Pong and Beyond

608th played so far

Genre: First-Person Shooter
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 2004
Developer: Epic Games
Publisher: Atari

One of my big early FPS experiences was the first Unreal game, one of the early games in the genre to play with story telling and audio logs. It was a new experience that I wasn’t used to and inspired me.

Sadly, that didn’t end up on my list, but as is often the case, it’s the multiplayer in the series that really made a dent, and (in the vein of Quake III Arena) got its own series of games. This is the sequel to the first in that series, for whatever reason.

Our Thoughts

So despite the game having a clear multiplayer focus, Unreal Tournament‘s single player goes beyond a bot tutorial designed to get you into multiplayer as quickly as possible. It takes you through an actual tournament – getting you to qualify and then (presumably) winning it. It’s not just on rails, but you earn money based on performance. It gives you some choices and direction, which really helps sell it as a good experience. Sure, there’s no real story, but there’s some real progression.

The shooting, then, is pretty decent. It’s nicely chaotic, set up to just throw many players in there, and the levels are large enough that it’s more than just a firefight. There’s a bit of exploration, but mostly the different levels and areas split up the fights quite nicely.

Final Thoughts

A multiplayer focused FPS is what it is, and for my style of play that comes down to the bots you play against. Here, they feel like they have a bit more personality than normal, they have some interesting strengths and bring what feels like a nice bit of variation.

I doubt I’d keep up with multiplayer – and I have no real interest to submerge myself in it – which means the game lacks some longevity for me, but it’s been working well enough so far.