz.

Additional contributors: Brian Hirt, Trixter, Eric Barbara, Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, Wizo, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, Plok, Rik Hideto.

Game added December 17, 1999. Last modified March 24, 2024.