When comparing Cube 2: Sauerbraten vs Unreal Tournament, the Slant community recommends Unreal Tournament for most people. In the question“What are the best PC arena shooters?” Unreal Tournament is ranked 5th while Cube 2: Sauerbraten is ranked 9th. The most important reason people chose Unreal Tournament is:
This game is in such early development and has so many tutorials for helping people get involved in development that if you're able to create a good map (or mod), there are still few enough mappers/developers around to where if you can get that map noticed, it might end up sticking around for the rest of the game's life as a main staple. Your map has the potential to live forever.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Simple gameplay
There are no skills beyond those common to all AFPS games: very basic movement, aim, weapon switching, item timing, map knowledge. There is less to learn so newbies can become proficient more quickly, but there is still the ability to hone those basic skills to a very high level, as evidenced by regular community tournaments.
Pro Fast movement
Movement is very simple but acceleration is very fast, so hitting an opponent good at dodging is more difficult than perhaps any other AFPS.
Pro Cross platform
Available for Windows, MacOS and Linux.
Pro Free, open-source
Pro Low hardware requirements
If you can run the original Quake 3 you can probably run this (with the advanced graphics features disabled).
Pro Easy map editing
Getting into map editing is very easy, which has resulted in a large number of user-created maps with a wide variety, from massive sky castles where you have to hunt down your opponent from far away, to large CTF maps, to competitive, claustrophobic 1v1 arenas with teleports.
Pro Many gametypes and gametype combinations
Free-For-All (everyone for themselves, all weapons allowed), Capture (where teams fight for control of points on the map), Capture the Flag (two teams fight to capture the other's flag and return it to their base), Teamplay (defeat the other team's players to score points for your team), Tactics (FFA, no weapon pickups, players spawn with random equipment), Efficiency (FFA, no weapon pickups, players spawn with all equipment) InstaHold, where two teams have to possess a single flag for a minimum of 20 seconds to score points; Collect (kill enemy players and collect their skulls, which then have to be returned to the home base), and Protect (teams try to touch each other's flag). Instagib, regenerative weapons ("regen") and Teamplay versions of most of the game modes are available, as well as online cooperative map editing—one of Cube 2's most interesting and popular features.
Pro Has a Doom-like singleplayer campaign
Pro Great chance to get involved in the development
This game is in such early development and has so many tutorials for helping people get involved in development that if you're able to create a good map (or mod), there are still few enough mappers/developers around to where if you can get that map noticed, it might end up sticking around for the rest of the game's life as a main staple. Your map has the potential to live forever.
Pro Great movement
You can run, sprint, jump, dodge, slide, wall run, wall dodge, lift jump, and lift dodge. That's a lot of movements for you to utilize. And once you master them, it feels like you're surfing around the map, just flowing.
Pro Lots of pro players to learn from at this early phase of the game's development
Because it's still early in this game's development (UT4), a lot of the players you'll run into are top players from previous UT's (UT99, UT2K3, UT3) and have been at the game for over 15 years. This means that yes, while you'll likely get dominated when you run into these veterans, it's also a great opportunity to better your own play. There aren't a lot of gaming communities out there where you can just jump in and immediately start playing with and learning from the best players in the world.
Pro Completely free, open, and mod-able
Pro The cleanest graphic representation of projectile/area of effect/hitbox
You will know just from a glance how big of an area each weapon will EXACTLY affect, how long it takes for a timed grenade to explode, how big each projectile is and so on. Graphics are made for competitive accuracy but it didn't sacrifice the amazing visuals and cool (but subtle) particle effects.
Pro Strong community
Members of the community are beyond supportive, and they generate some amazing content. Gametypes, Maps, Custom Weapon Sets, etc. there are also semi-frequent ESL cups that anyone can join.
Pro You get to have your say in the game's development and future
The game is not yet in Beta. It's not yet even in Alpha - it's currently in the "Pre-Alpha" phase. You have the chance to interact with both Epic and community developers to make a difference.
Cons
Con Simple graphics
For the most part it looks like a game from the early 2000s. There are advanced options that use a lot more GPU power, but inefficiently compared to modern games, and many competitive players turn these off in favour of visual clarity and a really high framerate.
Con Simple gameplay
The gameplay is more basic than almost all other AFPS games. Movement doesn't get any more advanced than recoil/rocket jumping, without even crouching or bunnyhopping. This is great for newbies and for becoming competent quickly but for experienced AFPS players getting around the map is less interesting and there are less skills to work on - just the basics of aiming, weapon selection, item timing, and map knowledge.
Con This game is abandoned and will never be finished.
It's been over 2 years since Epic Games did any work on Unreal Tournament, and the last communications they have had with the community is a few throaway comments on a stream or a Discord chat server. The game is dead and older Unreal Tournament games are more polished & populated, go play those instead.
Con Difficult to know how big the game will ever get
The Unreal Tournament franchise has been around for over 15 years and used to reign supreme above all the other FPS's. Today however, it's much harder to predict how well it'll do compared to other top FPS games. That combined with the fact that it's a very difficult game to learn, you might end up honing your UT skills for nothing at the end of the day.
Con Constantly changing game mechanics and balancing
Because the game is still in "Pre-Alpha," the game has the potential to change in both major and minor ways from build to build. The majority of your gained experience will transfer from build to build, however it can be a bit of an annoyance having to relearn balances over and over again.
Con Playerbase is a little small these days
Con Unbalanced weapons
As of writing this (8/19/2016) the flak canon is over powered, but it's not a big deal because they change the weapon balance with each new build (about once a month).
Con There's a huge skill gap
Many of the players currently involved in the community at the moment have been playing Unreal Tournament for over 15 years. If you're new to the UT franchise or arena shooters in general, there's a chance every time you boot up the game that you'll run into and get trucked by those vets.