Unreal Tournament
In the early 2000's, as high-speed internet and online gaming became more and more available there were a number of games that choice picks for me and my friends. Starcraft, Diablo II, CounterStrike, (I was kind of alone on that one.) and among a few others, Unreal Tournament. UT was essentially the one big competitor to Quake III, which was more or less my choice at the time, but I was outweighed by my local friends who much preferred Unreal. Which was neither better or worse, simply different. Nevertheless, Unreal Tournament was a rich first person shooter with a very strong online multiplayer capability. In fact, the entire game exists strictly for arena based multiplayer as is the case with Quake III as well. And although it does contain a 'single player' mode, the only real difference is that you are now competing against bots (A.I. driven players) instead of other online players.
Unreal Tournament really was a game that we put some serious miles on. The core gameplay was solid and not too over complicated. There was no leveling system and the weapons were your typical early-FPS lot. You had a (way overpowered) pistol, sniper rifle, flak-canon, rocket launcher and among a few others, a teleportation tool. This tool allowed you to fire a disc at a desired location, then zap over there with the secondary fire mode. The unintended benefit to this tool was that you could actually use it as a weapon. Like 'telefragging' in Doom, no two players can exist in the same place at the same time. So if you fired the disc in front of where a player was running, you could then teleport into them causing an instant kill. It worked very predictably and was a ton of fun. Makes me wonder if perhaps the developers did design it with that in mind.
I'm guessing part of why we played this for so long was that it was a balanced enough game that one person wasn't always the same chart topper for kills. If I remember correctly, we all had our moments of glory and so noone really got bored of being murdered game after game. The added game modes helped keep things from becoming dry as well. Instead of simply having free-for-all deathmatches, Unreal Tournament also featured a capture-the-flag mode as well as 'assault', 'domination', 'team deathmatch' and a 'last man standing' mode. Assault and Capture the Flag were particularly popular, though darting across the Facing Worlds map through the wide-open midsection with your flag was a daunting task that rarely lasted.
Unreal Tournament really was just the right game at the right time for us. Online multiplayer was just heating up, Massive Online games were hardly common and console online games hadn't hit the market yet. So when we were home, late night at our PC's and we wanted to 'quench our virtual bloodthirst' we hopped into UT's lobby and racked up the 'M-M-M-M-MONSTER KILLS!'. (Game quote only acceptably funny if you've played Unreal Tournament.)
In the early 2000's, as high-speed internet and online gaming became more and more available there were a number of games that choice picks for me and my friends. Starcraft, Diablo II, CounterStrike, (I was kind of alone on that one.) and among a few others, Unreal Tournament. UT was essentially the one big competitor to Quake III, which was more or less my choice at the time, but I was outweighed by my local friends who much preferred Unreal. Which was neither better or worse, simply different. Nevertheless, Unreal Tournament was a rich first person shooter with a very strong online multiplayer capability. In fact, the entire game exists strictly for arena based multiplayer as is the case with Quake III as well. And although it does contain a 'single player' mode, the only real difference is that you are now competing against bots (A.I. driven players) instead of other online players. Unreal Tournament really was a game that we put some serious miles on. The core gameplay was solid and not too over complicated. There was no leveling system and the weapons were your typical early-FPS lot. You had a (way overpowered) pistol, sniper rifle, flak-canon, rocket launcher and among a few others, a teleportation tool. This tool allowed you to fire a disc at a desired location, then zap over there with the secondary fire mode. The unintended benefit to this tool was that you could actually use it as a weapon. Like 'telefragging' in Doom, no two players can exist in the same place at the same time. So if you fired the disc in front of where a player was running, you could then teleport into them causing an instant kill. It worked very predictably and was a ton of fun. Makes me wonder if perhaps the developers did design it with that in mind.I'm guessing part of why we played this for so long was that it was a balanced enough game that one person wasn't always the same chart topper for kills. If I remember correctly, we all had our moments of glory and so noone really got bored of being murdered game after game. The added game modes helped keep things from becoming dry as well. Instead of simply having free-for-all deathmatches, Unreal Tournament also featured a capture-the-flag mode as well as 'assault', 'domination', 'team deathmatch' and a 'last man standing' mode. Assault and Capture the Flag were particularly popular, though darting across the Facing Worlds map through the wide-open midsection with your flag was a daunting task that rarely lasted.
Unreal Tournament really was just the right game at the right time for us. Online multiplayer was just heating up, Massive Online games were hardly common and console online games hadn't hit the market yet. So when we were home, late night at our PC's and we wanted to 'quench our virtual bloodthirst' we hopped into UT's lobby and racked up the 'M-M-M-M-MONSTER KILLS!'. (Game quote only acceptably funny if you've played Unreal Tournament.)
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