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)

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

Trying to be the next Quake 3, but stops way before......

The Good
Probably one of the best aspects of this game is the many types of gameplay and the many stages for each, although some levels are very poorly made (eg' Lava Giant. (WHO WANTS TO CTF IN THAT CRAPPY LEVEL??)

On the other hand, some levels are great to play in, like the Frigate, which I found to be very fun. Some game types were also very good, like domination.

The Bad
Here we are :
Very slow, hard DMers will hate the slow choppy gameplay
Graphics suck. Not colorful, instead just a few slabs of models put together<
Single player tournaments hard and annoying
Game finding process slow and unproductive, most servers fail to connect

The Bottom Line
Look, UT is decent, but it is not a solid DM game! If it was a single player, okay fine, but this game is just lousy. You want something good, go to Quake 3, Arena & Team Arena. I give Unreal Tournament a slow and poorly deserved (4.5/10)

Windows · by ThE oNe (180) · 2002

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.