Both Unreal Tournament 2003 and Quake III: Arena are among my favorite old-school, frenetic-cut FPS. There’s more, of course, but these two are probably the ones I spent the most hours on in the genre alongside Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory on PC. However, as much as I like the Epic Games saga, Unreal Tournament III never won me over.
It is curious (and unfortunate), because in the end it has meant the end of this legendary first-person shooter , no matter how much a free pre-alpha of that Unreal Tournament announced in 2014 is still available, which would mean its return in style until Epic Games decided to put it on hiatus in 2018.
A tournament that is not enjoyed the same alone
It does not matter that id Software released Quake Champions a few years ago, completely focused on online multiplayer, or that the same studio has managed to reinterpret the mythical DOOM of John Romero, John Carmack and co in a brutal way in 2016, just a year before . It matters little seeing the state in which Unreal Tournament is , once one of the absolute references.
Perhaps for that reason and a strong burden of nostalgia, it gave me this time to try to give another chance to that Unreal Tournament III launched in 2007, leaving aside its curse for being the last game to be officially released. If we look at it in perspective, part of that was to blame for another Epic Games game that had taken off a year earlier on Xbox 360: Gears of War.
The aesthetic similarities are more than palpable , reaching disaster when we compare the campaigns. Because in the case of this installment of Unreal , despite the fact that the saga debuted in 1998 as an FPS focused on history and with a complementary multiplayer, its campaign is totally dispensable and is very involved with shoehorn so that we can see its different multiplayer modes. .. against the machine. And of course, the experience loses many integers like this, especially when it comes to revisiting it more than a decade later on consoles or PC.
And also because of the inevitable comparisons, where the Gears have had memorable moments in their campaigns and a multiplayer to match. Unreal Tournament III only stood out in the online component and to top it all, since the closure of Gamespy in 2014 , it has suffered since then, having to look for external solutions to continue playing. And it does not compensate.
And despite everything, a remarkable Unreal Tournament
I couldn’t help returning to Facing Worlds , my favorite map of all the Unreal Tournament . There the Capture the Flag mode shows its true reason for being and how kamikaze we can be when crossing that bridge that gives the feeling of being endless knowing that we are watched from the enemy’s tower.
Despite the fact that its heyday in terms of popularity, with servers full of people, has (unfortunately) gone down in history, if we move on from the campaign and focus on lifelong ways, one continues to enjoy what is yours for the simple pleasure of shooting and listening to the narrator how he gets excited (along with us, why deny it) when we chain crazy death streaks.
In contrast, the game mode that debuted in this Unreal Tournament III , nicknamed Guerra , which became a variant of the Rush seen in Unreal Tournament 2004 , still does not convince me, having to constantly activate nodes to unlock the protection of the core rival to be able to destroy it. Above all, when it comes to having to depend so much on AI. And it does not improve with the use of the aerial scooter or other armed vehicles. I keep sticking with the classic modes .
At least this mythical saga of Epic Games has had countless games that have tried to replicate their sensations, being one of the ones that have come out of this tribute the best that TOXIKK from Reakktor Studios which, luckily, came to have a mode free alternative since the end of 2016.
At that time we wondered if we were facing the resurgence of the old school FPS and the truth is that things have not gone for better, except for honorable exceptions, such as DUSK , a superb hair released in December 2018.
I wish I had had a more positive feeling with this return to Unreal Tournament III , but it saddens me too much to see the direction the saga has taken since then, especially after the Fortnite media boom since 2017.
