Gaming: this classic shooter just got re-released, and you can play it for free

Dig out that yellow Livestrong bracelet and prepare to re-engage your circle-strafing skills, because 2004 has stopped by and bestowed us all with one of its greatest gifts: Unreal Tournament 2004, patched up so it works on modern PCs, available for free, with the original studio’s blessing.

It says something about how fun UT 2004 is that developer Epic kept the servers on until 2022, some 18 years after the breakneck-paced arena shooter first arrived. It threw vehicles and a 32-player Onslaught mode into the burgeoning online shooter genre, along with visuals so good you were genuinely proud to have them on your screen.

The simplicity and purity of that experience gave the game incredible longevity. While modern shooters grew ponderous and exhausting by experimenting with po-faced narratives and featureless open worlds, UT 2004 consistently offered a quick fix of adrenaline. So it was a bit of a blow when the support finally ended, meaning players could no longer find each other online and trade rockets in multiplayer servers.

That led an amateur developer collective called oldUnreal – who’ve previously preserved and restored Unreal and Unreal Tournament 99 – to embark on another preservation project. They’ve patched it so that it works at widescreen resolutions and on modern operating systems, and released it for free.

And legally, too, with Epic Games’ blessing. It’s available now and frankly, it’s quite hard to think of reasons not to reinstall it.