The evolution of the twitch shooter.
Unreal Tournament 2004 is one of the few games nowadays that consists of incredibly fast-paced action, as opposed to the slower, more tactically paced military shooters. It's basically the evolution of the "twitch" shooter, a genre which has been mostly abandoned because it became stale. Developers simply did the same thing over and over again. However, the guys at Epic obviously know that there's more territory to be mined here, and the real key to Unreal Tournament 2004 is how it combines the fast pace and quick action of twitch-based shooters with innovative, fresh new ideas that really give it life, and ultimately make it the best game to offer you incredibly fun carnage.
It's not mindless, though. UT2004 sports surprising depth, not to mention variety. There's a big variety of modes, from Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch to Double Domination to Capture the Flag to Assault and then Onslaught. While each mode is individually outstanding, most people's hearts will either lie in a combination of the vehicle-based combat of Onslaught and Assault and the on-foot frenetic pace of both forms of Deathmatch. The Deathmatch is relatively similar, just with newly polished and redesigned weapons, plus an absolutely huge stock of maps. Assault is an extremely fun objective-based game, in which you switch sides periodically from offense to defense and try to beat each other's times.
Onslaught is probably the best mode though, as well as the most popular. In Onslaught, each team has a home base which is linked to the other by a series of power nodes, which are basically capturable spawn points. The object of it is to destroy the other team's power core, which is located in their home base. However, you can't attack the power core unless you have the closest power-node to it, and you can't have ANY power-node unless you have the consecutive one. This really helps to focus the gameplay and create specific hotspots of all-out, absolutely adrenaline-pumping action instead of spread-out battlefields. Another really great thing about UT2004 is how it makes sure that you are NEVER stuck on boring, on-foot journeys out to the action, only to have to redo it every time you die - you can always warp from any node you have to another node that you have on the map. This makes the game incredibly addictive and extremely hard to be frustrated at and quit, which means you can play for hours at a time without even noticing.
Onslaught would be a really, really great mode even without the vehicles, but the vehicles really do help to sell it. Because of the afore-mentioned warping, vehicles will often be free for your use (although on-foot combat is still great). The vehicles are expertly balanced, from the airborne Raptor, to the hovering Manta, to the jeep-like Scorpion, then to the lumbering Goliath tank, and finally to the absolutely massive Leviathan (which is only included in certain maps). However, even if you're on foot you don't have to worry about always being killed by vehicles, as there are always tactics to use, from launching grenades to using the vehicle-tracking AVRIL to using shock combos or the lightning gun, or even hopping into a turret and shooting away.
The graphics are spectacular and scale extremely well on low-end machines. Both the sound and music are terrific. The value is pretty much unbeatable, considering the loads of downloadable free content from the developer itself, as well as probably the best mods to exist for any game ever. Overall, UT2004 makes a strong case for itself as the best multiplayer shooter thus far, and even now is an experience that should not be missed, because there is simply nothing that can match it.