Unreal Tournament III

December 23,2007 - The Unreal series has been a staple of PC gaming for a decade now. It has pushed the boundaries of multiplayer FPS gaming farther than essentially every other franchise. Virtually every iteration the series has had as been top notch and among the best on the market at any given time. With the release of Unreal Tournament III on PC, nothing has really changed here. Unreal is back, it looks better than ever, and doesn’t do much to the franchise in terms of radical changes or tweaks to the gameplay. That’s both a good and bad thing, as previous fans of the series will obviously be entertained and love the game, but it won’t do much in the way of bringing a new userbase to the game.

Unreal Tournament is a twitch, multiplayer shooter that is really only accurately comparable to games like Quake. It isn’t like Halo, Counter-Strike, or Call of Duty; it’s really a completely different breed. In many ways, Unreal’s style is the best, and truest to the roots of PC shooters of the past, but in many ways as well it’s starting to show its age and how little it is progressing as time goes on. What twitch gameplay means is that it moves very fast, doesn’t ask for a lot of strategy, and really relies solely on precision and good reflexes. This is where shooters started and according to the Unreal series, where they should stay. This is a flat-out fun game, albeit archaic, but as entertaining as games can get.

Unreal Tournament III excels in its gameplay and presentation. It’s using the Unreal III engine we saw in Gears of War last year and it’s easily as good looking as that, and that’s quite impressive given how fast the game is moving. The gameplay remains largely untouched; there are a few new weapons, vehicles, maps, and things of this nature, but it remains to be a fast paced, multiplayer focused shooter. The adrenaline system has been removed from the gameplay, so you won’t have to worry about any of that cloaking, speed boosting, or anything along those lines. That’s simultaneously a positive and a negative, as you feel it loses the little strategy it had in varying the gameplay, but also draws the focus to the pure rush and fun the fast paced action.

There are several types of match variants. Deathmatch, capture the flag, and the standard objective based types are going to be the meat of it, with small changes on each of those. The newest mode is Warfare, which is a lot like Onslaught in UT2k4, only with more vehicles and bigger maps. You have to link up your nodes to the enemy nodes to successfully destroy their power core and claim victory. It’s easy in concept, but given the size of the maps and your likely high death rate, they can be pretty lengthy matches and a lot of fun.

The maps you’ll see in multiplayer are the same that you’ll see in the single-player, if you can really even call it that. In the past games the story is that Unreal Tournament is literally a tournament but now it’s a war. Really, that’s all you’re going to need to know to get the plot down pat. Rounding out all the different modes the maps cover are the three deathmatch variants, which are standard, team, and duel—a one on one type—and then you’ve got capture the flag and vehicle capture the flag. They’re exactly as they sound so there’s not much that should be left for you to wonder about. The maps themselves are really where the modes take a new life, as some maps were clearly designed for that mode in particular and work very well.

Gateway is one that stands out in particular, as you’ll have these little portal-like devices that link you up to completely unrelated landscapes to the one you were just in. So for example you’ll be in a jungle-like area one moment and then in a snowy area the next, all in the same map. It’s quite fun chasing people around in these maps, and if you’ve played Crysis it’ll surely remind you of the huge shifts in locations from start to finish in that game. The rest of the maps work really well, too. There are some classic maps you’ll have from past games, and when the mod community gets going you’ll definitely have some great downloadable content to work with, like all the other games in the series.

For the most part, the new weapons are pretty standard. You’ve got this pistol gun that is slow as your default weapon, but it’s hard not to like it given just how different it is from the rest of the guns. Most of the other weapons are left largely unchanged, outside of a few balancing tweaks, but really, you won’t notice it too much, to tell you the truth. The vehicles are much better this time around, however. The new vehicles are all, at the very least, fun to use and cool to look at, and the new towering alien vehicles that look like they’re from War of the Worlds are awesome. Most of the levels are expansive enough to take full advantage of these, too, which is really nice.

Generally speaking, the presentation here is about as good as it gets. Some of the best graphical optimization we’ve ever seen can be found in this game. Really, as long as you meet the system requirements, you’re going to be able to play this game at a solid framerate so ultimately you’re going to have a lot of fun playing it. Naturally, it does make it more fun to take advantage of the excellent visuals, as they truly are breathtaking. The maps themselves are varied, and the animations are equally as pleasant to look at. Technically speaking, the audio is also quite good. There is really good music and the sound effects are as good as they’ve ever been. There’s not much to complain about here, as usual, given the series’ track record of being at the top of the heap in most technical respects.

If you’re a fan of the Unreal series and have a computer that can run it, there’s really no reason for you not to own this game. If twitch shooters aren’t your thing, this isn’t going to change your mind. Unreal Tournament III is largely unchanged from its predecessor, and for most, that’s going to be a good thing. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel by any means, rather it just puts platinum spinners on and attaches it to the most ridiculous Honda Civic money can buy.

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