Unreal Tournament 2004 is back

(old.reddit.com)

62 points | by keithoffer 2 hours ago ago

31 comments

  • unsungNovelty 8 minutes ago

    Plaay >>

    In the mystique female voice!

    I bought it in steam before they removed it. So I can still install and play this game from time to time. Capture the flag is something else in this game!

  • grubbs 22 minutes ago

    This is great. I remember playing this for the first time at a Wizards of the Coast in the mall. They had 8 or so PCs on a LAN in the back of the store. My first true LAN party I guess.

  • magicalhippo an hour ago

    One thing I missed from Unreal Tournament, which too few other games adopted IMHO, was the concept of mutators. Effectively server-level mods which, as the name implied, mutated the gameplay in some way.

    There were silly ones like the one making your characters head larger for each kill, and those which made it just different like low gravity, and so on.

    It was also relatively easy to make your own, thanks to UnrealScript.

    Really wish more multiplayer games embraced this concept, it really increased replayability by changing things up.

    • jack_tripper 25 minutes ago

      Same. My favorite mutator was the exploding ammo cases. So much fun to see an enemy run to pick up an ammo box and just shoot it with a pistol blowing it up in his face. That was apretty revolutionary game mechanic 20 years ago. Do any modern games have such a thing?

      • amlib 7 minutes ago

        That volatile ammo mutator was made even more awesome because it actually spawned "shots" of that type, so a plasma pile wouldn't just explode but rather spread various plasma shots around it. The granade one would have the granades bouncing around a bit before exploding. It was so easy for things to go wrong and backfire on you :)

    • themafia an hour ago

      My favorite game of all time was Quake, similarly extended with QuakeC, into the QuakeWorld CTF game. I still dream about those maps.

  • fergie 15 minutes ago

    Such a good game- very ahead of its time, great look and feel. Weird that it was allowed to wither and die.

  • GaryBluto 20 minutes ago

    Epic Games have been surprisingly generous with their older library. Refreshing to see.

  • davikr 19 minutes ago

    Still holding out for UT1 code to be officially released.

  • ghaering an hour ago

    That is great news! I hope we will have a few public servers left to play this online.

  • basisword 20 minutes ago

    Wow this is really exciting, especially the Mac support. UT was kinda my gateway to programming. They made it really easy to build and play your own maps.

  • CommanderData 25 minutes ago

    Amazing, more companies need to do this.

    Separately it's a shame most modern games have removed LAN gaming.

  • IshKebab an hour ago

    Do they have access to the source code then?

    • dvdkon 44 minutes ago

      The code was floating around the Internet some years back, and was probably privately shared much sooner.

      I just wish these groups making fan-made builds would share at least patches, so they don't become gatekeepers and others could build on their work.

  • piva00 an hour ago

    Are there are any FPS shooters on the genre of UT (or even Quake3) but modern, not remasters?

    I've been missing a lot the frenetic gameplay of those, used to play a lot of UT at a decent level but nowadays I only see tactical FPSs or the likes of Counter-Strike/Battlefield with a high player count.

    • petercooper 14 minutes ago

      Outing myself as a parent of young kids here, but I have been genuinely surprised how good Hypershot on Roblox is. It reminds me of Unreal Tournament a lot and is really easy to play, I've been hooked for a few weeks. It cuts everything down to the basics like UT without all the bells and whistles modern AAA games have. Oh and it's totally free (but with all the monetization attempts Roblox games tend to have, though they aren't necessary to play even at a high level).

    • lgl 10 minutes ago

      Diabotical was heavily inspired by Quakeworld/Quake3/UT arena shooter FPS.

      https://www.diabotical.com

    • K0nserv 19 minutes ago

      https://www.warsow.net/ is good and runs on pretty much everything. Plays like a mix between UT and Quake3.

      • retsibsi 12 minutes ago

        I love Warsow but am I right that it's very hard to find an opponent these days? I just checked https://arena.sh/wa/ and there are 4 non-empty servers, but most (maybe all) of the players seem to be bots.

        • K0nserv 9 minutes ago

          I haven't played a while so I cannot comment. When I last played I spun up a server for my friend group to play on. This is the beauty of old school games like these, no need to rely on a company to keep servers running. In a way Warsow is the perfect LAN game: everyone can run it and it's easy to host a server.

    • hofrogs 14 minutes ago

      Open-source one: Xonotic

      https://xonotic.org/

    • jjbinx007 34 minutes ago
    • corint 27 minutes ago

      Not that I can really think of - there's the adjacent Sauerbraten, but that's a similar vintage!

    • belst an hour ago

      there are but they are pretty niche, so mostly you play against bots or against friends.

      This one is the last one I heard of but I also haven't followed the scene much lately: https://store.steampowered.com/app/324810/TOXIKK/

      • OccamsMirror 37 minutes ago

        TOXIKK was awesome. But very hard to find matches with players.

    • pjc50 41 minutes ago

      Isn't that what Overwatch/Valorant/Apex/Fortnite etc are?

      • loa_in_ 31 minutes ago

        No, these are class based team FPS, core of UT and Quake is (team) deathmatch

      • piva00 33 minutes ago

        Overwatch is a objective-based game, and like Valorant is a "hero shooter". Apex and Fortnite are battle royales.

        I think the closest I got was The Finals but still class-based, so reminds me more of Team Fortress.

        I loved playing 1v1 on Quake 2/3 and UT, also team deathmatch, from the list you commented it feels like each game got one of those aspects but none that makes the genre of UT what it is: knowing where weapons/ammo/armor spawn, map knowledge to navigate around, emergent movement mechanics (rocket jumps, strafe-jumping, etc.).

        Interesting to see this genre mostly died out, and remnants of it have been scattered across other genres.

    • mikkupikku 20 minutes ago

      Dusk is more Quakeish than UTish, but well worth a look. The graphics are deliberately low fidelity 90s retro, but the gameplay is tight.

    • crimsoneer 25 minutes ago

      maybe Splitgate if that's still alive?

  • wesammikhail an hour ago

    Instagib Face Classic Quad Jumps in 2026?

    Sign me the f up!