The original Unreal Tournament was the introduction to online and off-line multiplayer action for a lot of players with its gorgeous graphics, multiple game modes, reliable Net play, and a never-ending supply of intense action made it an instant classic. It’s offline bot modes were also valuable to those who didn’t yet have an internet connection. Its sequel, Unreal Tournament 2003 offers plenty of impressive attributes. 

The graphics is one of the stand out features, implementing a smoothly integrated terrain engine the jagged and harsh lines of most 3D games are gone. The use of the Unreal Engine 2.0 brings beautifully detailed environments, with dynamic lighting and textures. The maps here are big, beautiful, and are full of fine detail. This is truly one of the best-looking games on the market when it was released and it runs remarkably well, even on modern hardware without any rendering flaws.

Audio play’s a big role in UT2003, A variety of diverse and amusing taunts, complaints, and other messages come from both your teammates and your opponents. The soundtrack is powerful and dramatic, although it moves quickly to the background during a heated game, a lot of the tracks are recycled from Unreal championship for the Xbox. It has a KMFDM electro/industrial feel to it that fits with the game’s theme, whilst the Egyptian-themed maps benefit from similar music. Sound effects are really good with plenty of bass-intensive booms and blasts that liven up any gunfight. The game has support for EAX with was supported on certain Creative SoundBlaster cards and gives extra environmental audio effects.

There are five game modes – Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the flag, Domination 2.0, and Bombing Run. The first three should be familiar to anyone who has played any online arena shooter. Domination 2.0 is a popular mode from the first Unreal Tournament but has changed where both teams only need to hold two bases for a few seconds for them to score. Bombing Run mixes team-based death matching with ball sports to create an incredibly appealing and challenging variation, although its mostly just an altered version of Capture the flag.

Although most players will get Unreal Tournament 2003 for its online gameplay, the game also offers a good single-player mode to help you get accustomed to the game’s new maps and mechanics. Single player works much like the multiplayer mode, but with bots as your teammates and enemies. The noticeable improvement is in the AI’s team tactics. When playing a bot-filled team game such as Domination, your computer-controlled teammates will work together, support you, and score points all on their own and they’ll do a decent job. You can dictate the AI’s general behavior before a match (defense, offence, auto, support, and so on), or issue orders to them during play via a quick menu. Most of the online servers have been phased out, following the release of UT2004 but you can still find the odd server still offering online play. Epic did shut off the master server (along with other Unreal titles) but third party servers are available.

The single-player experience in Unreal Tournament 2003 is designed around the concept of a tournament ladder, where players fight through a series of matches to become the champion. You pick your teammates early on, and as you progress, other teams offer you teammate swaps. Each competitor has a rating for things such as accuracy, agility, stamina, and team play that come into play when you trade teammates. There are different races like the Juggernauts that move slower but have more health, that adds a strategy element to the game. Adding to the variety are more than 30 characters and maps to choose from, with the game supporting additional maps and skins. Also, power-ups abound throughout the levels. This lets you unleash mass carnage with the help of double damage, super shields, and even a new adrenaline rush that temporarily increases your abilities. Finally, there’s a horde of mutators that let you alter gameplay elements, allowing for big heads, low gravity, and instant kills, if you want.

There are nine weapons available, including a flak cannon, a rocket launcher, a machine gun, a minigun, a bio-rifle, and a new sniper-riflelike lightning gun. The weapons are paced differently than in the previous game, making accuracy more of an issue and preventing random wild fire. However, the downside of this is that all the guns have been toned down from the original weapons of mass destruction. The biggest complaint that can be levelled at Unreal Tournament 2003 is that it wasn’t improved over the original enough. The game doesn’t pack in as much variety and features as it could have. More game modes and weapons would have helped put it over the top in terms of value. 

UT2003 was only released on Windows and MacOS, the console counterpart would be Unreal Championship that was released for the original Xbox. 

Windows: This version will work on Windows 98 with DirectX 8 or higher, all the way to Windows 11. Some features like DirectPlay will need to be manually installed through the Windows features:

Mac OS: The Macintosh port was only ever released for OS X for PowerPC, no Universal patch was made available. You will need a Mac running OS X Jaguar with a PowerPC G4 or G5 processor for the best experience.