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When it was released back in May of 1998, Unreal got many mixed reviews and was heavily criticized. Fans of the
long-awaited game claimed that it was the best FPS ever made and had one of the best Single-player experiences to date,
not to mention that most advanced 3D engine ever. Meanwhile, there was a rather large group of people who complained that
Unreal was nothing more than an eye-candy rich memory hog. Who was right??? No one will ever know, but there is one thing
that both sides agreed on: Unreal multiplayer sucked. There were no questions asked; when it came to Unreal deathmatch,
it was the most lagged experience ever. Epic Games (formerly known as Epic MegaGames) released patch after patch
attempting to put right what they had originally done wrong: put multi-play aside to create a richer single player
experience.
The Goods
Quick Peek:
Epic goes at it again, this time with Multiplay in mind. Can they bring down the king of all FPS's... id?
Release Date:
Quarter 1 1999
Developer:
Epic Games
Publisher:
GT Interactive
Homepage:
Unreal Tournament
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However, a breakthrough was achieved in patch release 2.20, when Tim Sweeney, the programmer for Epic, finally managed to
bring Unreal netplay to the Quake/QuakeII level. Player warping and high pings were a thing of the past. So the question
now comes down to... why isn't anyone playing Unreal online then? The answer however, is simple. Although Internet
performance is vastly improved, the fun of Unreal deathmatch just isn't there. Unreal lacks the powerful weapons of
Quake2 and doesn't have a vast array of mods available. In short, Unreal deathmatch is slowly being forgotten,
overshadowed by newer games such as Blood2 and Half-Life. Slightly disappointed and still striving to achieve perfection,
the Epic team starts over, this time with only one objective... to make the best damn DM experience anyone has ever seen,
and hopefully will ever see. This was the birth of Unreal Tournament.
Many felt that id Software was crazy for making a deathmatch only game, especially since everyone was so looking forward
to their next technological marvel… Trinity. No one expected them to announce Quake 3: Arena. However, everyone stood by
their side, knowing that id has never made a dud and was well known for leading the pack in gaming developments, and most
importantly, had the most online played game ever… Quake II. However, the announcement of Unreal Tournament came quite as
a shock to everyone else, who thought that Epic's next project would either be the Unreal Level Pack (which we have yet to
see…) or Unreal 2. After all, what does Epic know about making DM fun? The truth is… quite a lot. Epic has learned
quite a lot from their past mistakes, and with the knowledge of their failure, they set out to overthrow the online gaming
community.
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