Twenty years ago, one of the greatest fps franchises on pc peaked with unreal tournament 2004. remarkable in its own right, its striking legacy extends to its role as a platform for mods that would turn into enduring standalone franchises, and its influence on later games, especially rocket league.

Unreal Tournament 2004

By Kyle Hoekstra

The release of Unreal Tournament 2004 represented a remarkable moment in PC gaming history. Not only was the game a joy to play, building on the multiplayer shooter mechanics that had originated in 1999’s Unreal Tournament, but it was also able to be modded, and some of those mods would become standalone games themselves, launching the careers of their devs.

Released an astonishing 20 years ago, Unreal Tournament 2004 was one of the outstanding first-person shooters of its time. This third iteration in the franchise brought a bounty of fantastical levels and deliriously lethal contraptions to the shooter scene, returning Unreal Tournament to the podium to rival interlopers such as Halo. It provided a counterpoint to a flood of military shooters while bringing the franchise “up to date” in the words of Epic Games’ founder Tim Sweeney. Its fluidity of movement, good looks and bombastic gunplay cemented its status: IGN and Gamespot scored it 9.4, PC Zone 94%, and PC Gamer 92%. Edge called it a “triumph”.

Two decades later, Epic’s last game before partnering with Microsoft ahead of its unannounced second Xbox console is an artefact of unfashionable, but not obsolete, FPS gaming from the early 2000s. Its themes were scattershot and weird, yoking anthropomorphic reptiles with cosmic ancient Egyptians. Yet in surprising ways it shares DNA with the game that would supersede it at Epic Games: Gears of War.

It’s remarkable for other reasons. UT2004 became a cradle for community-created modifications. Thanks to Epic’s initiatives to promote its tech, some mods became games in their own right. Arguably chief among the games to benefit from UT2004’s popularity is the extraordinarily successful Rocket League.

With the state of the Unreal franchise uncertain, turning an eye to the celebrated UT2004 yields insights concerning not just the development and legacy of that game but of the numerous projects and studios linked to it, not least Epic Games themselves. So what is the story of UT2004? And what is its surprising legacy?

UNREAL TOURNAMENT 2

UT2004 might legitimately be better remembered as Unreal Tournament 2. The original Unreal Tournament, launched in 1999, had put Epic and collaborators Digital Extremes on the map. A multiplayer spin-off from the 1998’s Unreal, it made a mark amid fierce competition, namely id’s Quake III Arena. Its frenetic action unfolded as a futuristic spectator sport, and was buoyed by gratifying