Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #523 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: Midway Games Ltd
• Released on: 2008-02-22
• Rating: Parental Guidance
• Platform: PLAYSTATION 3
• Number of items: 1

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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

Good Game
I have alot of different opions of this game. Before I owned it I read some reviews saying don't buy it for the the single player mode. When I got the game I really liked the single game mode, there are good cutscenes and you really feel like your in a team. the online is amazing, but there is one problem. its difficult to find a game with 16 people, even over 10 is sometimes a challenge. There just aren't enough people online which i was really disappointed about but when you do find a match it is a brilliant online experience only rivaled by COD4 and Warhawk. Hope this review has help.

The latest incremental update to the massively successful franchise
A bit of history first:
I admit that I have an sentimental connection with Unreal Tournament, because I was actively there when the "big shift" happened. This "shift", for want of a better word, was one from all-things-IdSoftware to all-things-EpicGames.

Most online gamers are too young to remember, or at least have forgotten that at one time, the only online FPS gaming experience of any longevity was from IdSoftware - 3d Realm's DukeNukem3D had it's time, but was simply was washed away by the first truly 3D FPS - Quake - and it's freely mod-able architecture. (Truly 3D, in that before then, FPS games were rendered with a twin view point perspective and the players were all scaled sprites - dead bodies always faced you feet first, no matter what angle you approached them at. Hell, before then, no one used the now-standard look&strafe control method. Playing Doom was like being a rolling gun turret).

This was where the idea of an FPS online community started, because beyond simply making new maps (as before with Doom and Duke3D), people started making total conversions that shifted the game into new directions that the creators have never envisaged - Quake Hoverboard racing was one I remember fondly. In short: the open architecture enabled this FPS to 'live' way beyond anyone's expectations.

So that was 1997, and it would seem that IdSoftware were the rulers of this realm. But then, after years of delay and speculation, Epic's "Unreal" was finally released. Not only was it the most significant enhancement to the genre of the decade, but eventually took the gaming world by storm as the engine of choice for many 3rd party games developers.

Unreal firsts: Massive environments (no more tight corridors, unless you wanted them), proper transparency, amazing water effects and full development tools supplied with the original install disk. 1999 saw the follow-up "Unreal Tournament", and the rest, as they say, is history.

So now to UT3:
So here we are in 2008, and so what's new? Well, it's an incremental update to the previous UT's, so don't expect anything earth-shatteringly different - the formula has been tweaked, but that's about it. It's still an FPS (unless you have installed the ActionCam or UT2D mods - both of which I recommend), and happily it runs on all the high end platforms in one near-simultaneous release effort. Too bad Xbox 360 owners can't join the PC-PS3 party (I mean that sincerely).

The one thing that I do notice though, is the heritage of this title. The network performance is very slick, and the whole experience of battling people online is handled incredibly smoothly. This is facilitated by over a decade of experience, and it shows in bucket loads.

The PS3 version is mod-able like the PC version, and this is the key to the longevity of this title. You probably won't feel the value straight away (especially as there is no proper single player campaign, just like the previous UT installments). It will be next year, when you find yourself still playing it, probably with some bizarre mods that have popped up in the meantime. It will be that "go to" game when you have some mates around and a fridge full of alcohol. Weirdly, online play feels very similar to Halo3, so for PS3 owners UT3 may just fill that void if you need it to. Do I need to mention that one of the standard player models looks like GearOfWar's Marcus Phoenix?

NOTE: PS3 users should also to be aware that the 1.1 update expects the baked SAVEGAME.MOD files to be in the root of your usb storage media, so loose the folder structure if the ps3 mod you've downloaded has one - otherwise UT3 won't find it when you try to import it.

I also recommend that you go to ut3mod[dot]com via the ps3 web browser and check out some ps3-ready direct-to-console downloadable content. All gratis - superb!

Brilliant Multiplayer Mayhem
Unreal Tournament III is a multiplayer game that has single player practice missions. The whole fun here is going online and blasting it out against other people. The thrill comes from knowing that anyone - including yourself - can be killed with the right couple of shots with the right weapon. However, when you get killed you can very quickly get right back into the action It has a very similar feel to the original UT game. It is not deep, nor meaningful and deathmatches - my favourite - are pure chaos! Story? errrm, there is no story, at least not one worth paying attention to. This is all about the game play!

I could give it 4 stars because the single player is not nearly as much fun as the multiplayer but why complain that chalk is not cheese? The single player works as a tutorial, nothing more. My advice is make sure you know what you are buying before you plunge in because if challenging multiplayer chaos doesn't sound like fun to you then you won't like this.