Yeah, basically Unreal 1 got me into playing deathmatch in the first place. Since I never played on LAN parties a lot and internet was still freaking expensive in Germany back then, it was the only chance for us poor offline people to play some deathmatch. The funny thing was, when I finally got to play Unreal Tournament against real people I could actually hold my own against them.
I always found Unreal slightly better than Half-Life, though I own both plus the addons (only opposing force, never bought blueshift). Half-Life just got worse once you reach the alien world levels and the final fight was kind of lame. I'd much rather have fought the g-man or someone along that line. You guys do realize however that it was half life that started all the heavy scripting people here like to hate so much?