Single-or multi-player? Epic finally solve the age-old question and discover that there's really no difference at all.

Epicurean

A camera fly-by embarks on a seamless journey through an underground car park, rising into the neon glare of a futuristic but subtly decaying urban sprawl. We enter a faceless behemoth of a skyscraper, home to a sinister corporation which promotes ‘no-holds-barred fighting’. “Fifty years have passed since the founding of deathmatch,” we’re told. “The time has come to prove you are the best...”

So begins Unreal Tournament’s impressive intro sequence, but what of the rest of the game? Prematurely dismissed as a cynical pretender to Quake III Arena’s throne, Tournament was always going to struggle to build a reputation among gamers who grew to hate its predecessor’s consistently laggy Internet nature. By the time Epic had patched Unreal to full health, Quake II was firmly established as the frag fans’ game of choice, with Half-Life and Team Fortress Classic making good ground in recent months...

Epic lost the first multi-player round, then, but they’ve succeeded in making Tournament’s team-play every bit as involving, atmospheric and downright tense as the first game’s single-player mode. While it’s not quite 50 years since the founding of deathmatch (try taking the zero off the end), the time has come to prove who is the best. The next few months are going to be decisive in determining which of the three multi-player-focused big guns rules the fragging fields of the Web. It looks like Epic are holding all the cards, too. Quake III Arena’s Test versions have met with a mixed response, while Valve’s Team Fortress 2 has been pushed back to spring 2000 at the very earliest. But the real frustration for Epic’s rivals must be that Tournament is as good as it is ? That is to say, a supremely well designed, fast and gloriously attractive game which is crammed to bursting with new features, and which introduces the finest bot AI yet to grace a first-person shooter.

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