Unreal Tournament 3

Rating Mature Genre first-person-shooter Publisher Midway/Epic Games

It’s hard to believe how much has actually changed in the near ten years since the original Unreal Tournament’s release; both in the UT franchise itself as well as the First-Person Shooter genre as a whole. To be honest, I had never felt like joining the UT bandwagon in the early days, preferring to stick with the more ambiance-driven World War mainstays of the day and the over the top scale and presentation of Starsiege: Tribes’ team driven objectives. Needless to say I was never one for the close quarter’s fragfests or capture the flag matches that seemed to dominate the UT world. However, as the franchise grew and matured so did my accepting of it, culminating with Unreal Tournament 2004’s addition of vehicles and its large scale Onslaught mode battles. But, is UT3 a welcome and renewed return or just more of the same?

To answer that simply, even though UT3 feels quite familiar, it builds enough on its predecessors that the game is worthy of yet another go around. Gameplay is as fast as ever while the graphics are more beautiful that ever. The Unreal Engine seems to hold a steady frame rate, even during the most hectic of firefights. Hopefully, this was to be expected from a game being released on its own engine, as it is quite disheartening to see the problems that some licensing developers have had when it comes to the Unreal Engine on consoles.

As far as game types go, returning FPS standards include Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Capture the Flag. UT3 has another mode called Vehicle Capture the Flag which is exactly as it sounds. Game types that have not made the cut from previous Unreal titles include Onslaught, Bombing Run, Invasion, Mutant, Last Man Standing, Domination, Double Domination, and Assault. UT3 includes a Warfare game type, The main component is an orb that is carried by a player and can instantly capture nodes if successfully transported. It acts sort of like Onslaught coupled with Bombing Run with a little bit of Assault thrown in for good measure. A Duel mode is also present, implementing a queue system that allows 1-on-1 battles to play out much like the arcade days of yore: winner stays and loser heads to the back of the line.

A single player/co-op campaign is also included in UT3 that focuses on a group of Ronin mercenaries seeking revenge after having fled to Earth from their home colony. As one would expect from a multiplayer arena-centric FPS, this campaign is little more than a jump in point for new players to get acclimated to the game’s varied modes and items. Thought it does a great job of doing just that and treating us to some great cut scenes at the same time, most Unreal veterans will skip this mode entirely and jump right into the online foray. And who can blame them, since that’s where UT has always shined.

Unreal Tournament 3 on Xbox 360 has been released almost seven months after its PC and PS3 counterparts. This extra time seems to have worked to UT’s benefit in some respects, allowing the developers to better optimize the Unreal Engine for Microsoft’s console. Even though some features have been added as 360 exclusives (2-player split screen and additional maps and characters), the promise of user-generated content is gone entirely due to Microsoft mandated restrictions. Though this a major detriment to this version, the core game is solid enough in its own right to warrant a purchase for major fans of the genre, especially if the Xbox 360 is their console of choice.