Unreal Tournament vs. Quake

Within the genre of first person shooters there is a sub-genre that I like to call arena shooters.
Arena shooters focus on dropping you and a bunch of opponents into enclosed arenas with a bunch weapons with the sole objective of making your opponents less intact than you are. With such a simple premise, the creators of such games are forced to make the basics right, the core shooting and the movement in the world. The expectations on the breadth of the game are lowered in favor of a perfect "feel". Only when the very basics are perfect, the creators start thinking about adding new gameplay elements on top of the foundation.

The two contenders

When speaking of arena shooters, there are two series that to me stand way above everything else, and they are both featured in the title of the article.
Quake was the game that started it all, a masterpiece from id Software that defined the genre. It's strengths lie in a very clear cut arsenal of weaponry where close to no overlapping exists, and a very fast unforgiving gameplay.
While there are four iterations of the series, the most prominent and well respected is Quake III Arena, which for many is the epitomy of FPS gaming.

Unreal Tournament didn't start a genre, but instead showed what should be expected of it. Not only did it rival Q3 on the basis of incredible core gameplay (that didn't feel like a simple imitation), it offered more game modes, better maps and more customizability with the inception of mutators. Add to that an outstanding amount of official content that was/is continually expanded, and you've got something that ends up being "Bigger, Better and more Badass" (to quote a certain Epic Games employee).
Unreal Tournament has by now had four iterations, with UT2003 not being much more than a solid precursor to UT2004, cutting down the real number to three.
There are important differences between the iterations of Unreal Tournament, but since the the purpose of the article is comparing what I believe to be the foremost of both series, UT2004 will be seen as the representative game. While I don't feel it is fair to disqualify the other two without a proper explanation, I'll leave that to a different article (some of it has been covered in my UT3 review)

Basics compared

The movement is what splits these games apart. Not that the weapons don't have a contributing factor in differentiating the two, but the movement in the two restricts the designs of the maps in a very tangible way, so therefore it will be dealt with first.

Movement

Quake 3 with it's strafejumping and rocketjumping will take a player long distances over a short time, both horizontally and vertically. This forces maps into accommodating rapid, long distance movement. This has left players with a history of not more than "fairly" entertaining maps that are hampered by the need for simplicity. While this doesn't mean that there are no interesting maps, they are however quite sparse.
And yes, I do use "interesting" and "entertaining" interchangeably in this case because I don't find a handful of platforms hanging in space (Longest Yard) or two rooms with corridors between them and a cupboard (House of Pain) stimulating in any possible way.
Thankfully, with Quake Live the community received a set of maps that are in general vastly superior to the old maps, but they are still only making the best out of the situation, following the old guidelines of what can and can't be done.
Expect large swaths of open area, wide corridors and minimal amounts of vertical obstruction.

If Q3 takes you far in a linear fashion, Unreal Tournament (and especially 2004) takes you a short distance in a more explosive and unpredictable fashion. Dodging is a shorter movement but happens as suddenly as a rocketjump and the double jump takes you fairly high without the use of any weapons. This, along with the absence of the rocketjump is what results in a higher tolerance for map complexity and "right-angle-density". In Quake 3 if a corner comes your momentum is killed, in Unreal Tournament you're just doing another dodge in another direction.
The potential for all kinds of wonderful maps is there (as can be seen with everything from DM-Roughinery to UCMP2-Churn), but it seems that players still gravitate towards the large maps, where it can take two, three, sometimes even four full dodgejumps just to get across a corridor, and that's probably not even a major part of the map (yes DM-Rankin, you're TOO SPACIOUS for 1v1, no matter how many times you're played in tournaments).
All it really amounts to is that fight,chase and flight is more interesting if you have to consider multiple angles and directions at all times, considerations that will never arise in unobstructed environments.
Apart from the effect movement has on map design, I also think that the short range explosive movement of dodges is more interesting in the heat of battle than that of rocketjumping.

Weapons

So while I would argue for UT2004 having the superior movement system, the same cannot be said for the weapon arsenal. As mentioned weapons come second after movement when it comes to importance, but it is not be neglected at all. There's a reason the saying "A shooter is as good as it's weapons" exists (as you might understand, I don't agree with it completely).

Quake 3 has undoubtedly the best arsenal of the two and it might, quite possibly, have the best one in any FPS. In no way do I mean to belittle the weapons of Unreal Tournament which are indeed fantastic, but there is simply no arsenal (that I'm aware of) that has so clear roles of application. After one or two shots fired from every weapon in Q3 you have a perfect understanding of their usage, and can subsequently start learning how to apply them in combat. They are few, but they are concise; the Quake 3 arsenal is the KISS principle personified, covering all ground needed, making no weapon obsolete.
Unreal Tournament 2004 has an arsenal that is more or less double the size, considering the multiple firing modes offered. The difference here lies in possibilities offered, and their necessity at all times.
Where Quake 3 stops at the grenade launcher for indirect area denial, UT2004 gives the Assault Rifle grenades for roughly the same result, but also gives the Flak secondary for instant explosion denial and the Bio carpeting for delayed but static denial (until the slime explodes).
Same thing goes for the "stream of damage" weapons. Q3 has its Lighning Gun, while UT2004 has two firing modes on the Minigun and the Link Gun shaft. All three are different, but only slightly. The overlap is noticable but fortunately the differences between the weapons and firing modes are pronounced enough to warrant their inclusion.

I have a couple of gripes with the arsenal of UT2004 however that detract from a game that I otherwise enjoy so much.
First of all, the change from Enforcers to Assault Rifles was a grave mistake considering how worthless the AR is (even when you dual wield them). Only the grenades are worth anything, and even then they're fired very slow (if you want any kind of range with them) and are fairly hard to hit with. Grave mistake.
Secondly, the Link Gun plasma would need to fly as fast as, and have a rate of fire of, the Plasma Gun to even be remotely useful outside of vehicle and structure bombardment in Assault/Onslaught.
Finally, I feel that the UT3 versions of the Rocket Launcher and Bio Rifle are a bit better than the ones of UT2004. RL is easier to get direct hits with (I don't care much for the grenade functionality) and the Bio Rifle is also easier to hit with. The fact that the Bio drains instead of insta-kills is also a very nice feature. These changes are miniscule compared to the other points, but they still bog me at times.

A matter that will most likely make or break the game for many however is the Shock Rifle. This is a Swiss army knife of weapons, and I to this day can't decide if it detracts from or enhances the game. It has a powerful hitscan attack (45 damage), a spammable secondary (for the same amount of damage), and not an area denial but powerful SPACE denial attack.
The space denial is really the only type of attack that Q3 lacks, however Q3 doesn't need it; the question I ask myself is whether Unreal Tournament needs it. Space denial is (especially as powerful as the shock combo) the most versatile tool one can get in an arena shooter according to me, and this mechanic was and still is a risky business to implement.
Even after so many years of play with it, I can give no straight answer on whether it is detriment or an asset.

Closing thoughts

UT2004 is most definitely the slower game of the two, but what it looses in speed it gains in complexity. Rarely have I found matches in Quake that have provided me with so much joy as the ones I've had in UT2004, and in the end I think that's what it's all about.

The thought of comparing UT2004 and Q3 (and to an extent the series) came about in the midst of an argument during a LAN party, when the choice of game was to be decided. At the time UT2004 was chosen for it's more enjoyable 1v1 and 2v2 (according to a majority), additional gametypes and more content in general helped along the way too.

I respect both games as cornerstones in the FPS realm, but in the end there has to be one you feel you'll never uninstall.

Unreal Tournament 3 + Titan Pack

When Unreal Tournament 3 was officially announced, a wave of mixed feelings went through the Unreal-community.
UT2004 was essentially everything most people could have ever wanted in terms of a shooter. Sure, there were going to be UT99 purists who would object to the style and the zealous Quake gamers who still claim that after Q3 the world could have stopped spinning, but disregarding people who would never have it any different than graphically updated clones, UT2004 was a milestone in FPS gaming. The mechanics were done right, the content was abundant, the community was sprawling and everything was kept at a impressively high standard. Within UT2004 we had almost everything we could ask for.

Now I've only been playing UT3 for the "Play UT3 for free!"-weekends offered on Steam. Since these have occurred twice I've got somewhere around 20 hours of total play time. I therefore don't feel entitled to a final opinion, but I want to share my observations.

A legacy to live up to

Throughout the history of culture the successful sequels (any field) have made us relate to the original, yet find new content to explore. Some sequels have it very easy because the original was of such high quality that the audience will settle for "more of the same", demanding slight tweaks but retaining very large parts of the structure. Other sequels might have the privilege to work with a well received but raw original, providing the liberty to shape and/or expand in many different directions.

UT3 didn't have the luxury of either of those.

The audience had already seen the Unreal Tournament formula go through three very different, but still coherent and intertwined, iterations. Most content (and especially the good one) we already had experienced three times over (some will argue that UT2003 was not as enjoyable as the other two, I respectfully disagree). This unfortunately put Epic in the situation where anything (that I can think of) that would stay true to the UT-franchise will inevitably have been tried, especially after the monstrous amount of content provided with UT2004. While "more of the same" didn't necessarily result in a bad game, it did make a large part of the audience wonder if they were getting their money's worth, they already had the provided content in older games (and that's speaking of UT3+TP, vanilla UT3 must have felt like a rip-off).

Unreal Tournament is a franchise that is very flexible when it comes to play styles, as long as it's futuristic and creatures kill each other it's acceptable and in canon. The mentioned opportunity of a "raw original" (which in this case would mean the mentioned flexibility) is exploited, but it seems Epic put a lot more pressure on making small changes and execute those well than taking risks with new styles of play. This is in no way a bad decision, but it's a stark contrast to what the release of UT2004 looked like. Both fans and ordinary gamers were treated with (among other things):

• Close to every game mode ever introduced in UT (including a mind-blowing reintroduction of Assault)
• The inception of the new game modes like Invasion, Mutant and to a lesser extent Vehicle-CTF (no maps but the support was there).
• This deserves it's own point: Onslaught
  Many saw it feasible to detach this as a separate game.
• More maps in a UT-release than we had ever seen, each and everyone sticking to Epic's tradition of being of the best in the industry.
• An improved single player that felt interesting enough to keep you entertained without multiplayer.

With this being only some of the big reasons to buy the initial release (which excludes the fantastic community and official support the game got post-release) it got hard for UT3 to live up to the expectations.

The Good and Bad

First of all, there are two aspects that basically define the feel of playing a certain shooter. This sole "feel" can make or break the game. The two aspects are the movement and the weapons, in no particular order (because should I want an order I would need another article explaining my choice). All the other things come secondary.

The movement

The movement is essentially a mix between UT2004 and UT99, double jump is there but you can't add a jump at the end of a dodge. This meant that the verticality was preserved but some of the horizontality was lost. UT has always been about the explosive horizontal movement, which is one of the things that made it so different Quake 3. This statement will make some upset and have them call upon the different aspects of bunny jumping and RocketLauncher/PlasmaGun maneuvers. I will however claim that while these are interesting in their own right, the dodging mechanic found in UT2004 was something sublime that offered the jerky and unpredictable maneuvers of the Q3-RocketLauncher both inside the heat of point black combat, and outside when a chase or escape was present.
I will at some point address why I feel UT is superior to Quake, but I think it is sufficient to say that removing the dodge-jump removed something important. Some will object saying that UT3 is with it's lack of a dodge-jump similar in movement to UT99, but this is very far from the truth; UT99 had a proportionally higher running speed, which made the game feel a lot faster than UT3.
It takes some time to get used to, but overall it doesn't feel as interesting, and it's most definitely slower than any of it's predecessors. With that said, the maps are perfectly aligned with the movement, so it feels right but it's not what I wanted.

As a minor note I'd like to add that they've added hoverboards which are always available in the Onslaught equivalent called Warfare, this is a nice touch that remedies some of the camping on vehicle spawns on those huge maps where going on foot is simply not feasible.

The weapons

I will further down address the graphics and art style a bit more thoroughly but the first thing you notice about the weapons is that they look unnecessarily contrived. There are more details than you can count, and while it's never really distracting, a lot of people will prefer the simpler models shown in previous installments of UT (that might just be nostalgia speaking, who knows). The feel of the weapons is an improvement however. It seems the small tweaks added make the weapons feel fresh again, even though we've had most of them for four games now (the flak cannon in Unreal was a beast...). A quick rundown:

• Impact hammer has taken the shield gun's place. I understand that some have gripes with the shield, and I do find this hammer very nice. Sound, visuals and the power, love them. They didn't however need to make the secondary attack completely worthless (knocking off powerups with melee anyone?).
• The fan favourite Enforcer is back and unfortunately it feels wimpier. This is sad because the reason people wanted it back was because the UT99 enforcers were monsters, dealing solid damage with good accuracy. This is better than the Assault Rifle, but it's not the real deal.
• The Bio Gun is easier to hit with now, and charged blobs of goo don't make instant damage, but drains depending on the size of the blob. A welcome change to one of my favourite weapons.
• The Shock Rifle now has harder to hit shock cores, other than that it's the same thing.
• Link Gun is the same deal, although at first, second and third glance it seemed as Epic had dropped linking. Apparently you have to stand really close to each other for linking to work. Linking was mainly used in Onslaught so this change is trivial for me.
• The Stinger Minigun is very nice. Sound, visuals and fire modes are all top notch.
• The Flak Cannon seem to fire more shrapnel in a wider spread, and the shells seem to do more damage. More versatile than ever.
• Sniper Rifle... What can I say? I liked the Lightning Gun, apparently others didn't.

The rest of the weapons are basically the same, nothing special. Overall it's a mixed bag of changes, but nothing is messed up, and some changes are very nice so the weapons are fine.

Gamemodes

Warfare is basically Onslaught with hoverboards and the ability to capture nodes instantly with orbs that any player can pick up in their base. An interesting addition, but nothing special, the games seems to flow the same way (except on smaller maps when a lot of uncalled for captures occur, IOW love or hate scenarios). The new vehicles are different but for the most parts nothing game changing. They are now divided into the Axon (basically the ones found in UT2004) and the Necris (which are totally different, it's really a question of trying them out yourself).
The addition of special events linked to special nodes is a very interesting twist however.

Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Vehicle Capture the Flag and Duel I feel no need to cover because all thing necessary to say have been in "Movement", "Weapons" or in the short Warfare paragraph.

Then we have Greed (which is nothing but a straight rip-off of the UT2004 mod) and Betrayal, with the latter being such an amazing game mode it has not only had me thinking about purchasing the game just for this one game mode, it has also motivated me to start learning UnrealScript so I can port it to UT2004.
It's just that much fun.

Finally there's also a handy new mutator that can really mix up the existing game modes called the Titan mutator, which can turn any mode into something completely new. A good addition.

Graphics and artstyle

Graphics set to max are nothing but jaw dropping. Period.
I was also pleased to find that it scaled the graphics on the fly quite nicely, so what I would expect to lag horribly on my laptop, turned out to run very well.

The sceneries are rich on details, which at times shifts from being atmospheric to being cluttered and overloaded. The claim that the characters have an uncanny resemblance of Gears of War is to a large extent true. Overall I found the characters to be impressive, but not as interesting as the ones found in UT2004 were.

The maps are as mentioned well designed, and the artwork here is spot on. Some of the maps were so beautiful and so amazingly designed it absolutely blew my mind. Epic are still the ones who provide the best maps in the industry.

Verdict

We are treated with unspeakable amounts of FPS games lately, but when it comes to multiplayer which today is where the games' true lifespan lies, only a few companies know how to do it right. The Battlefield series is one setting, the Halo series is another, but in the end it's the futuristic arena combat introduced by Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 that showed me what real multiplayer FPS should look like.
UT3 might not be the best game in the series, and it comes in a time where it is no longer as unique as UT2004 was when it came out, but one needs not to be outstanding to be good.