Honestly, who knows? An Unreal Tournament game is not something you review after a few afternoons of playing; and in my opinion not really something you can even pretend to cover in it’s entirety in a single entry. As such I won’t be answering the above-mentioned questions until my review, instead I’ll give an overview of my experiences with the game. On which fronts does it deliver? Where does it shine? And where are the kinks that need sorting out? Those are the questions I intend to answer today.

The Surprising

• Epic managed to squeeze in a lot of fixes that weren’t present in the beta demo. The server browser now properly sorts pings, mouse sensitivity is no longer fps-reliant, headshot hitboxes have been reduced, etc. The most prominent of these changes was the buff of the sniper rifle, which has received a higher rate of fire. This has resulted in the sniper rifle once again becoming a prominent weapon which simply feels good, it no longer feels sluggish like it did in the beta demo.
• The singleplayer storyline is surprisingly entertaining, as long as you don’t take it seriously. It really felt like you were going around the planet waging battles on properly themed maps and it was cool to fight in something else than the standard tournament for a change. It won’t match Crysis in terms of storytelling and cool-factor, but it certainly beat Call of Duty 4 in terms of pure enjoyability. It does make you want to keep playing, as long as you don’t play on insane level (which I did).
• Both Vehicle Capture the Flag and Warfare are surprisingly fun. Normally I detest vehicles in shooters, but these gamemodes are actually quite fun to play every now and then, perhaps in part because vehicles aren’t overpowered like they usually are. In comparison to Quake Wars, the sequel to my other all-time favorite shooter (Return to Castle Wolfenstein), Warfare definitely steals the crown in the vehicular shooter space.
• Character customization is cool. It’s nice to make your model that bit more personal, although the amount of items and models to choose from is unfortunately quite limited.
• Loque returns as the incredible 100% accuracy bot and part of the singleplayer storyline, as do Malcolm and Lauren. Strangely Xan is absent, as are some other old favorites.
• Cool new twists to maps and gameplay that don’t ruin the fun, or competitive viability! CTF-Strident features a ray of light that crosses the map and heals anything in it’s path, DM-Fearless features a new invulnerability pickup that lasts for a very short amount of time, etc.
• Capture the Flag is fun again! Somehow UT2004’s CTF mode never really did anything for me like the original UT’s did… but UT3’s does. This game is worth buying just for it’s awesome CTF mode. If anything is going to bring you back to oldschool CTF, this game is it!

The Good

• The graphics are absolutely stunning. Character models are, aside from their heads, on par with Crysis; and environments are, mostly, drop-dead gorgeous. Weapon and lighting effects are gorgeous and CTF-Coret has never looked this good… plus it runs like a dream. I can play all maxed out in my native resolution of 1680×1050 and I’m still scoring well over the standard 62 fps cap on the most demanding of maps!
• Map design in UT3 borders on perfection. I love the CTF maps in particular, which are all great fun to play with amazing layouts that should be perfectly suitable for competitive play. Most DeathMatch maps are of similar quality, and these are paired up with a bunch of quality remakes. Facing Worlds lovers have CTF-OmicronDawn, there’s CTF-Coret and CTF-Hydrosis (Hydro16!) for oldschool UT players, DM-Deimos (Hyperblast!) and DM-Deck for DeathMatch players, etc.
• Gameplay is awesome fun in a UT’99 way. It’s fast-paced, balanced and cool. This is the kind of gameplay that keeps you locked in multiplayer matches for hours on end, as you find yourself unable to stop having fun. A massive improvement over UT2004 and quite possibly on par with the original UT!
• Music is of great quality, with a lot of old tunes returning in remixed form. Bloodpumping music that will help your game become that much more intense - and certainly boosts the feeling of it being a successor to UT, not UT2004.
• Bots in instant action DeathMatches are more skilled than ever and will prove a challenge for even the most hardened of UT players. They also seem to work together more than they ever used to.
• Weapons are very well-balanced. They all have a purpose and they’re all powerful, even the enforcer. A major improvement over the shock/lightning/shield combo that was UT2004’s entire useful weaponset…
• The translocator doesn’t suck! It has limited charges and very limited reach, but you’d be hard pressed to run out of charges and telefragging has never been easier! This helps make CTF extra fun!
• Patches are already underway, with a huge 180MB beta patch already out which fixes a lot of problems previously discovered by the UT community.
• The players that are playing online right now make for an awesome community. Mostly very friendly players and I’ve yet to see anyone whine or cheat, hopefully that won’t change.
• Other characters are easily visible.

The Bad

• The server browser is unwieldy, as is the entire menu system itself.
• Most of the taunts suck and are clearly targetted towards the younger console audience.
• When playing the singleplayer campaign on insane level the bots cheat and have 100% accuracy. Meanwhile your own teammates are practically useless on any map with vehicles. Once a bot on my team decided to grab a leviathan and sit with it in our main base for the duration of the entire map.
• Widescreen is not properly supported. The only fix is to manually set the fov to 100, but this isn’t possible in the regular retail version because it doesn’t remember fov-settings. You can play in widescreen properly with the 1.01 beta patch however, which allows for in-menu fov changes.
• Little variety in character design, with a fair few similar models and only about 20 to choose from in all. This is a significant step back from UT2004 which already was a significant step back from UT’s variety in character models and skins.
• Epic made a lot of design decisions that don’t make any sense. Many basic, likely easy-to-implement, features have been left out for no apparent reason, such as crosshair selection. Meanwhile a lot of things were changed that shouldn’t have been: there are no more advanced statistics in-game, no more ping/fph display in the scoreboard, no more extensive menu system, the console key has been defaulted to F10, no more favorites lists, no more handy in-game menu that allows for voting and joining other games, etc…
• Very few players online thus far. This could be in part due to the very lengthy singleplayer ‘campaign’ and the fact that many European stores don’t yet sell the game.
• No Warcows! 

All in all Unreal Tournament 3 leaves an overwhelmingly positive impression as the most enjoyable multiplayer shooter since Unreal Tournament itself. Most of the negative points are minor, or already being fixed by Epic, who are renown for their post-release support. The UT vybe is firmly in place and this looks to become my main game of choice for a long time to come!

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