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 best game of 1999!

The Good
Unreal Tournament offers endless playability with 6 different game modes, or variations of each other. If you just want to blow people up, you can go for a Tournament Deathmatch, a Team Deathmatch, or a Last Man Standing, in which you have a set amount of lives. Capture the Flag is another awesome mode, no matter how unoriginal, and is probably my personal favorite. In Domination, you need to take and keep control points which are spread around the map to gain points, and in Assault, the first team must try to complete their objectives while the other team tries to stop them. Each game mode has plenty of excellent maps to go with them, and more maps have been put up for free download. One of the best things about Unreal Tournament is its A.I., which acts and plays just like human beings (although maybe not quite as smart). People who have slow internet connections don't have to tolerate laggy game play to have a good fight. And of course the game uses the beautiful Unreal Engine, and has a great soundtrack as well.

The Bad
The Unreal Engine was unfortunately made for Glide users. Running the game under Direct3D or OpenGL will often give you low frame rates.

The Bottom Line
An incredibly fun, endlessly playable first-person shooter.

Windows · by Brian Jordan (19) · 2001

Brings everything great about multiplayer deathmatch into a one player game.

The Good
Ever since the dawn of time, well since Doom was released anyway I have loved a good game of Deathmatch. Unfortunately the price of the internet, lag time and the fact that you can never find anyone of the same standard to play with this was no possible for long periods every day. This is where Unreal Tournament steps in with the greatest one player deathmatch you are likely to get. yes even better than Quake 3. While the one player is good it reallt shines in multiplayer and now that internet is almost free unlike in the days of Doom multiplay is getting more and more accesible. The best weapon in the game by far is the Redeemer which is a mini remote controlled missile launcher. Another new thing is the assault mission which see you trying to take over a boat, castle or train. These mission are tremendous fun and unlike capture the flag you really have to work together. It also has the best sniper rifle ever. By Unreal Tournament now!

The Bad
Takes ages to load even with a decent PC

The Bottom Line
Enter the tournament of a life time. Enter Unreal Tournament.

Windows · by Matthew Bailey (1257) · 2000

Compared to Quake 3, this game just doesn't cut it.

The Good
While I find UT an extremely annoying game, it does have some things going for it. I'll try to sum them up.

  • Good-looking (albeit horribly slow) game engine. Don't get me wrong, the graphics are really quite good, but compared to Quake 3 the game engine is simply outdated and slow, and the only thing that truly shines is the flare effect, which is every bit as good as it was in Unreal.
  • Good assortment of weapons (my personal favorites being the ASMD and flake gun).
  • Overall good level design (although nothing matches DM17 in Q3).
  • Outright terrific music! Thumbs up to Alex and Michiel (along with the legendary Necros and Skaven). Amazing work indeed!



The Bad
I'm sorry, Unreal Tournament just isn't better than Quake 3. Not even remotely better. Almost everything said about Unreal Tournament is a complete lie. Want examples?

  • Everyone will admit that the Quake 3 engine is better, but what they will not tell you is that it is WAY better. It looks prettier, it is more responsive and it is a hell of a lot faster. Unreal Tournament crawls. On my machine (P2-350, 128mb memory, Riva TNT 1) I can run Quake 3 in 800x600 16 bits with texture and geometric detail levels set at maximum and still get 30ish frames per second. Unreal Tournament in 640x480, 16 bit and lowest texture detail will grind to a 4 fps crawl in even the most small action sequence. It is SLOW. A big battle (e.g. deathmatch in the Liandri map with 6 or 7 opponents) will run so slow you wouldn't be able to aim before you died. That sucks.
  • One of UT's most hailed features, the multitude of battle types, is complete hype. While I will admit that Domination is cool, CTF and deathmatch are just as good if not better in Quake 3, and Assault is outright CRAP. It's just no fun, especially with the computer. Furthermore, every kind of game can and has been MODed into Q3. There is even a project in place that aims to convert UT to run on the Quake 3 engine. The results look promising, and runs MUCH faster on Q3 than on the Unreal engine. So what does that say?
  • Speaking of AI, another one of the completely overhyped features in UT is its "much more advanced computer AI compared to Quake 3". Bullshit. Unreal Tournament's AI sucks every bit as much compared to Q3. Where a level increase in Q3 results in better aim and quicker reflexes, a corresponding level increase in UT would result in completely erratic behaviour by your computer opponents, which will run like hell in humanly impossible ways, dodge your bullets and release hell at you a lot faster than a human opponent can possibly click the mouse. Along those lines, the friendly AI (that is, the computer players that are on your team) get worse and worse with every level increase, which in most cases means that you will run desperately with the other team's flag, get shot at repeatedly and wonder just where the hell are your team members and why aren't they helping you. So how exactly is UT's AI code better than Q3's?!
  • UT's network code is far inferiour to Q3's. Even with an extremely low ping (in Israeli terms) of about 80ms, I still can't aim properly because there is a ridiculously long delay between me pushing the button and the shot actually being fired. With Quake 3 running on a server right next to the one I played UT on (both located in an Israeli ISP) I get the same ping and gameplay is a LOT smoother. And yes, I still use goddamn 64k ISDN dialup. Shoot me. You can't get ADSL/cable/sat. in Israel.
  • As for weapons, I think one of the chief complaints regarding Q3 was that its weapon assortment isn't as good as in UT. Huh? Where did that come from? In UT you have four chief weapons (out of ten!) you can actually DO something with (ASMD, flake cannon, rocket launcher and the Redeemer). How is that better than Quake 3, where you have Railgun, shotgun, rocket launcher, plasma cannon etc. that you can use? And in UT you even have the utterly useless impact hammer whereas in Q3 you automatically get the machine gun, with which you can still kill.

In short, Unreal Tournament is simply inferiour.

The Bottom Line
With marginally better single player action, the internet multiplayer-oriented Unreal Tournament falls completely short of Quake 3. Unreal Tournament's chief rivals looks better, plays better and is much faster. In short, Quake 3 is the better game, hands down.

Windows · by Tomer Gabel (4539) · 2000

[ 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.