Unreal Tournament

Game:  Unreal Tournament
Year:  1999
Company:  dev.  Epic Games, Digital Extremes
            pub.  GT Interactive
Engine:  Unreal Engine
Type:  FPS with multiplayer emphasis
What I Paid:  ten bucks
Game Time:  from 12 hours to infinite


The Engine
Epic Games doesn't just make games, they make engines.  Licensing their engines for third party use might be worth more than game sales.  The first Untreal Engine was used in 25 games total, including Deus Ex, Star Trek titles, and Harry Potter titles.

Graphically, Unreal Engine was pretty comparable to other engines of the time, like id Tech 3 and the Halo engine.  Which brings us to our next topic of conversation.


Competition

For multiplayer PC shooters of the time, the big players were Unreal Tournament, Quake 3: Arena (and the expansion, Team Arena), and Halo: Combat Evolved.  They each have a single player campaign.  Of the three, Halo has a plot and has by far the best single player experience.

For multiplayer, Unreal has six game types, Quake 3 (with Team Arena) has 7, and Halo has 7, HOWEVER, Halo is the only one that does not have computer-controlled bot support.  Bots are easier to set up in Unreal than in Quake 3.


Changes from then to UT 2003/2004

Most of the weapons, with minor adjustments, carried through to later Unreal games.  Two were discarded, and one was nerfed.  The Ripper, that circular-saw shooting, ricochet-happy head chopper, gets eighty-sixed.  The melee... whatever it is, gets replaced by the similar but easier to use shield gun.  The Pulse Rifle is replaced by the nearly identical, but much weaker, Link Gun.

Some of the combatants carry on, such as Malcolm, Xan, Kragoth, Barktooth, some of the Skaarj, and a handful of other names.

And, the sniper-friendly map Facing Worlds returns later as "Face Classic."


So, Anything Else?


Well, I can leave a lot of things unsaid, because this franchise, and modes like deathmatch and CTF,  are pretty well known across the board.  It's a fun game, just like all the UT titles, and gives you something to kill time, with friends, or with bots.  If you don't have any FPS multiplayer games, this wouldn't be my first recommendation.  But if you're feeling nostalgic, it's something to do for a weekend or two.