Post by b0b on Apr 21st, 2008 at 10:10am
Review time!
I can summarize this entire review in four words: This game kicks ass!
Admittedly, I'm a bit of an Unreal Tournament fanboy. I've been playing UT since the original came out in 1999, and have wasted countless hundreds of hours playing around with fan-created content and getting my butt kicked online.
I liked the direction Epic took with UT 2003/2004 with the new game types and the addition of vehicles, but the gameplay seemed to be slower than the original UT. The entire charm of UT, for me, was the ridiculous speed at which the game ran. You got in fast, you got your weapons, you made a few kills, and you died. Then you started all over again.
UT3 has done the impossible by combining the speed of the original UT with the enhancements of UT 2004. You respawn immediately upon dying (instead of waiting forever like Counterstrike: Source or Battlefield 2). Vehicles play a bigger role in other game styles like Capture the Flag, and a larger number of vehicles are at your disposal. Each team has at least two flying vehicles and four or five ground vehicles, including one tank and one super-death-r0x0r vehicle of DOOM. Even if you're playing on a map with several massive über-vehicles, though, you can still kick a lot of ass on foot. That's a nice change of pace.
Interestingly, Epic actually put a lot of effort into the single player mode. The original UT had a "combat ladder" which was simply a bunch of maps with pre-set bad guys, and UT 2004 had a lame tournament system that allowed you to earn credits to buy and pay team mates. In UT3, a fairly sizable war campaign has been added with a decent plot and some respectable voice acting. You're hired by a private corporation as part of a security force and you get to fight your way across the planet to protect your company's interests.
The level design is everything I've come to expect from Epic. The levels vary greatly in style and substance, but all of them are perfectly polished and really appeal to their specific game types. Deathmatch levels are tight and fast with plenty of corridors and blind corners. Warfare (think UT2004 Onslaught mode) maps are absolutely massive and feature a lot of interesting terrain with multiple pathways to each objective. The maps are a riot when you get 40+ players online.
The only downside I had in my UT3 experience was a driver problem, which is Creative Lab's fault, not Epic's fault. As has been the case for the past decade, Creative's audio drivers are total crap. I have to disable Hardware OpenAL support or the game will crash to the desktop every five minutes. I've tried a variety of drivers, but Creative seems to be unaware of the problem (or they simply don't care). Suck it, Creative.
The graphics are, of course, absolutely top notch. I played a little bit of UT2004 just for nostalgia last night, and the difference is astounding. The outdoor maps have believable foliage and grass, while the indoor maps have believably rusty metals and dank, damp corridors. The wooden buildings in the Japanese levels look incredibly realistic. Graphical realism is absolutely top notch, and it seems to be done in a way that doesn't strain PC resources.
If you love first person shooters, buy this game. I promise you won't be disappointed!
-b0b
(...best $30 he's spent in a long time.)