ProFocus: Unreal Tournament 2004
We have our reasons for picking UT2004 out of the series, and we’ll elaborate on them soon enough, but first some history.
The UT series was first released at the end of 1998 and hit critical acclaim, being touted as one of the best FPS games ever made and one of the pioneers of online FPS gaming. It’s extreme fast pace and dual firing modes for each weapon gave it a pretty high level of depth in weapons tactics, and the only thing that was similar (albeit only in speed) was Quake 3: Arena, its direct competitor. Competitive gaming for UT became common, with it showing up at Cyber-Athlete Professional League, World Cyber Games and Electronic Sports World Cup to name a few.
Eventually though, a new UT was released, named UT2003. Now, this did have some competitive scene, but it was too small and 2003 wasn’t widely accepted by the community, due to its incomplete feel. This was when UT2004 was released, and a massive community followed through. The movement was much more floaty and acrobatic, and duels became a much more tactical match and more precise than the original game.
In 2007, UT3 was unleashed upon the masses, but unfortunately, the community did not embrace it and there is little to no competitive scene, even to this day.
So now that the history is out of the way, our reason for picking UT2004 out of the bunch was that it had arguably the largest competitive scene, which is still quite decent in Europe. There was also an array of incredible players that came from UT2004 such as Lauke, Luxxiz, DevilMC, eVeNfLoW, and even an Australian player, Kore_au. With such a vast amount of professional gamers and tournaments, UT2004 was a no brainer. It also just happens to have the most frag vids, which we think we should head to now. Enough talking eh?
ProSkill
As usual, we’ve got three videos for you to drop your jaw over. The three on offer are ‘Frantic vs Skaven comeback’, ‘Malignancy’, and ‘UnrealNorth: The Movie’. Strap yourselves in and turn the volume up, time to watch.
Frantic vs Skaven: The Comeback
Though we usually show videos showcasing compilations of frags, this video on its own is worth watching. This was a semi-finals match between two well known 2004 players, Frantic and Skaven. Frantic is down by 6 frags, and there is just over 5 minutes left on the match. Losing this will lose him the spot in the finals against Ghoulink, and all Skaven needs to do is play defensively. What you then witness is something pretty freakin’ awesome:
We have to wonder just how Frantic feels after that comeback, and how devastated Skaven would be. Nonetheless, it was one hell of a play by Frantic and it’s quite a well known comeback by the 2004 community. If you’d like a HD version of this video, look no further than Unreal.ie for the goods.
Malignancy
Malignancy is a short video showcasing the sheer ferocity of one of, and if not the greatest UT2004 player ever, Luxxiz. Particularly well known for his double headshot kill in a duel against the WCG champion Lauke, Malignancy shows this and many other frags that will have you smacking your gob in disbelief:
So do you think he’s the best player ever? Just look at his accuracy! Ridiculous. If you’d like a higher res version of this video, look no further than RapidShare. It loves you long time. Now onto the final video, and the largest..
UnrealNorth: The Movie
What happens when you put together a video showcasing awesome frags from some of the most active and skilled players in the community? UnrealNorth happens. Featuring some hilarious and absolutely unbelievable frags, UnrealNorth comes in just shy of 11 minutes, and is a blast to watch:
Your eyes melted yet? No? Watch it again then, might just melt them. If you’d like a much higher res version of UnrealNorth: The Movie, then head on over to Filefront and download away!
That sums it up for our three videos this episode. We hope you enjoyed them as much as we did, and look forward to your feedback in the comments section. Now as usual, we always leave our readers with some tips too, and this episode is no exception.
L2Play
Let’s get one thing straight: UT2004 is not just about running and gunning and being great at shooting. There are a huge amount of factors that come into play when duelling or playing TDM. Things such as movement, map control and most importantly, timing, which is what we’ll be talking about.
Timing is essentially the timing of power up items, weapons and minor pick ups in a duel or TDM. If you know your map, and keep control of all the power ups and important weapons, then you essentially dominate. Of course, tactics and aiming do come into play, but even a bad shot can beat a good shot if they play their cards right.
As an example, the 100 shield in UT2004 respawns every 55 seconds after the first initial pick up. Basically when a match starts, the 100 armour will spawn 27 seconds after the timer has started ticking, and directly after you pick up the armour, it will spawn 55 seconds after you’ve picked it up. If it were a 20 minute match, you’d go to the 100 armour area and pick it up at 19:33. Once you’ve done this, you count down for 55 seconds and get back there by 18:38. Once you’ve picked it up, rinse repeat and you keep doing this throughout a match while running and gunning and thinking out your plans.
Timing like this can ultimately win you the match if you do it well and keep the opponent from gaining control of the armour pick ups. The more armour you have, the harder you are to kill. And for reference for people aspiring to play UT2004, this is one of the first things you should be learning if you’re keen on playing duels or TDM.
And that concludes the third episode of ProMode! We hope you enjoyed this episode and are keen on getting in on some UT action. Feel free to post feedback and comments in our comments section right below. Next week, we’ll be looking into the world of Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists and showcasing some team effort in Counter-Strike. We hope to see you there for another week of fragging. Until next time, ProMode out.
Or is it the week after? D:
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