A great game for it's time. Still a classic.

As an avid gamer, I can't think of a better way to relieve stress by shooting someone in the head with a Flak Cannon.

Unreal Tournament was a spearhead which brought a brand new era of first person action games; it's Epic's pride and joy.

So is this a good game?

The short answer is yes. Building on what was good about Unreal and the feedback of their fans, Epic and GT were boldly targeting the hardcore and highly critical multiplayer audience with Unreal Tournament.

There's no beautiful single player campaign to fall back on this time. UT's single player component consists of several tiers of bot matches (multiplayer style matches played with computer AI instead of human opponents) rather than a cohesive storyline like you would find in a game like Half Life.

To further cement their focus on multiplayer, Epic has included a number of team play oriented mods into Unreal Tournament, including Capture the Flag, Assault, and Domination. Clearly, the message sent with UT is: multiplayer or bust.

These modes offer a large variety in the overall gameplay.

Capture the Flag
The most popular mode in the game, and it's one of the simplest. Basically all you have to do is either defend your own flag, or attempt to steal the oppenents flag and bring it back to your own. This mode does require some skill and some of the online players have mastered some of the beginner levels making it near enough impossible to win.

Assault
Possibly the most innovative idea in all the Unreal merchandise. This popular mode puts players into two teams (One is the defence and the other being offence).
Basically the 'Offence' team needs to complete tasks, these could be entering a ship, or destroying a lever. The 'Defence' team has to try and stop this until a set time limit is up. The teams then swap and try to beat the time.

Domination
Domination, the least popular mod pits 2-4 teams in a large map. There will be three hot points on the map. The teams have to gain control of these hot points for as long as possible. A score limit is used on most maps and you gain points for holding hot points. Obviously the more hotpoints you have the quicker your score raises. First team to reach the score limit is the winner.

There are also Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch modes which basically involve players killing each other until they reach a kill limit and thus win the game.

The online mode of the game can hold up to 32 players on any one server and this really makes playing the above modes enjoyable.

There are a total of eleven weapons in the game, from the slow yet powerful melee weapon 'Impact Hammer' to the impressive mini nuke weapon 'The Redeemer'. The game also feature sniper rifles and pistols. Players generally stick to one weapon gaining skill with it and using it online.

The games controls easily aswell, using the keyboad you can obviously walk forward and back (Using either the arrow-keys or the 'W,A,S,D' layout. Jumping is simpilised and you can now double jump by pressing forward twice.

Epic did have a number of factors in its favor going into the development of UT. Foremost among these was being able to use the Unreal graphics engine without having to start from scratch. The Unreal engine was truly ahead of its time, capable of colorful, intricate scenes that far outpaced its competitors in terms of visual flair and flashiness. A typical gaming rig at the time could barely handle it, but today's hardware is definitely ready to tackle the challenge and give a decent frame rate for competitive play.

The graphics were simply amazing, you could should a person in the head using a sniper rifle and graphically see the head ripping from the persons neck, which was a huge achievement for an FPS (First Person Shooter).

Limbs could be removed by shooting an individual enough in a certain spot and blood was by the bucket loads.

The sound is also amazing, hearing the bullets drop to the ground as you shoot a pistol at someone is a hugely gratifying feeling and the sound of moans as people fall to there death is also quite good. The music though is strangely repetitive and can become annyoing after a long amount of playing.

As for single player mode, you can play as around 20 different characters, they all have the same atributes and stats. You begin by playing through all the deathmatch levels. As you progress the enemy AI become more skillful and the quantity also increases.

After completing a certain amount of the DeathMatch modes you then have access to other modes and can play these against AI bots.

All in all this game is exceptional online, yet rather linear whilst playing offline.