When the dust cleared, Quake Wars was left dead and bleeding, while UT3 managed to walk calmly out, secure in the knowledge that its delicate balance of complex mechanics and streamlined game design made it the most superior multiplayer shooter on the market.
If Halo 3 was the multiplayer game of the year for consoles, then Unreal Tournament 3 was its grossly superior, PC-orientated older brother. Gorgeous to look at and with a nice simple selection of mutators and modes, this was Unreal Tournament taken back to basics in many ways. There's only a handful of different game types in the vanilla install, but this is compensated for in the superior map design which manages to spew buckets of complexity into even the simplest CTF level.
Every time Epic had scaled back though it had also added on so that, while there is an initially simple set of available game types, it’s complemented by a huge array of vehicles and as good a singleplayer campaign as you’ll ever find in a game like this.
The strength of UT3 lies in two places – the longevity and alterability of the Unreal Engine 3, and the passion of the team behind it. We had a chance to chat to Mark Rein at the UT3 launch and his passion for the game was almost tangible at points.
The whole team at Epic has worked to create an engine which is not only used by several games in this list, but which continues to fully support the mod community – securing Unreal Tournament 3 a solid future for years to come.
Source: Bit-Tech