If there’s one thing that’s important for a fast-paced multiplayer-based first person shooter, then it’s good quality maps. Unreal Tournament certainly featured plenty of those, but it’s sequels tended to disappoint greatly on this front. Now with Unreal Tournament 3’s European release only days away and the beta demo proving to be surprisingly fun, there is only one question on the minds of Capture the Flag and DeathMatch players worldwide: what will the maps be like!?

Fortunately there has been a fair bit of news on exactly this front, and it’s looking good! But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Further in I’ll be covering some of the maps that have been unveiled in short gameplay videos and a bunch of benchmarking tests. Interestingly it looks as though the demo maps were amongst the most demanding in the entire game, so we can expect better performance than DM-Shangrila and vCTF-Suspense on average! Once again it seems the UT3 engine isn’t just pretty, but amazingly scaleable as well…

Let’s deal with map layout first. In UT2003 and UT2004 it was common practice to be obstructed by all sorts of tiny objects in equally tiny hallways, essentially limiting any manuevrability you might have had to minimal proportions. Judging by the gameplay videos you can see over here on PlanetUnreal, it looks like Epic learned from their past mistakes.

The above is most easily illustrated through the remake of CTF-Coret, which looks absolutely awesome to play by the way. Hallways are even more roomy than they were in the original, while remaining true to the original layout. Yet it also looks gorgeous in comparison due to Epic’s new design, with a beautiful city background and some nice, non-obstructive, decorative elements. The maps of CTF-Strident and CTF-OmicronDawn also seem like some very solid maps, with a few original gameplay elements like flag emplacements on lifts.

On the DeathMatch front we have maps like DM-Deimos, DM-Gateway and DM-Heatray which will undoubtedly be popular on public servers, but definitely won’t see any use in organized play. Meanwhile there are a couple of decent maps like DM-Deck and DM-Sanctuary, which look like they’ll be playable, but certainly no favorites for anyone. More interestingly is the vast array of maps which look genuinely awesome to play in organized clan matches and public servers alike. Whether it’s DM-Fearless, DM-RisingSun or DM-Sentinel - they look like genuine UT maps with great design, layout and weapon placement. Think of them as the UT3 equivalents of DM-Rankin, or for the more oldschool UT fans like myself: DM-Turbine. Even 3 high quality maps is a mighty impressive count for stock maps nowadays, which also seems promising for the 6 DM maps still unrevealed thus far.

In terms of aesthetics the maps in UT3 seem to have a feel of their own. They’re not quite like anything you’ve seen in previous UT games, even the remakes like CTF-Coret. Some maps seem almost Quake-like in terms of aesthetics, with many shades of brown all over. Others appear genuinely unique, like DM-Shangrila and DM-RisingSun. Whereas yet others seem like very generic modern-day-city shooter maps, such as DM-Defiance.

Overall most of the maps don’t immediately make you think ‘Ah, that’s UT!’, but the layout of many of them seems very oldschool UT: pure quality. Some maps also do immediately suck you back into that oldschool UT atmosphere. Just watching the PlanetUnreal newbie (let’s face it: he’s not even a decent UT player) move about in DM-Fearless made me think straight back to those oldschool games of DM-Hyperblast. CTF-Coret, while featuring an entirely different background, still looks very much like Coret. Deck, while having a more grounded look, still very distinctly resembles that old pubbers-favorite Deck16.

While aesthetics and layout clearly aren’t much of a problem for the stock maps in UT3, there is one other thing that might turn things awry: performance. The demo maps varied quite a bit in terms of performance, with Heatray being much more playable on low-end PCs than Shangrila for example. On this front German magazine PC Games Hardware comes to the rescue with benchmarks for every map in the game… and it looks like DM-Shangrila and vCTF-Suspense were amongst the most demanding maps in the entire game!

As you can see in those benchmarks shots it looks like performance won’t be a problem at all. The beta demo generally performed well even on very old hardware, and seeing those maps being amongst the most demanding in the game only confirms the vast scaleability of this awesome engine. Just about anyone should be able to install this game, head online and have fun on any variety of maps with the awesome gameplay of this new UT game.

It’s great to finally have another fast-paced arena shooter to look forward to that actually looks to have a sizable selection of quality maps at release! Personally I’ve already preordered the game, so all that’s left is to wait until friday to see what the remaining maps are like. In any case, it looks like good times are ahead for DM and CTF fans alike… and you’d be missing out on the greatest multiplayer fun in nearly a decade if you pass this one up.

If only it were friday now!

Share This

If you liked this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!