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From frenetic team-based realtime first-person combat to deathmatch free-for-alls, UT3 is a 'Halo killer'
I decided to take a break from playing through Crysis to take a look at the newest entry in the Unreal franchise. As I expected, I wasn't disappointed. In this review, we'll take a look at the available game modes, the graphics in the core game, the gameplay itself, and the editor that ships with the whole shebang.
GRAPHICS
To start: the graphics in UT3 aren't quite as good as its major competitor, Crysis. This doesn't affect my feelings on the game itself: UT3 is intended for a completely different purpose than Crysis (or Bioshock, which uses a modified Unreal engine), and the purpose doesn't necessarily include face-melting visuals. That said, UT3 does look very good even at slightly diminished quality settings, and with my built-for-Oblivion-when-it-came-out PC, I still managed to convince it to serve up between 20 and 30 fps (higher, depending on the location on the map), which is quite playable.
Before you castigate me for that last, I once happily ran the original Black & White on a Pentium Pro 60MHz. That is not a typo.
One of the interesting things about this incarnation of Unreal Tournament is the texturing. Textures, in this game, aren't really just textures at all, but materials. I'll get to that in detail later, but for now suffice to say that you can do pretty much whatever you like with your textures in the newest UT, and all the textures in the game do look just great.
Character animations are satisfyingly convincing, with sprawling death slides and flips and whatnot and explosions which, while not meeting the Crysis standard of "best explosions ever in a game", certainly qualify for a wolflike grin each time you see one. The most extreme example of this is, of course, the Redeemer: a (for the uninitiated) remote-guided tactical nuclear missile (and who doesn't want one of those?), which ends in a literally earthshaking and blinding explosion that rivals all others in this fragfest.
The vehicle animations and materials are equally good, and each one has its own unique look and feel that is instantly recognizable. Among my personal favorites is the Darkwalker, which is- for all it was swiped lock, stock, and barrel from Command and Conquer 3- by far the most impressive from a visual standpoint. This three-legged walker is one of the best vehicles in the game, and it's quite clear the modelers, texture artists, and animators paid special attention to how this thing moves, looks, and behaves in combat.
So far as gaming environments are concerned, the variation between locales is quite impressive. This game contains environments ranging from windblown deserts areas, to market districts, to forests and frozen wastes. F.E.A.R. this game is most certainly not- each area has its own 'attitude', if you will, its own paths and unique design. None of the maps are "boring", all of the designs are fairly inspired, and thus the gameplay is enhanced- please believe me, you will not get bored by thinking, "hmm it seems I've been here on another map".
GAME MODES
Once again, Unreal Tournament lives up to its reputation for delivering multiple "games" in a single box. While not boasting the veritable smorgasboard of modes available in UT2004, UT3 still delivers the best of the best: Campaign (a single-player mode), Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the FLAG (FLAG, for Field LAttice Generator, per the single-player mode), Vehicle CTF, Warfare (in which you must connect nodes to the enemy power core before destroying it), and a one-on-one mode (which I haven't played because I only own a single copy as of this writing). Each game mode has something different to offer; by far the longest games I've played are in CTF or VCTF mode. Deathmatch and team deathmatch offer the run-and-gun insanity you've come to expect from the UT series, and the single-player campaign mode is a welcome addition for new players to help get them up to speed.
As if that weren't enough, UT3 includes things called mutators, which alter the gameplay across the board. Some of these include the Big Head mutator, which makes people have huge heads on their characters; the slow-motion kill mutator (one of my personal favorites), which slows time down for a moment when you make a kill; the instagib mutator (which blasts apart your enemies when they get hit by any weapon), and a configurable mutator that allows you to replace any weapon(s) in the map with others.
Can you say, "Redeemer Arena?" I just knew you could. :D
GAMEPLAY
UT3 gameplay is fairly straightforward, and easily grasped by even the newest nuggets. Rules depend on the game modes, but to list them all quickly:
Rule #1: kill everyone.
Rule #2: kill everyone not your team color.
Rule #3: get the other color FLAG, and take it to yours without yours getting taken in the meantime.
Rule #4: control all nodes between your core and theirs, and then destroy their core.
What makes things difficult for the player are the array of weapons and vehicles available to everyone: someone might headshot you from far above for an instant kill, or run you down with a floating hovercar. Sandstorms might blind you, giving you cover- or keeping you from seeing what your enemies are up to. An enemy darkwalker might stalk its way through your ranks; fortunately, it is possible to give orders to your team by either pressing 'v' or simply speaking your orders into your headset mic (which also works when playing offline, with bots).
Environmental hazards also abound. It is fully possible on some maps to go flying off into deep space, or fall into the ocean with no way back (which means death). Luckily, spawn points on each and every map allow you to quickly rejoin the battle; there's no real 'penalty' for dying ingame.
THE EDITOR
UT3 ships with an editor that is, at its heart, nearly identical to the editor in UT2K4. There are differences, of course; the biggest difference seems to be the material editor. Using this new addition to the UT editor, the modder/mapper can create complex networks of materials that include features like normal and specular mapping, animations, and apparently just about everything Maya is capable of, materials-wise.
In both Maya and the UT editor, materials are constructed using a visual network of nodes, which allows you to see individually items such as specular maps, normal maps, effects of alpha (transparency) channels, and much more. While very intimidating at first, merely playing with the material editor gives one a great feeling of "I can do anything I like", and the results in the final game show that that is indeed the case. Flexibility appears to be the rule of the day for this engine- so much so, that there are a whole lot of upcoming games that have declared their intent to implement this engine.
CONCLUSION
Unreal Tournament 3 deserves a place on your gaming shelf and your PC. It is obvious that the developers kept what worked from UT2K4, and added complementary elements that build upon what they got right the first two times. It delivers everything it promised prior to release (a somewhat rare event), ships with a whole lot of maps (be advised, not all of them are available in each mode), and hands out hours and hours of fun. Apart from that, mods are coming, which will only add value to the core game itself.
Even if you have hardware a couple years old, fear not: the UT3 engine looks to be immensely scalable, and seems to run quite well even on older hardware. If you have any questions about how it will run on your own PC, don't hesitate to download and play the demo, which itself comes with two maps for you to try out. Go grab it if you haven't already, and enjoy an hour or two of frenetic fragging and glorious gibbing!
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