Unreal Tournament

About Unreal Tournament

Unreal Tournament (1999) is Epic Games and Digital Extremes' multiplayer arena shooter, set in a future where "consensual murder" is a sport, with bots, mutators and modes from Assault to Domination, often counted among the greatest games ever made.

Unreal Tournament in Depth

One of the first modern arena shooters, it focuses on head-to-head multiplayer deathmatch. The single-player campaign is a ladder of arena matches against bots, climbing towards a challenge for the title of Grand Champion against the mysterious Xan Kriegor. Game types include Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch for up to four teams, Capture the Flag, Domination, in which teams hold control points, Last Man Standing, where players start fully armed with limited lives, and Assault, in which one team attacks a base's objectives and then defends it for the same time. Bots fill out teams, can take orders, adjust their skill to the player and be customised. "Mutators" change the rules, such as "InstaGib", which arms everyone with instant-kill Shock Rifles.

Each weapon, from the Enforcer to the Rocket Launcher and the Ripper's ricocheting blades, has two fire modes, and the Redeemer fires a miniature nuke. Body armour, health packs and damage amplifiers lie across levels set in spaceships, outposts, castles and monasteries, with lifts, teleporters, water and lava. The story explains it all: losing a war against the Skaarj and facing riots in its mining colonies, the New Earth Government legalised "consensual murder" in 2291, and the Liandri Mining Corporation turned the fights into a profitable professional Grand Tournament.

Making Unreal Tournament

When Unreal came out in May 1998, its multiplayer was hampered by poor network code, so Epic made improving it a priority and began an expansion in summer 1998 that grew into Unreal Tournament, developed over about a year and a half with Digital Extremes. GT Interactive published it for Windows in 1999, followed by PlayStation 2 and Dreamcast versions from Infogrames. It received universal acclaim, scoring 92 on Metacritic and 94% on GameRankings, with praise for its graphics, level design and gameplay; Computer and Video Games called it "a technical and game-playing marvel", and GameSpy said it raised the bar for multiplayer shooters, though the console ports had limitations. It sold 100,998 copies in the US by the end of 1999, trailing Quake III Arena, and nearly 2 million worldwide by November 2001, and a Game of the Year Edition bundled the bonus packs in 2000. Unreal Tournament 2003, 2004 and 3 followed.