Unreal Tournament 2004 is now available for free thanks to its fan community, and they've even updated the game for modern PCs: 'This is the first public patch for Unreal Tournament 2004 in over 20 years'

A Unreal Tournament 2004 player wearing wearing clown makeup and a top-hat celebrates after winning a match. — (Image credit: Epic Games)

Epic Games may have since left the BSP-carved valleys of Unreal in favour of the cartoonish hills of Fortnite, but at least it hasn't locked the series that put the company on the map deep in a digital vault somewhere. In the last few years, it has given permission for the Internet Archive to assume hosting duties for its older shooters, which is why you can download both Unreal Gold and the original Unreal Tournament from archive.org.

Now, the latest of these rehabilitated shooters has been released into the wild, bounding across the fields in search of flags to capture. Yep, Unreal Tournament 2004 is available to download for free, with Epic's approval.

"Please note that this is the first public patch for Unreal Tournament 2004 in over 20 years," writes UT project manager and computer science professor Stijn-volckaert. "We have implemented numerous fixes and improvements, written a new SDL backend for Linux and macOS, and even a new renderer. We have also migrated the entire codebase to modern build systems. Some new bugs may have slipped in!"

If you've never played Unreal Tournament 2004 and are wondering whether you should, the answer is yes, as soon as possible. It's generally regarded as the high-point of the series, certainly on a par with the 1999 original. UT 2004 combines the visual upgrades from UT 2003 with a much wider array of game modes.

Crucially, UT 2004 introduced the vehicle-based Onslaught modes, and brought back UT's innovative, objective-based Assault mode missing from UT 2003. One of those Assault maps, AS-Mothership, takes the action into space, with you duking it out with the opposing team in fighter craft before the attacking team boards the titular mothership in an attempt to blow up the core. It's rad.

Whether you'll be able to find a game for a multiplayer shooter that's been out of action for years is another matter. But I should imagine this new release will coax a few players back online. Even if it doesn't, UT-2004's bot AI is pretty robust from what I recall. Either way, Stijn-volckaert says the community patch "works in online games except on servers with AntiTCC".

TOPICS

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.