Unreal Tournament 2004 Review

Game:  Unreal Tournament 2004 (UT2K4)
Year:  ...2004
Company:  dev.  Epic Games, Digital Extremes
            pub.  Atari, MacSoft, Midway
Engine:  Unreal Engine 2.5
Type:  FPS with multiplayer emphasis
What I Paid:  $20 (?) on eBay
Game Time:  as long as you want


A Bit of Explanation

The second of the Unreal Tournament games was UT 2003.  It was titled as such because Epic thought to imitate sports games in releasing similar games annually.  Thus, UT2K3 used the Unreal Engine 2, and UT2K4 uses Unreal Engine 2.5.  These two titles have many similarities and share several maps.  As such, they are considered together to be "Unreal Tournament 2," justifying the most recent 2007 UT title to be called Unreal Tournament 3.

The Engines

Unreal Engine 2 and 2.5 are used in a whopping 80+  games, including the BioShock franchise, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell games, Red Orchestra, and the upcoming Duke Nukem Forever.  I suspect Epic may make more via licensing than by selling games.  Non-game simulations also used these engines.  From Wikipedia, "Until October 2007, more than 500 companies had an Unreal Engine 2 Runtime Licenses."

Lighting, water, and particle effects are decent for the time.  Everything is a little blocky, but you have to remember, this is BEFORE Source and id Tech 4 redefined expectations.


Game Types
With both a single player ladder campaign and ELEVEN built-in multiplayer game types (custom maps allow even more types, like Vehicle Capture the Flag), this has the most variety of any UT title.

This is by far the easiest game to LAN that I have ever played.


Mods and User-Created Content

In addition to coming with a variety of game-altering mutators, a slew of custom created mutators were created.  The most notable was the "RPG mod," which allows all characters to level up, gaining different bonuses as they kick ass.

Gobs of custom maps exist, most of them suck.  The best custom assault maps I've found are the half-hour, vehicles everywhere Confexia map, and a hard-to-find map called Utopia.

Horsehell Commons is a good Vehicle Capture the Flag map, also, one that starts with A that I do not currently have. 


Final Comments

UT2K4 might not be the prettiest game out there, but it's definitely worth the price for the amount of content.  I've probably played this more than any other shooters I currently own.

Unreal Tournament 4, which will use a new engine, is planned to come out along with the next generation of consoles (PS 4, Wii 2, etc) so it will probably be a couple more years before we see another Unreal title.