9 years later and UT is still one of the best multiplayer games around. This is a game with style AND substance.
Just looking at the old screenshots here on Gamespot for UT, I wasn't expecting much out of the game's graphics engine. Considering it came out in 1999 you couldn't ask for more than the visual quality of the original Half-Life with some slightly better graphics. While this is kind've the case (with some levels that look way better than others), some of the graphics are even better than most games I have played today. The best example I could give here is to check out CTF_Face and NOT be impressed. I remember being incredibly wowed at the space environment within which both teams played capture the flag, but 9 years later it still looks just as awe-inspiring. The level actually rotates in space, and the huge 3D planet and asteroid art is simply a sight to behold. This is easily the best-looking level in the game, and although the rest of the levels don't look AS good they are all a blast to play in for the most part. Another shining example of just how well Epic used their engine is the intro *video* (with in-game graphics) that is essentially a camera that moves through a futuristic city and has a voiceover talking about how Unreal Tournament started in the UT universe. It just somehow manages to look as cool today as it did in 1999. The greatest part about the graphics, though, is the consistently great and clearly inspired art direction. Despite their low polygon counts and slightly blurry textures, ALL of the guns and their corresponding effects just LOOK amazing. They are seriously some of the best designed weapons EVER, if not THE best. Add to this the fact that they are all pretty original in design and use (i.e. what they actually do is pretty unique for the most part. Even the sniper rifle, which is a standard for FPS games, is just way more fun to use than in 99% of shooters I've played). There is absolutely nothing in this game that doesn't look great, even from a 2007 perspective. These graphics are like the online FPS equivalent of a Mario game (that is, they are timeless).
Obviously, being a multiplayer only title (not counting playing with bots which includes the singleplayer tournament mode), the gameplay NEEDS to be good, and UT delivers in spades. EVERY gun is just a blast to use. To start, it needs to be said that, no matter what you have equipped, you will always move at the same speed. This is a seemingly minor thing to point out, but it really helps make the action more enjoyable and fast-paced. Anyways - you start off with a pistol that you can shoot regularly or sideways like a gangster, and you can actually get another pistol and dual-wield them. You also start with a teleporter device that shoots a pod into the air, and when you right click it you are teleported to wherever it landed. If an enemy happens to step on the pod when you teleport, he dies, but its' main use is to scale walls or move faster. You have your sniper rifle which is self-explanatory, but it is easily the most satisfying sniper rifle in any online shooter I've ever played. Hearing *headshot* after a well-placed sniper shot is simply awesome. Then there is the railgun which fires, well, a line of energy that travels at a certain speed. It's alternate fire mode is a ball of energy that, if you shoot it with its primary fire mode, will explode and instantly kill an enemy (although the ball by itself will do damage too). There is a bio-cannon that spews toxic waste that can make a dangerous toxic pool on the ground (walking on it will hurt you). The flak cannon makes a return from the original Unreal, and it either shoots, well, flak or it can double as a grenade launcher. There is an auto-plasma rifle that fires slow-moving plasma projectiles, and its secondary fire is a green laser that projects itself out in front of you (the laser moves when you move - it's not a projectile). You have the rocket launcher which doubles as a grenade launcher for its alternate fire, and if you hold either button long enough you can fire X amount of rockets or grenades (up to a certain amount). The melee weapon you can get is pretty lame comparatively, but basically it's like a spring action gun that you charge up and release next to an enemy to do a lot of damage. There is another melee weapon in some of the levels that is a chainsaw, and that one is pretty fun to use in comparison to the other. The best and most original weapon is the nuke which can fire like a regular gun OR can be controlled by the player. By this I mean that you fire it and your camera-view suddenly becomes the missle's as you can move the missile around the map as long as you want until you explode it with a mouse-click or by ramming it into something. There is a disc-launcher ala Tribes that either has the disc bounce off the surface it hits (and ricochets for a while which looks VERY cool) or has it explode on contact. The last gun is the minigun which is a little boring as well, but is still fun to use. You can also pick up anti-grav boots that make you jump really high, invisibility power-ups to make you go unseen, and damage amplifiers that, well, make you do more damage. The most important thing about the weapon selection is that they are all perfectly balanced. You can kick major ass with any of them if you're good and accurate enough, although the melees ones are the only exceptions as they don't really count for much anyway. The various modes you have to play in are Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture The Flag (if you have the flag and use the teleporter to move around, then the flag drops), Domination and Assault. They are all pretty self-explanatory, although Assault is like objective-based where one team has to push back the other team into the level, and Domination is where you try to push a ball further into the map until you shoot it into the enemy's goal to score. Not every level or game-mode is great, but enough are to really give this game the replay value it needs (not to mention the fact that there are TONS of new maps and mods out that are really fun to play). You can have 16 computer-controlled bots to play with you if you have noone else to play with, and you can set each of their difficulty levels from very easy to impossible-to-kill. Needless to say that they are probably the best bots in any FPS game currently made. The last bit of gameplay to note here is that you can introduce *mutators* into your matches that are basically like Goldeneye's man-with-the-golden-gun kind of customizations. You can have all rocket matches, all sniper rifle matches, and a ton of other things that you can customize or download. Also, all of the voice-commands and taunts you can give during the game are very helpful as well as incredibly funny. The fact that the bots also make use of them a LOT adds SO much personality to the game. As you can probably guess by now, UT is great enough to warrant me having to explain all of this.
The soundtrack is one of the most inspired and innovative of any FPS shooter ever. It spawned every FPS deathmatch cliche sound effect you can think of, from "Headshot!" to "Multi-Kill!", UT invented it all. Not only did it invent this, but the actual sound quality of the voiceovers, the music and the guns is on part with any recent game today (and in some cases even better). Every gun sounds satisfyingly deadly and unique, and the thrill of hearing the announcer yell to every player that you are "Godlike" after having had X amount of kills (forgot the number) in a certain amount of time is just so so cool. The music is also surprisingly good and original a lot of the time, with CTF_Face's being the most noteworthy. It just perfectly fits the atmosphere and is a great tune in its' own right.
There is basically no noteworthy story or characters to speak of, although each of the models you can choose from look fantastic for a game this old. Single-player is basically the tournament from the game's title, and the story is that you are trying to win it. It's not disappointing at all as it is basically just an excuse for you to play the game offline.
If you love deathmatch or capture-the-flag and haven't played Unreal Tournament then you are truly missing out on an amazing experience. I was definitely surprised to see just how well the game held up after 9 long years, but despite my hesitation it is without a doubt still one of the best games I have ever played. It just has so much personality, and that's what elevates it above the rest of the competition. It's a perfect game for LAN parties considering the fact that just about every computer today can run it extremely well (plus it's for PCs AND Macs. As an added bonus, you can play it without the CD in your CD-Drive if you have the latest patch installed), and you're bound to have a great time with it any time you load it up.