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Unreal Tournament 3
Unreal Tournament 3 gives the PS3 a taste of the PC world.
December 17, 2007 | 11:51 PM PSTby: A. McDaniel
AMN's Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don't waste your time. This is why we've split our reviews into four sections: What the Game's About, What's Hot, What's Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.
What the Game's About
Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 technology is powering numerous games this generation, but their latest game, Unreal Tournament 3 seeks to showcase its power.
You star as Reaper, an all-around toughguy leader of a band of mercenaries dubbed the Ronin. You are seeking revenge against an undead invading force called the Necris, who together with the alien Skaaj decimate your home colony and blow you up for good measure in the game's opening sequence.
In exchange for reincarnating you, your team signs on with the Izanagi Corporation, a corporate sponsor of the tournaments. During the off-season, it's commonplace for players to seek work as mercenaries for the corporations. The Izanagi Corporation's current head of security is Malcolm, the current tournament champion. You are to first protect the interests of the company in order to get an opportunity to exact your vengeance on Akasha, the Necris High Inquisitor and leader of the team known as the Black Legion.
Each battle is a variation on either the standard deathmatch and capture the flag gametypes, or the new Warfare objective gametype. Capture the flag and deathmatch are straightforward affairs. Reaching the score limit disables your opponent's respawner, causing them to yield the match to you.
Warfare sets you out to destroy the opposing team's power core while protecting your own. In order to inflict damage on a core, you must control each connected node enroute. Unconnected support nodes give you access to various tactical advantages such as additional vehicles, direct access to the enemy core, and sometimes the ability to damage the core indirectly.
What's Hot
The first thing that stands out about UT3 is the graphics. UT3 utilizes the Unreal Engine 3 to its fullest potential. The art direction and post processing effects create a futuristic, gritty, and gothic universe befitting a cyberpunk game like UT3. There are very few games that can achieve this level of graphical polish, and there are none that run anywhere near as fast and smoothly.
The game looks gorgeous at 720p, and runs at a solid 30 frames per second. Framerate drops have been commonplace amongst Unreal powered games. It took serious effort on one of the larger warfare maps, full of vehicles and every character on screen at once in front of an exploding power core before the game so much as dropped a single frame. Two other major issues with other games that use the Unreal Engine 3 is draw distance and texture pop-in. Epic seems to have finally ironed out both of these problems. Once installed, everything works perfectly and load times are minor.
UT3 requires actual skill; it will test your speed and reflexes. Each headshot will be rightly deserved. There are no easy kills; Players move quick and with the ability to dodge incoming projectile or weapons fire easily, each frag feels rightly deserved. Despite movement being a slight bit slower than its PC counterparts, UT3 is one of the fastest FPS games on the market, and the fastest FPS one a console ever. Once you take the game online, the 'speedfreak' server setting or 'mutator' actually speeds the game up past it's PC counterpart's default speed.
UT3 allows you to host campaign or multiplayer games. You can allow friends or strangers to jump in and help you progress through the story mode, or you can set up your own multiplayer server if you wish. You are given a ranking based upon how well you play against players at your level or above. The statistics are very detailed, which will please gamers who are obsessed with keeping tabs on how well they are doing.
Unreal Tournament 3
There are over a dozen weapons and over a dozen vehicles to choose from. Each weapon has a definite use. Unlike many FPS games on the market, each weapon and vehicle has its particular strength and weakness. Even the weaker default weapon: the enforcer pistol, can be put to good use in skilled hands. Without the use of a vehicle, you still have access to the translocator, and new to the series is the hoverboard. The translocator is a series favorite in capture the flag games. It allows you to shoot disks that let you instantly teleport to that location. The fast moving hoverboard is a godsend on the larger CTF or Warfare maps when you are too far from a vehicle but need to quickly reach a destination.
The A.I. used to control the bots is outstanding. Your enemies behave much like you would expect human opponents to. In multiplayer matches, you will sometimes forget which characters are live and which ones are bots. You have limited control over your computer controlled teammates. You can order them to attack, play defensively or perform various other tasks, but for the most part their default command set will get you through most missions.
What the Game's About
Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 technology is powering numerous games this generation, but their latest game, Unreal Tournament 3 seeks to showcase its power.
You star as Reaper, an all-around toughguy leader of a band of mercenaries dubbed the Ronin. You are seeking revenge against an undead invading force called the Necris, who together with the alien Skaaj decimate your home colony and blow you up for good measure in the game's opening sequence.
In exchange for reincarnating you, your team signs on with the Izanagi Corporation, a corporate sponsor of the tournaments. During the off-season, it's commonplace for players to seek work as mercenaries for the corporations. The Izanagi Corporation's current head of security is Malcolm, the current tournament champion. You are to first protect the interests of the company in order to get an opportunity to exact your vengeance on Akasha, the Necris High Inquisitor and leader of the team known as the Black Legion.
Each battle is a variation on either the standard deathmatch and capture the flag gametypes, or the new Warfare objective gametype. Capture the flag and deathmatch are straightforward affairs. Reaching the score limit disables your opponent's respawner, causing them to yield the match to you.
Warfare sets you out to destroy the opposing team's power core while protecting your own. In order to inflict damage on a core, you must control each connected node enroute. Unconnected support nodes give you access to various tactical advantages such as additional vehicles, direct access to the enemy core, and sometimes the ability to damage the core indirectly.
What's Hot
The first thing that stands out about UT3 is the graphics. UT3 utilizes the Unreal Engine 3 to its fullest potential. The art direction and post processing effects create a futuristic, gritty, and gothic universe befitting a cyberpunk game like UT3. There are very few games that can achieve this level of graphical polish, and there are none that run anywhere near as fast and smoothly.
The game looks gorgeous at 720p, and runs at a solid 30 frames per second. Framerate drops have been commonplace amongst Unreal powered games. It took serious effort on one of the larger warfare maps, full of vehicles and every character on screen at once in front of an exploding power core before the game so much as dropped a single frame. Two other major issues with other games that use the Unreal Engine 3 is draw distance and texture pop-in. Epic seems to have finally ironed out both of these problems. Once installed, everything works perfectly and load times are minor.
UT3 requires actual skill; it will test your speed and reflexes. Each headshot will be rightly deserved. There are no easy kills; Players move quick and with the ability to dodge incoming projectile or weapons fire easily, each frag feels rightly deserved. Despite movement being a slight bit slower than its PC counterparts, UT3 is one of the fastest FPS games on the market, and the fastest FPS one a console ever. Once you take the game online, the 'speedfreak' server setting or 'mutator' actually speeds the game up past it's PC counterpart's default speed.
UT3 allows you to host campaign or multiplayer games. You can allow friends or strangers to jump in and help you progress through the story mode, or you can set up your own multiplayer server if you wish. You are given a ranking based upon how well you play against players at your level or above. The statistics are very detailed, which will please gamers who are obsessed with keeping tabs on how well they are doing.
Unreal Tournament 3
There are over a dozen weapons and over a dozen vehicles to choose from. Each weapon has a definite use. Unlike many FPS games on the market, each weapon and vehicle has its particular strength and weakness. Even the weaker default weapon: the enforcer pistol, can be put to good use in skilled hands. Without the use of a vehicle, you still have access to the translocator, and new to the series is the hoverboard. The translocator is a series favorite in capture the flag games. It allows you to shoot disks that let you instantly teleport to that location. The fast moving hoverboard is a godsend on the larger CTF or Warfare maps when you are too far from a vehicle but need to quickly reach a destination.
The A.I. used to control the bots is outstanding. Your enemies behave much like you would expect human opponents to. In multiplayer matches, you will sometimes forget which characters are live and which ones are bots. You have limited control over your computer controlled teammates. You can order them to attack, play defensively or perform various other tasks, but for the most part their default command set will get you through most missions.
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November 20, 2009
