Product Description

Game features:

• Unparalleled graphical and physical realism from the award-winning Unreal Engine 3 technology delivers the most compelling first-person shooter experience to date - online and offline!
• New single player campaign! This is Unreal Tournament like you`ve never seen it before! The Necris invasion has begun, and your clan was one of the first to be slaughtered. Head to the front lines and join this Epic battle to defend humanity while taking your revenge.
• New and favorite characters - Fight side-by-side with or compete against new and returning characters from the Unreal universe, all with enhanced abilities, extremely detailed designs, and distinct personalities.
• Enhanced popular game types, including: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, and all-new Warfare mode and more.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1128 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Midway Games Ltd
• Released on: 2007-11-23
• ESRB Rating: Rating Pending
• Platform: Windows XP

Amazon.co.uk Preview
Purposefully held over to take full advantage of next generation PC graphics cards and the new consoles, this latest sequel in the Unreal Tournament series is looking to set new standards for multiplayer first person shoot ‘em-ups. Considering developer Epic Games’ Unreal graphics technology is used by so many other companies you always know a new Unreal Tournament game is going to look good. There’s tons of new features beyond just eye candy here though, including a whole new game mode called Warfare, which works like a combination of the existing Assault and Onslaught modes, with more involved mission goals that make team play absolutely essential to success.

As you’d expect there’s a hanger full of new vehicles and weapons including some nifty hoverboards for when you’re just on-foot and a number of new robot mechs for you to drive; all with varying numbers of legs including tripods and four-legged walkers. The enormous Leviathan tank is particularly impressive, with four independently manned turrets and a giant energy weapon.

Considerable work has also gone into providing the game with a decent single player mode, never one of the series’ highlights, with newly improved artificial intelligence that allows you to simulate a multiplayer game properly even when you’re playing on your own. User created modifications (mods) will also continue to play a hugely important part in the game’s success with the game shipping with a new version of the Unreal Editor for both PCs and consoles. After a quiet 2006, it seems like 2007 is going to be the best year ever for PC gamers.
HARRISON DENT

Manufacturer's Description
Unreal Tournament 3 unleashes the full power of Unreal Engine 3, taking graphics, gameplay, and challenge to a whole new level. Players engage in intense and hyper-real battles with other human players online, or against Unreal artificial intelligence that sets the industry standard. With the most powerful futuristic weapons and vehicles available, this is FPS action at its best.

Customer Reviews

Awsome engine, mediocre game.
Having been a fan of the Unreal & Unreal Tournament franchises since the orriginal Unreal appeared around 1997, I had very high expectations of UT3. The demo was xcellent, whetting my appetite further. I finally got hold of the game yesterday and have been playing on & off since then.

The Good:
=========
1) The game engine is awsome. Seriously, the graphics sound and physics are so far in advance of anything else that every other game engine I've seen just became obsolete. Yes, it really is THAT spectacular, so long as your system is sufficiently powerful.

2) Some of the maps included in the release version are excellent. Again, full use has been made of the engine capabilities to deliver inspiring and genuinely fun experiences.

3) Character customisation - it's now possible to fine tweak many visual elements of your character such as helmets, shoulder guards, torso designs, even boots. This adds nicely to the feeling that one has a unique character.

4) It has more "story" than any previous Unreal Tournament game. Even has some humourous moments, and some great cutscenes rendered with the impressive game engine. Did I mention that the game engine is unbelievably good?

The Bad:
========
1) It's buggy. Several times during the "campaign" mode the game just crashed, requiring a hardware restart. Not amused.

2) What happened to all the options? Why can't I decide if I want to allow translocators in all the game modes? Why can't I choose a name for my character for off-line or LAN play? Why can't I assign the Tab key to anything? (I know why- why can't I re-assign the key that toggles the console?) The number of options and the ease of their manipulation that was present in UT 2004 is sadly absent.

3) Level design & number of maps. Some of the maps, particularly some of the deathmatch maps, are mediocre at best. I can't help thinking that the development team spent years designing the engine, then merely tacked on a few maps & called it a game. Again unlike it's predecessors, don't expect to have a vast choice of maps to play out of the box.

4) Limited game modes. What happened to Assault? Who are the developers trying to kidd by including 1-on-1 play as an individual game mode - especially without any dedicated "duel" maps? The inclusion of Vehicle CTF is nice, but lets not forget that VCTF started life as a 3rd part mod for UT 2004. And am I supposed to think that the "warfare" mode is anything but a very slightly altered version of the old "Onslaught" mode from UT 2004? Even some of the maps are re-modelled Onslaught maps!

5) Limited basic character models. Sure, the ability to fine tune your character is excellent, but with only 4 or 5 basic "species" to choose from, this is once again sadly restrictive compared to UT 2004.

6) The game seems to forget most if not all of my personalised settings every time I start it up. I would imagine that it saves these as part of some sort of on-line profile, however because every time I try to log-in it says that my password is not valid (how is that? I haven't decided what I want my damned password to be yet!!) I don't suppose I'll be finding out any time soon.

7) Truly abysmal user interface. It's not user friendly. It is difficult to work out what's going on and it takes an unecessarily long amount of time to basically DO anything. Again, the user interface in UT 2004 worked, so what on earth was the point of re-inventing the wheel, particularly when the result is inferior to it's predecessors?

Conclusion:
===========

As I stated above, I can't help feeling that the vast majority of the development time was taken with the game engine, which it must be said is vastly more sophisticated than anthing I've found in any other game. It's as big a step over the UT 2004 engine as the UT 2003 engine was over the orriginal UT. Awsome. However, I think that the actual guts of the game itself could have done with considerably more content and quite a bit of pollish.

Apparently the first/inevitable patch is in the works as I write. I can't say I surprised. Obviously with the game design tools being included UT3 will eventually be as expansive and will have as many if not more maps that UT 2004, but these things should not have been essentially left to the mod community to do.

To sumn up, a superb game engine that has an occasionally sadly lacking implementation. I would seriously hesitate buying this game at least for a few weeks until most of the major issues have been resolved.

1-2 WEEK UPDATE:
================
Since my initial review I've managed to get the game to save my on-line profile. This seems to have solved the crashing bug I described above and the game now apears to be completely stable. However, it seems that one has to choose a completely unique character name in order for the game to save your profile. For players coming to the game in maybe months or a years time this will be a major headache - not being able to chose ones favourite character name.

Having played every map the game has to offer, I have to say that my original comments regarding the lack of content, lack of options and lack of types of avatar still stand. The game itself is fun to play and looks unbelievably beutiful (IF your system is up to the task) but I still can't help feeling that the game was rushed to the market for a Christmas release, which has resulted in a severely restricted level of content. If in the near future FREE upgrades are released with loads more maps, characters and options, then I'd be quite happy to award the game 4 or maybe even 5 stars. Until then, the obviously rushed release means it's very definitely only getting 3.

Dumbed down for the consoles, dead online.
This game is incomplete and unfinished. It's missing basic features such as webadmin or a decent UI. All the things that Epic learned from polishing the previous UT games has been forgotten as this game arrives with small numbers of maps, broken bot AI, missing gametypes, bland unbalanced weapons and vehicles, and far more.

Three months later, the average number of people playing online is around 500. The four year old UT2K4 can still put nearly 5000 people online most of the time.

Epic have let us all down by trying to make one game for the consoles and sell it to the PC owners too. Even though the console game is additionally nerfed with slower everything and auto-aiming, the many console-orientated compromises and split focus of development have given us a game still incomplete, unfinished, and unpolished.

Terrible dissapointment
This is a difficult review to write as I want to be fair.

If you're intending on playing this online and have a good PC, you should be fine.

The game plays well, the graphics are stunning...and I mean really stunning. The physics are ok but nowhere near as good a those in STALKER.
The environments play well and the game is fast and smooth.

BUT....

Where all the previous Unreal tournament games had a full offline aspect, this does not....and the menus are aweful

There is one offline profile which can be modified to suit your controls preferences but this can't be saved, nor can your progress in campaign mode. You will have to re-enter you control preferences every tme you open the game.

If you have no internet connection, this game will essentially only function for practice.

But the thing that gets on my nerves is that this information has been left out of the system requirements listed on the rear of the box which is in breach of the trade descriptions act. To play this game and save it, you do need an internet connection.

Why EPIC didn't just leave the original ladder from the first Unreal Tournament, I just don't know. I do know it wasn't for the benefit of gamers.

I can only presume this is down to nVidia's inteference. There is absolutely no reason to force players online other than to monitor your PC usage through the spyware which is put in to some modern games.

Games used to be fun and they used to work first time because they were developed and tested properly with entertainment in mind. Imagine buying a DVD and finding out that the film will not play properly unless it's played on a PC and is connected to the internet?

This is the kind of thing that will finish PC gaming for good as the Marketing people take hold of the games industry.

Dismal disappointment.

If I find no patches or mods to rectify this, it's going back to the shop.