Before Unreal Tournament and its closest peer, which was Quake III Arena, FPS games were mostly about cardboard characters battling against hordes of relentless (but otherwise witless) monsters, with a thin veneer of story (if the premise of the game concerned can be considered anything but a story).
Unreal Tournament is jointly developed by (soon-to-be tremendously famous) Epic Games and Digital Extremes (which went on to pursue mostly co-development ventures).
This game, and its peers of the same generation, showed that the FPS genre can be a platform for highly competitive play, thus steering the genre away from game designs that are fast becoming stereotypes.
Unlike previous games in the genre – and the previous ones in the Unreal franchise, in fact - Unreal Tournament does not pit the player character against hordes of AI-controlled monsters whose only true purpose is to violently eliminate the former. That is, monsters which have capabilities that are very different from those that player character has. Instead, this game has the player character fighting other combatants who have the same abilities.
In other words, eliminating enemies is no longer a matter of exploiting their 'natural' weaknesses and avoiding their strengths, but a matter of outwitting opponents who have access to the same methods of killing like the player character does.
To illustrate this point, instead of facing brutish fiends who have no better tactics than rushing headlong into the player character's field of fire, the player character now has to face hostiles who can wield the same guns that he/she/it can, retrieve the same kinds of power-ups and have an awareness of the map in play that is (nominally) as good as the player's.
Of course, with such a set-up, it also meant that the single-player portion of the game has little rewards to offer from a narrative aspect. There is no adventure to be had, no inhuman monsters to be sent howling to their deaths, no evil force to be vanquished and nor is there any story that is written to take advantage of the gameplay designs of this game.
There is a background of some sort, but it only serves to anchor this game to the same fictional universe in which the first Unreal game is set and to give less-than-solid reasons for certain gameplay contrivances/conveniences like the players' never-depleting opportunities to respawn their player characters after their deaths (for game modes other than a certain one in this game, that is).
(It is also worth noting here that the first Unreal game had unsatisfactory multiplayer features.)
To describe the premise briefly, it concerns the discovery of "respawning" technology by private enterprises in the Unreal universe, which pretty much made the humane consequences of wars meaningless – but it also turned physical conflicts from what were once abhorrent activities (to so-called right-minded people, that is) to a blood-sport with plenty of violent glee to offer to both participants and spectators.
With the story (tossed) aside, the player can then indulge in the core gameplay of the game: highly competitive matches between participants who theoretically have the same capabilities as each other. Both the single-player and multiplayer segments of the game are built around this.
The single-player segment essentially has the player setting up and joining matches with AI-controlled combatants. The same maps used in this segment are also available in multiplayer. In other words, it is really only there for purposes of practice.
What would differentiate the single-player segment from the multiplayer one is of course the AI scripts that are used to control combatants which are not under the influence of a human player, or bots, for short. The AI scripts are always aware of the entire map layout, even when they are busy fighting, so AI-controlled participants will always know where they are going to.
As an example of their almost-perfect knowledge of map layouts, it is very rare indeed for an AI combatant to unwittingly run off ledges to its doom or get caught in geometries of the map (which is very much unlike enemies in the single-player segments of previous FPSes). However, this behavior is enabled by navigation scripts, which either come together with the maps or are included in the AI scripts themselves. Therefore, the paths that AI-combatants take can be quite predictable to experienced players who have already memorized the map in play completely.
Slight user-made changes to official maps may also cause the AI scripts to bump into runtime errors, which then cause AI combatants to be unable to move at all.
In other words, the AI scripts used for bots are limited to only official maps at launch, and navigation support for bots that are called to play in non-official maps that they are not 'familiar' with either has to be provided by the player who is experienced in code-writing or by developers who have been persuaded to support non-official maps.
While all this would appear a bit disappointing, it is of course worth noting that the design of bots was still in its infancy at the time. Nevertheless, the bots can still offer a decent challenge to players who happened to be seasoned FPS veterans. They can also be included in matches with human participants, if only to bulk out the number of combatants.
With the eschewing of a single-player campaign, the developers have to pad out the game with something else. They have done this by having multiple game modes. Three of these are the time-honored Deathmatch (free-for-alls), Team Deathmatch (battles between teams) and Capture-The-Flag. These game modes are not much different from those found in other FPS games of the time, though they do benefit from the designs of maps and weapons in this game – there will be more elaboration on these later.
The other game modes have objectives that are not the usual which can be found in FPS games of the time. These are Domination, Last Man Standing and Assault.
Last Man Standing is perhaps the weakest of the lot, as it restricts every participant to a limited number of re-spawns. Once their respective stockpiles of "extra lives" are spent, players are left with the option to be only spectators for the rest of the battle. Most human players who are seeking quick thrills would not be content to watch the match conclude, and AI-controlled players certainly will not give their own two-cents of comments as spectators if they have been disposed of.
If the host of the match made the mistake of setting a limit of lives that is not optimal for the mix of participants, it was more than likely the victor of a match would find him/her on his/her lonesome at the end, with few other players willing to stay for the resetting of the match.
Domination is actually a variant of King-Of-The-Hill, in which teams attempt to capture and hold on to more than one location in the map.
The battle for these locations, which are called 'control points', can be quite thrilling tugs-of-war, if the map had been designed properly for this game mode, i.e. the locations are not so easily defensible, yet not so easily conquered. On the other hand, maps that fail to have this design goal in mind would tend to produce stalemates or inevitable victories for the team who managed to secure the more easily defended locations first.
Much of the fun in this game would depend on how well this design goal is met. While there were maps for this mode – both user-made and official – that were badly designed, there were great ones, which in turn gave level designers food-for-thought and valuable lessons/experience, especially for games that were made later and have this game mode.
Assault is perhaps the game mode that stands out the most. Unlike the previous game modes where the objectives are often clear-cut or simple to fulfill, maps which were made for Assault require that participants give more conscious attention to the objectives at hand.
In this game mode, one team has to achieve a specific objective, such as destroying or activating something, having just one member reaching a location or – borrowing from the previously mentioned game mode – capturing a location. The other team has to prevent the other from seizing the initiative.
On servers which were dedicated to Assault maps, it is difficult for the gameplay experience to become monotonous to all but the most jaded players.
Of course, how great this experience is also depends on the design of the maps for this game mode. In retrospection, some of them can be considered quite dull for today's standards (especially those involving flipping switches), but during this game's time, having players focused on something other than annihilating each other was a very refreshing take on the gameplay of FPS games.
If it is not apparent already, the maps and weapons offered to players are a couple of the main factors by which the gameplay of this game will be judged by.
The first Unreal game had a very weak, perhaps even pitiful repertoire of weapons; the only saving grace that these weapons had were that they have alternate firing modes, which turned some weapons into what are practically two-weapons-in-one.
Unreal Tournament retains this interesting design, but has expended the armoury of weapons. Many of these weapons are much unlike those in the first Unreal game, and most importantly, they appear to have been designed with fierce competition among players in mind.
Almost all of them have firing modes that would cater to those players whose prowess lies in their reflexes, e.g. their "twitch", and who would care little about strategy and only wishes to jump into the fray. These are usually the "primary" firing modes, though it has to be noted here that players eventually realize that the "secondary" firing mode has more worth in combat for some weapons.
Examples of weapons which appear to cater to gung-ho playing preferences include the default ranged weapon, the Enforcer pistol, whose secondary fire is surprisingly effective for a default weapon (which tends to be weak in most FPS games at the time). Peculiarly enough, player characters can collect another Enforcer (usually from players who have been slain just after re-spawning), increasing the firepower of this weapon choice further; this was perhaps due to a design decision to ensure the Enforcer remains a competitive weapon late into a match, and if it was, it was a good call on the part of the developers.
Another example is the bigger cousin of the Enforcer, the ubiquitous (for most sci-fi shooters at the time) Minigun. It would seem not any more different from the Miniguns in other FPS games at the time, but Unreal Tournament may have been the first game to popularize the design for heavy weapons that trade accuracy with volume of fire. Unlike the Miniguns of other games at the time that tended to be overwhelmingly accurate, the Minigun in this game is not. To compensate for its unreliable accuracy, the designers had included tracer fire in its particle effects, which was perhaps one of the earliest uses of tracer fire for hit-scan weapons.
There are also weapons which are usual staples in shooters at the time. These include the Rocket Launcher and Sniper Rifle.
The former is expectedly enough the weapon to be relied on for a balance between indirect and direct fire. The Rocket Launcher can also be primed to launch multiple rockets simultaneously.
Of course, this option is not an original design; it had been used before in other games where saturation of the target with explosive firepower is expedient. From the impression given by this weapon's primary fire, it would appear to be a weapon that is suitable for the typically brutish. However, its peculiar alternate firing mode shows that this weapon also benefits players who prefer finesse over brawn.
The secondary fire is a particularly peculiar option, because it modifies how rockets are launched. By default, any rockets fired would travel in a horizontal line, which is perfect for saturating an area with explosions, but terrible for anything else. However, launching the rockets by triggering the secondary fire option sends them in a tight spiral towards the target – which is perfect for demolishing objectives and heavily armored players. (However, this can lead to over-kill.)
Furthermore, the Rocket Launcher rewards the patient player by allowing him/her to have the Rockets locked onto any target that he/she had been "painting" for a while, virtually ensuring that the Rockets will home in on the latter.
If there ever was a Rocket Launcher that was designed in a genuinely different way from the rest in the shooter genre, Unreal Tournament's was it.
The Sniper Rifle is a weapon that players who are inclined to hide and shoot from behind cover would typically use. The Sniper Rifle's prodigious firing rate and fantastic scope-zoom allows quick-fingered (and cowardly) players to pick off competitors at great distances. It also rewards finesse, by offering instant deaths from scoring headshots. (Indeed, there is a grisly death animation that would occur whenever the target suffers from a sudden loss of head.)
The Sniper Rifle was perhaps the most imbalanced weapon in the game, which led to related behaviors among players like the banning of Sniper Rifles in leagues and the aversion of wide-open spaces in matches that allow the use of Sniper Rifles. This weapon design serves to remind players that while the developers (namely Epic Games) have learned many lessons from its previous games, there are yet more for them to learn.
Almost every FPS game at the time had a fall-back weapon that can be used whenever a player runs out of ammunition, and Unreal Tournament is no different. The fall-back weapon in its case is the Impact Hammer, which is canonically a weaponized mining tool.
It would appear to be a typical melee-only weapon, but it has very interesting traits that allow it to be used in amusing and very satisfying ways.
The Impact Hammer can be used to deliver a piston-powered blow to a suitably close enough target, but it can also be used to deflect projectiles like Rockets and Ripper Blades, potentially giving the attacker a taste of his/her own medicine (if the hammer-blows are timed correctly before the projectiles hit the player character's hitboxes, of course).
Secondary fire pressurizes the Hammer, allowing the player character to deliver a much more powerful blow with very small splash effect. Interestingly, the same splash effect can be exploited to perform a variant of the time-honored (and cheesy) Rocket-Jump. Considering that every player starts with the Impact Hammer, virtually no level geometry is out of the reach of any player, even those who have no explosive weapons.
The remaining weapons are perhaps the ones that gave Unreal Tournament its identity as a refreshingly unique shooter. These are weapons with designs that had not been seen much during this game's time: the Bio-Rifle, the Flak Cannon, the Pulse Gun, the Ripper, the Shock Rifle, the Redeemer and the Translocator.
The Bio-Rifle rewards the player who prefers ambush tactics to fighting opponents head-on. It fires volatile blobs of goo that can stick to most surfaces and conveniently explode when opponents come into close proximity with them. Of course, to prevent a player from rigging entire rooms with goo, the blobs autonomously explode after a short while. Its secondary fire, which merely launches a bigger glob of goo, does perhaps come by as a bit of a disappointment, however. Still, it certainly was a refreshingly rare weapon among the usual plethora of guns that push the player towards oafish slug-outs.
The Flak Cannon, the Pulse Gun, the Ripper and the Shock Rifle are weapons that are designed to be practically two-weapons-in-one.
The Flak Cannon's primary fire, which is a relentless directed volley of shrapnel, is mated with its secondary fire, which performs the role of a grenade launcher (minus the bouncing physics).
The primary fire of the Pulse Gun performs the role of launching fast-and-high-damage projectiles – a tradition started by the Doom games – while its secondary fire fires a stream of plasma that can quickly incapacitate and obliterate a target that did not take cover quickly. In other words, it is a terror-inspiring weapon, especially effective against players who have been caught flat-footed.
The Ripper makes use of the game's physics engine, by having its primary fire launch razor discs that can bounce off walls to turn a small room into a death-trap for anyone caught in it (including the player character, if he/she/it is not careful). The secondary fire changes the discs into explosive bombs, which makes it a poor-man's Rocket Launcher, albeit one that can be brutally effective if used in a manner that the opposition did not expect.
The primary fire of the Shock Rifle makes it an alternate Sniper Rifle minus the scope-zoom and headshot bonuses, while its secondary fire launches an electrical core that is slower but does more damage when it contacts something and explodes. Interestingly enough, the core can be manually detonated (for even more damage, in fact) by using the Shock Rifle's primary fire on it. This rewards players who have good eyes for gauging depths and distances.
With the versatility offered by these weapons, it was little wonder that they ended up being the most sought-after weapons.
The Redeemer takes up the role of the most ridiculously powerful gun, which was a design tradition that the shooter genre still had at the time. It is one-off weapon that can be used to launch a low-yield nuclear warhead that can be manually flown towards its target and detonated (also manually), albeit by leaving the user defenseless while he/she/it looks into the camera feed of the weapon.
While the Redeemer is tremendously devastating, especially to a bunch of players who are distracted by each other, it is not an imbalanced weapon. To counter-act its destructive power, the Redeemer missile has a big, bright, very obvious-looking model and similarly garish accompanying particle effects, as well as lots of noise being made while in flight. It can also be shot down, though the Redeemer is still speedy enough to be a satisfactory super-weapon.
(The missile is also disarmed if the user is slain while controlling it.)
The Translocator would appear to be the most innocuous of the lot; it is essentially a portable teleporter. The primary fire launches the module, which will then (hopefully) adhere to any destination that the player had pointed at before launching it. Secondary fire simply transports the player character's model over to the module, effectively performing an in-match re-spawn with the retaining of the character's stats and equipment.
This weapon can, of course, lead to a lot of mischief and level geometry exploits, and is thus only available in a few official maps.
What is more amusing about this weapon, however, is that it pays homage to and utilizes the digital phenomenon of "tele-fragging", which was originally a glitch in physics-bound game engines that causes a fatal removal of the victim's model by another that had been forced onto the first's location. Indeed, crafty players can swap places with opponents with lethal consequences for the latter via the use of this weapon.
If it is not apparent already, Unreal Tournament's armory of (mostly) splendidly designed weapons is its greatest forte.
Unfortunately, the other items that the player character may retrieve do not appear to benefit from such design caliber.
Most of the other retrievable items in the game perform the role of "power-ups", but their effects are so small and mundane that picking them up is often the result of an afterthought instead of active pursuit by the player.
Pieces of armor like Thigh Pads and Body Armor reduce damage, but their durability is so low that they seem to be only in the game to give homage to armor items in FPS games of the time. Their benefits are not plenty enough to alter how a player plays the game, especially considering how effective some weapons can be in damaging their targets. The Shield Belt plays the role of an "invulnerability" power-up, but like armor, it won't last for long against the devastating weapons in this game.
The Jump Boots alters the (virtual) physical properties of player character models, which then allows them to make higher jumps and take less damage from dangerous falls. However, it is only available for three jumps, and while there is a toggle of sorts for the boots, fumbling for the button to toggle the boots on or off can be a huge hassle in the middle of battle. Explosive-jumping is an easier and more convenient (albeit deadlier) method to perform higher jumps.
Fortunately, the other two power-ups are not as poorly designed and do fulfill their purpose with respect to gameplay quite satisfactorily, but they are surprisingly rare or very difficult to get to in official maps. The durations of their effects are also very short, so considering that they are often located in isolated areas of the map, getting back to the fray with the power-ups still active can be difficult.
Power-ups are often not worth the effort and time that had been deliberately spent to locate them and so are best retrieved while passing by the region of the map that they are located in. The player's attention – at locating items - is better off expended on weapons instead.
The maps in the game would appear to resemble those in other competitive multiplayer shooters; there are maps with small rooms and tight corridors for close-quarters fighting (and plenty of booby-trapping), maps with wide open spaces for sniping and bombarding, and maps with plenty of environmental hazards. Function-wise, most of the official maps are competently designed.
However, unlike some of its competitors – namely Quake III Arena – Unreal Tournament benefits from a stronger thematic presence of its background universe, despite the lack of story elements. For example, maps which are canonically located in a converted mining complex in the Unreal universe do look like they were formerly a mining complex, filled with details such as half-exploited ore seams. Maps which are located on just barely functional abandoned space stations that had been converted for blood-sport events look like they have been deliberately stripped bare of cover, thus presenting participants with a dangerous environment where they can be potentially pushed out of the boundaries of the map to die and drift in the void (and they do look that way too if they happen to die in such a fashion).
Further bolstering the atmospheric experience and immersion of this game (which otherwise has a preposterous premise) was graphics that can rival most other FPS games of the time, especially those from id Software. While the game's computer requirements can be quite high at the time, it does run smooth at any settings that the game has automatically chosen for the machine that it runs on, and more often than not, it manages to keep graphical settings that are important to gameplay, such as particle effects and clarity of player character models, at levels that are satisfactory for viable gameplay.
On computers that are more powerful, the more outlandish maps and weapons can be terrific to look at. There are plenty of particle effects in this game, and plenty of polygons for many models too (for its time that is).
The sound design in this game has the same level of quality as that for the graphical design. For example, the sound effects for the weapons are as varied as their gameplay properties, and all are very satisfying to listen to (especially more so if their users manage to score kills with them). However, it has to be noted here that most of the noises in this game belong to either the guns or the player characters' death screams (if any). There is not much sound for any other occurrence in this game, though this is only a small setback for a game that is really about quick thrills.
In conclusion, great weapon designs and an overall more-than-satisfactory presentation make Unreal Tournament a great shooter, and one of the few that heralded the true dawn of competitive multiplayer gaming in the FPS genre.