Genre: First Person Shooter
Year: 2004
Developed by: Epic Games
Published by: Epic Games
Platforms: PC, OS X
#186
Feeling Like: No Flak
I’m not going to write much in this entry. Unreal Tournament 2004 was responsible for one of the most fun LAN parties I’ve ever been to, and looking back on it, it may have been the last.
Kyle came to GNS in Grade 11 and we become fast friends. Ian was his brother, who also became part of our group of nerds very quickly due to our shared love of Star Trek, video games and generally eating way too much food that their mum would gracefully order to keep us quiet in their basement of Hollywood Crescent.
It wasn’t our first LAN there, but it was easily our biggest. We invited everybody we could, nobody was missing. Actually that’s not entirely true, where was Kasim? Kasim, if you’re reading this, do you remember where you were in June of 2004? Dobbo, Eric, Dave O, Scott, Mark, Kyle, Ian, Raymond, Justin and myself lugged our giant CRT monitors to the Smith household which, despite the small doors, seemed perfectly designed for this kind of pilgrimage. The driveway curved towards the back patio, and you could get to the basement without touching a single stair. It’s not as if we were geriatrics who couldn’t handle a few seconds of cardio, but when you’re carrying hundreds of dollars of heavy ass machinery, it’s good to eliminate any obstacles.
And that was it. We played hours of Unreal Tournament 2004. Onslaught was easily our favorite mode of play; according to Wikipedia (since I can’t actually remember what Onslaught entailed)…”vehicle-based game mode in which the objective is to capture a series of power nodes connecting the player and their opponents’ bases and destroy the power core located within their base. First team to destroy opponents’ power core wins.”
That sounds about right! I know we did a few Deathmatches and Capture the Flags to ensure the connection was strong enough, but the rest of the night was 5 on 5 Onslaught. I don’t remember who was on which team, but the I do recall when we finally took a food break, it was already late and that ended the LAN. Potential LANNERS, I have a message for you; Never go out for sustenance, always order in!
Thanks for the great time, boys. The Smith basement held many treasured gaming memories, but this was one of the best and the sole reason Unreal Tournament 2004 is so far up on the 500.
The 500 