Unreal Tournament 2004

Unreal Tournament 2004 is the third game in the popular Unreal Tournament series.

This latest edition includes several new features. First and foremost is the return of Assault mode from the original Unreal Tournament. This mode pits two teams, attackers and defenders, against each other. The attackers must try to complete various objectives, and the defenders have to stop them. At the end of the round, whether time runs out or the attackers win, the roles are switched, and the defenders become the attackers. A mode new to 2004 is Onslaught. Another team-based mode, there are several Power Nodes spread throughout the map, with one base per team that houses a large Power Core. The players must go to each Power Node, link it to the enemy Core, and eventually attack the enemy Power Core itself. Rounding out the remainder of the game modes is the standard Capture the Flag, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Double Domination, Bombing Run, Last Man Standing, Invasion, and Mutant, for a total of ten different game modes. An additional official game mode is Vehicle CTF, which will only appear in the gametype browser after the user adds a VCTF map in the Maps directory, be it an official VCTF map (released after the game was published) or releases from amateur mapmakers.

There are several weapons available to you, all of which come with a secondary fire. You have a shield gun, an assault rifle (which can be dual wielded if you pick up a second one after an enemy or ally dies while holding one, much like the Enforcer in the original Unreal Tournament), a shock rifle, Redeemer missile launchers (which can launch a missile guided by you), an AVRiL missile launcher, a lightning gun, a rocket launcher and a flak cannon, to name a few.

2004 features, for the first time, vehicles, which are available in Onslaught, Assault and VCTF. You can hop into a tank (Goliath), a humvee (HellBender), a lightweight wheeled vehicle (called the Scorpion and relatively similar to the Warthog in Halo), a juggernaut vehicle (Leviathan) and several different hovering or flying vehicles, notably some space ships in some Assault maps such as AS-Mothership. Each vehicle has its own characteristics, some can hold multiple players and additionally some players can hitch a ride by standing on the external body of the vehicle. Some vehicles also have a personalized license plate with the name of the player driving it.

There are over one hundred maps to choose from. A lot of them are remakes from the past versions of the game, and there are several new ones made for 2004. Most maps for UT2003 are compatible with UT2004. Maps can be downloaded in the future, from official sources or from amateur mapmakers.

Unreal Tournament 2004 also includes a detailed single player campaign, in which you earn credits by competing in tournaments, which you then use to draft a team to compete in team-based tournaments. You work your way up qualifying ladders to the championship.

2004 supports voice chat. It also includes the possibility to give a limited number of command through speech recognition. The game also supports text-to-speech, translation in-game text messages into voice messages using the computer default SAPI 4/ SAPI 5 synthesis voice.