The Unreal franchise has arguably stolen the online fragfest crown from Id’s Quake series. Here's the boxart for the game. Through the introduction on innovative play modes such as Assault (which predated similar gameplay models in Return to Castle Wolfenstein by no less than a year) and Domination, as well as an overall aesthetic all its own, the online entries in the Unreal universe have flourished while the offline ones have met with a relatively lukewarm reception. This trend continued when the Unreal franchise made its way over to the Xbox, as fans flocked towards Unreal Championship, one of the premier games for the burgeoning Live community whilst leaving the recently released port of Unreal II: Awakening (a primarily singleplayer affair) to relatively mediocre sales.
|