My Top 15 Games of All Time: #8

There was a time in video games where "twitch shooters" were king. These were fast-paced, heart-pounding, nausea-inducing games that required fast thinking and even faster mouse clicking. Some of these games were Quake and Serious Sam.

However, the series that always stood out to me was this one. A brutal bloodsport that packed some of the coolest weapons in gaming AND was an absolute blast to play.
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#8 - Unreal Tournament 2004 - First released March 16th, 2004 (PC, Mac, Linux)

The original Unreal Tournament was one of the first games I ever played on my PS2 and it hooked me in right away. I just must have been the right age and of the right mindset to enjoy a sci-fi, fast paced, action packed shooter with humans and aliens turing each other into tiny gibs (pronounced 'jibs' by the way, hard G on 'GIF" and 'J' sound on 'gibs', deal with it). Unreal Tournament 2004 was the expansion/replacement for 2003, actually replacing it on store shelves. The big things that 2004 added were the use of vehicles and the new Onslaught mode, where you had a HUGE map and had to control several power nodes between your base and the enemy base, once you controlled the nodes, you had to go into the enemy base and destroy their power core. This added a whole new layer to the series with large-scale vehicle warfare.

2004 featured the standard Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Capture the Flag modes, as well as several others, including my favorite: Bombing Run. A ball spawns in the middle of the map and your team has to take it to the opponent's hoop to score. 7 points if you are holding the ball while you jump through the hoop, and 3 for shooting it in, basically Grifball meets Football.

There was also Mutant mode, in which all players first spawn in with all weapons, with the first person to get a kill becoming the mutant, which grants them unlimited ammo, camouflage, increased rate of fire, and super speed. Of course the downside is that you constantly lose heath and can not acquire pick-ups. The person who killed the mutant became the next mutant.

The guns in the UT series are some of the best in gaming. While the Rocket Launcher is great, and the Lightning Gun can be super-effective (if not a little newb-ish), my favorite UT weapon will always be the Flak Cannon. The primary shot fires bits of shrapnel that you want to use at close quarters. These bits will bounce off walls and floors and whatnot, but that weakens them. If you use it like a shotgun, it can be VERY effective. The secondary fire launches a ball of shrapnel like a grenade launcher, exploding upon impact and can cause instant death. Very fun weapon to use.

Of course, some players swear by the lightning gun combo, shoot the secondary ball of lightning out, then hit it with primary-fire bolt of lightning, which causes a deadly shockwave. I always found the Bio-Rifle the hardest to use and least like my style of play. You shoot green acid which sticks to walls and players, causing damage over time, the secondary fire could be lethal, though, since you could charge up a massive ball of ooze that, if it contacts an enemy, is instant death.

That's the kind of craziness that I loved about the series and this game in particular; the fact that you could die at any moment, but you had the ability to kill anyone with one pull of the trigger, and then have your character taunt them with the old "You Suck", it was awesome!

The game also was very easy to mod, and of course the community went crazy with it, so you can find new maps, models, modes, etc. to keep the game fresh. The best part of all this? I was checking the servers just a couple days ago, and people are still playing this game. Of course you can go against bots, but the human element always made it more fun.

Let's show off the fast-paced action if you have never seen it before:

In case you didn't know already, UT was created by Epic Games, the same studio that produced Gears of War. So these guys know how to make damn good games.

The fact that people still play UT2004 online is a testament to how good it is and the fact that the twitch shooter can still exist today. Unreal Tournament 3 was released in 2007 and was fine, I actually enjoyed it a lot, but I keep coming back to 2004. I am, however, very excited for the new Unreal Tournament that's currently being worked on and will be absolutely free.