Nightmare Zero 18 years 7 months ago wrote:

Sorry for my being absent. School's been a bitch. So, a couple of weeks ago, shortly before the Feast Of The Rape Of The Native Americans, Unreal Tournament 3 hit store shelves like a hammer hits a cantaloupe. This was a game I was really looking forward too. I thought it would be a million times more awesome than Unreal Tournament 2004, which would've kept me busy for a while, but it fails at that miserably.

I got into Unreal Tournament thanks to UT2k4, which was entertaining, fun, and new, at the time. It had a really awesome soundtrack, but it also gave you the opportunity to play your own music tracks on its own program, so you didn't have to change settings and whatnot. It had really fast combat, decent AI, for both your team and your enemies, and it had an assault mode which really felt different and fun. It was also customizable and you could design your own characters and download ones off the internet! There was nothing wrong with this game at all!

So a clone of it should be just as good, right?

RIGHT!?

Wrong.

Graphics
Well, as with all games that come out these days for the PC, it looks just great; depending on the PC you have. It can be played on weaker PCs, such as my brother's which is about three or four years old, but the game looks a bit blurry and freezes quite a lot. We weren't even able to complete co-op because it froze on his machine halfway through the fifth mission. But lets say you do have a powerful PC, then the game looks absolutely beautiful, but a bit bright. The game makes sure to have more than enough bloom. This can be fixed by fucking around with a few of your files, but if you just jump into the game and don't know how to alter these files, and if you don't I pity you, you'll be hit with enough light to vaporize a few vampires. All of the maps look gorgeous. Whether its the snow, or rain, or outer space, it'll be a good treat for the eyes. Art and character designs have changed for the better too. The Necris look less like they were from Hot Topic and more like technologically advanced dead people. Everyone has different hair, skin, noses, eyes, and this is all well and good, but there really isn't a lot of variety, especially considering you can edit your own character.

Gameplay
If you've played previous Unreal Tournament games, then you already know exactly what you should expect...I think. This game is a fast-paced FPS consisting of various modes of play, such as Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture The Flag, and a couple of others. The Assault and Onslaught modes, familiar from UT 2004, are now replaced with Warfare. Basically, you go to various power nodes and proceed to take them over. Unlike in Unreal Tournament 2004's Onslaught, however, maps in the new Warfare gametype feature secondary power nodes, which can be captured with the aim of aiding the player's team in achieving its objective of destroying the opponents' power core. This aid comes in the form of powerful vehicles or dealing direct damage to the enemies' power core after a countdown sequence

Speaking of vehicles, you now have a few new ones. They've been split into two factions for the corporations in the game: The Axon and the Necris. The Axon's vehicles are basically the same ones from UT2k4, but are altered a little. The Leviathan seems more capable now, from what I've seen and is a bit over powered. I won a warfare mission with a Leviathan thanks to it having near-limitless health as well as its extremely destructive main cannon. The enemy spent about two minutes trying to kill me with missiles and other vehicles, but nothing worked. You have the Raptor, which has become a bit easier to control, the Scorpion is fast and also easier to control, the Hellbender now controls worse than in UT2004, and the driver has control of BOTH the Shock turret AND the Sky Mine turret, unlike UT2004. The Paladin is still super annoying, and the Goliath is more capable, but seems nerfed in terms of armor points. The Necris have their own individual set of killing machines which are not direct counterparts to Axon Corporation vehicles, but are instead unique in their design and purpose. The only exception, that I recall, is the Viper which is very similar to the Mantis. There is the Nemesis, the Darkwalker(which looks like its straight out of War Of The Worlds), the Nightshade, which has cloaking, The Fury, which is a flying vehicle with lasers and horrifically sweet tentacles(which will deliver countless hours of entertainment to hentai fans everywhere), and a couple more that I cannot really recall at this moment. You also are given a new hoverboard during vehicle missions which is good for traversing the truly huge maps in this game, but not only do you recieve more damage when you're shot while on a hoverboard, but you also drop any flags or orbs you were carrying.

The enemy AI seem to be omnipotent, especially in flag matches. There is no thinking. They know where you are at all times and will hunt you down no matter where you're at. No, the option isn't on the map to see where your opponent has gone with your flag. They just seem to know. The AI also can act rather awkward. I once spent about sixty seconds right next to a flag, in plain sight of an enemy, and they didn't do anything until I decided to grab the flag. The final battle consists of a one-on-one fight, unless you're playing co-op and then its two-on-one, where you deal with a truly frightening omnipotent enemy who will know almost everything about the stage, but its at this point where I seem to just be bitching at it.

Your ally AI tends to be rather stupid. They really can't do anything on there own. You will spend almost all the time in team matches dispatching others while your own teammates drop like fucking flies. They never get into vehicles, and when they do, they're just cannon fodder. I mean, its bad if your computer controlled allies do all the work, but when they don't do ANYTHING AT ALL BESIDES DYING, that's bad. In Unreal Tournament 2004, my allies were competent. In Unreal Tournament 3, my allies are mentally retarded.

Some of the weapons have been altered a bit too. The primary assault rifle from UT2k4 is gone and it has been replaced with, from what my friend has told me, an older pistol weapon from a previous Unreal game. While I didn't like the assault rifle too much, since it seemed to hit everything instead of my intended target, it was a lot more effective(LOL) than this new pistol. You can obtain two, but I doubt the enemy will be stupid enough to have the weapon for more than eight seconds of being respawned. Besides this, all the weapons from 2004 have returned, but a few were fixed. Rockets seem more capable and less chaotic, in my opinion. The Link Gun has been fixed and seems far superior and faster. The Avril missile launcher seems to reload faster and feels more effective. The Chain Gun has been nerfed a little; the primary trigger is now superior and the secondary trigger fires slower, but stronger shots. The Redeemer has been nerfed to hell though. It moves slowly and can easily be shot down by the all-seeing and all-knowing enemy AI. The first trigger just shoots a slow moving missile, but the secondary trigger allows you to control the missile, which is good and it gives you decent control over it, but, again, I must point out that the enemy AI will have their Spider-Sense tingle and will shoot it out of the sky. Oh, and aside from this, for some reason, the overall impact range of the explosion it causes seems lacking. Even when I shot it in a group of enemies, it only killed one or two of them.

The Campaign Mode is now a story mode consisting of random and various bot matches. The only reason you suffer through this is to unlock a few new characters and all of the Necris. You only unlock these characters to play as them in your own bot matches or online. But that's about it. I mean, there is no real joy or achievement in playing this mode. I'm sure its more fun when you're playing co-op, and I did have more fun playing this stupid mode with another human being because they at least know HOW TO PUNCH THE FUCKING KEYS, but when I have to depend on other people to enjoy a game, then something is very wrong.

Story
Yes, I was amazed I would have to write anything for this section. While the Unreal Universe does indeed have its own story, this isn't something we are meant to care about, in my opinion. We know of Malcom, the Necris, the Skaarj, the various reasons for the Tournament, but this game forces its own story on you. I guess this is because of the game's inevitable move to the consoles, ergo it has to give them something to do and a reason to call it "co-op" worthy or something. So, the idea of the "Tournament" has essentially been replaced with actual characters on an actual team with actual missions. No, Assault is gone so what do we get? Bot matches consisting of Deathmatches, Team Deathmatches, Capture the FLaGs(Now called Field Lattice Generators), and Warfare. They had an opportunity to give us something real and bring back Assault missions where instead of reinacting battles, we were actually in them. But they didn't.

We are given a bullshit story where we play as this seven foot tall huge tough guy who replaced his blood with muscles and his muscles with bone and his bones with pure steel. And yet he is a smartass and, according to some of the story, he's tactical, I guess. You team up with your awkwardly hot sister, a token black guy, and a sniper guy named Bishop who speaks archaically in a future that seems so far away from our own reality that you wonder where he even picked up most of the shit he spouts. The story revolves around this guy and his team of ragtag "Ronin", which they call themselves, as they attempt to wreak vengence upon the Necris for something they did which you will find out someday after a few bot matches. These bot matches hold some sort of importance however as you apparently bring down other organizations and make some enemies with the Necris. One thing that bugs me about this is that everyone around you keeps saying that the fastest way for revenge is the current path you're going on. If this is true, why is it taking me forever and a bloody day to get this revenge?!

Earlier I spelt flags as FLaGs. In Unreal Tournament 3, the flags used in CTF are not merely pieces of cloth attached to a pole; instead, they are Field Lattice Generators -- devices which are, apparently, designed to power Respawners. You're told this in your first mission where you brutally kill your awkwardly hot sister ten times, which is just fine and dandy once Respawners are there. The Skaarj have been replaced with a new species called the Krall. They're basically the Skaarj but are more barbaric and are colored a sinister(LOL) shade of blue. They also seem mentally retarded; they don't seem to speak, but instead just growl and snarl out various words.

This story mode had so much potential, but it was all for nothing, to be honest.

Sound
Music has been replaced with something a friend of mine called "Dynamic Music." In other words, there is music playing in the background but most of it is quiet until you run into combat where it will grow louder and more upbeat and stay that way until you or whatever you ran into is dead or gone. I dislike this as an entire battle in these games are dynamic all on there own and the music could always get the blood flowing without it having to get loud at random times. UT2k4 allowed you to upload mp3s on a playlist while playing the game and you could listen to your own music if you didn't like what was already playing. This game doesn't allow you to. You can open up a music player of your own, however, and play it this way, but its just more trouble than its worth.

The voice acting is a bit better in this game and enemies that spout out various insults after blowing you away sound a bit more threatening than they did in UT2k4. The story mode's voice acting handles itself well, even if it feels like the actors might be overdoing it. Explosions, gun fire, futuristic sounds, and all that jazz are fine and good. Oh and the only announcer that made a return was the male one. You can't have the female one or the stupid sexy female one.

Replay Value
After unlocking everything in the story mode, which you can also do through the console screen via a code, you can edit one of the character models in the game and play online, if you wish to. This is where the game shines and is fun if you can find decent humans with which to play with. The online traffic is quite hectic though so finding random servers to play on isn't all that hard. The game keeps track of how good or bad you are at games, but I don't believe it really judges you. You can also play with your own private bot matches if you couldn't get enough of the story mode's bot-tacular performance. After all of this though, there really isn't much left. I'm sure people on various forums and UT websites will make decent models, maps, and mutators someday, but that'll be a good while away. I'm also ashamed to say that the game requires a patch to improve a few of the problems in it, but, from my review, it only fixes the problem with the vehicles being made of adamantium. Any other problems I spoke of are going to probably be fixed in future patches and mods from Epic or by other people.

Overall A.K.A. tl;dr
The fun and joy that UT2k4 brought me is only halfway here and the other half is made up of the very things I didn't want in my sequel. Instead of cutting things out, maybe they should've just thought about how to improve anything in gameplay. Instead they take out the adrenaline, the fun, the stupid sexy female announcer, and put in crap upon crap upon crap. But, to its bare bones, it is just a better looking Unreal Tournament 2004. I'm sure the problems I have with this game will be fixed in maybe a year or two thanks to patches, fixes, character models, and the awesome Unreal community. And I know that a bunch of people are probably saying "YOU JUST KEEP COMPARING IT TO UT2K4!" and, well, this is TECHNICALLY a sequel. Hell, I'm sure if I just played this game, alone and without the influence of UT2004, I'd like it more, but why should we settle for less? If you're new to this game, try Unreal 2004 first and then form your own opinion. If you've played older Unreal games and want nice stuff to look at, you've probably already bought and played UT3 and opinions, as I've noticed, are varied.

Although its old, I prefer 2004 to this game. I like UT3, somewhat. Its playable. But it also forces you to lower your standards, as do most new games these days, for you to enjoy it. I was expecting a better looking, better sounding, and super awesome Unreal sequel and what I got was a subpar half sequel with a "bleh" story, and boring new characters. Most people who played Unreal Tournament 2004 and liked it probably don't like my review, as will the older fans from the older games. I truly doubt the "pet peeves" this game gave me matter to anyone, but imagine if you are going to get a truly delicious meal or snack that you crave more than any else. So you get it, but, SURPRISE, you find out that there are little pieces of a food or vegetable in the meal that you utterly hate. And it ruins it completely. But picking out these pieces is easier said than done.

Yes, that's what I felt as I played this game.

This game gets a 7 out of 10.