The ultimate arena first person shooter
Unreal Tournament is just as important as StarCraft when it comes to kick starting e-sports. However, the road this game took was a bit different. While Star Craft was deeply rooted in tactical as well as strategic combat and quick reflexes none the less, UT99 was the definitive twitch reflex game, though in order to become really great at it and be able to play professionally, you had to develop other tactical and communicational skills as well. Unreal Tournament was designed from the ground up to be played in multiplayer; therefore its single player campaign was nothing than a series of skirmishes with bots. They were ok, but the challenge began in multiplayer. It wasn't only about the player however, many game types required well skilled and finely attuned teams. A well balanced team was sometimes more efficient than a fast but non communicative team that relied solely on speed and shooting precision. Compared to UT2004 or UT3, the first game was way faster. You had to learn each map to the point where you didn't even look at where you were going, to save time on tilting the camera upwards when faced with an enemy. At any rate, the game had a massive following and to this day you can still find up and running servers to kick start a game. Along with Quake, Unreal Tournament remains one of the best multiplayer twitch response first person games, so you better be ready before you engage PCs, otherwise you won't survive for more than a few seconds.
