And this, my friends, is why I never need to buy another game ever again.
Unreal Tournament 2004 is the first person shooter equivalent of being handed a pile of a hundred movies that are all great in their own way, and then being told to sit and watch them all. Within each skirmish there is so much depth and nuance of strategy and enjoyment that it really does hit the nail on the head when it comes to finding the essence of what it means to play a video game. Ignore those dumb stories; some aliens took over some ring in space, yeah, yeah, just give me stuff to kill.
From the epic tank battles in Onslaught to an intense 1-on-1 match against a close rival, each moment is the every epitome of what you would want to see in an FPS. If I want to take part in a Peter Jackson worthy battle of thirty vicious bots, I can. If I want to play a Capture the Flag with Tribes style jumping, I can. If I want to emulate, as close as I can, a stupid looking Goldeneye-style Golden Gun battle, I can. If I wanted to let my Pikachu destroy his Blastoise with one hit, I can. Well, maybe not that last one, but you get the idea.
It's not a question of value, it's a question of if your life can handle not being emotionally available for several weeks. If even one of the modes included were shipped as a lone game (such as, say, the objective-based Assault) it would still be worth every moment of your time and every penny you spend, because Epic Games knows how to make the heck out of games. But then they decided to put the Onslaught mode in there, which any other money-hat publisher like EA would see and make it its own game (see the Battlefield series, for example). And of course there are the returning modes from other games, like Deathmatch, CTF, Bombing Run (football with guns) and Double Domination.
Let us not forget the fact that the second Unreal Engine, while becoming outdated, was modded so extensively that the mods handle a better than what even the PS3 can brag about these days. The fan-made maps are brilliant, depending on the mapmaker of course, and many of the mods change the game in ways that can range from subtle tweak to conversion, making the experience that much longer and satisfying.
The bots are excellent and have only been trumped by UT3's bots, which is pretty good considering the year gap there. The technology still holds up by and large past the bots, so 2004 is still a viable way to go when looking into the UT franchise. The graphics are still as nice as they used to be; perhaps at the level of early Xbox 360 games to some. Since the engine holds up well, average computers these days can get some really nice performance even with everything turned on.
You may be calling BS on my 100 plus hours spent on this game. Heck, that's the MINIMUM just to enjoy each of the levels as they come. I'd never think I'd say it, but UT2004 is very much perfect in it's final patched condition. With more thought put into each map than some shooters can brag about in their entire campaign, UT2004 took the expectations of every fan of the original UT and stomped, piledrived, trumped, canoodled, and belly danced all over them to make what it way past anyone suspected any one game was capable of.
Unreal Tournament 2004 is my favorite game, and I'm sticking to it.