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Unreal Tournament III has finally arrived on PlayStation 3. Can Epic go two for two on next-gen consoles?
Published: January 20, 2008
It also, in typical Unreal Tournament fashion, supports bots that are, frankly, stunningly good. The series has always offered botmatches that, if you told someone they were playing against real people, probably wouldn't know the difference (and no, all you high-level tourney players don't count). Suffice it to say that Unreal Tournament III's bots are good enough that if you can't find a way online, you can crank up the difficulty and get completely slaughtered without feeling like the game is cheating.
One of the things that isn't exactly typical of a UT game is the inclusion of a storyline. Okay, technically it's more like a series of cutscenes that play out as each of the game's five chapters kick off, but there was some effort put into giving all these myriad game modes some backing. Unfortunately, as anyone who had to endure some of Gears' dialogue, the story, while absolutely gorgeous from an artistic standpoint (particularly the frighteningly well-done character models), is painfully hacked together. It's a cookie-cutter story of revenge tethered together with laughable dialogue and a "twist" that feels neither weighty nor particularly rewarding when it's all over (which, admittedly, is in stark contrast to where you think the game might actually end).
Between the drool-worthy cutscenes, you're basically left to enjoy the game as you more or less would online -- if you didn't have any control. You'll get an initial voice briefing from Malcolm (yep, that Malcolm from all the previous games), and you can tap Triangle to bring up more detailed description of the environment and the reasoning behind your going there, but beyond a voiceover that plays while the level loads from lead character Reaper, there's not much else to thicken up the world. Another problem: the single-player matches recycle levels and modes a bit too often, and when you finally do get to see the enemy homeworld, the levels aren't quite seen enough to make them as intimately familiar in multiplayer as the other stuff. That may have been intentional, but perhaps shifting the story around a little to get the players off-world may have helped a little.
Regardless, the game still plays just as a Unreal Tournament game should; it's quick (though the PS3 version, despite supporting a keyboard and mouse natively, is toned down a little for controller play), visceral, insanely varied and nearly every level offers a ton of nooks and crannies to find and exploit, and the weapons are nicely tweaked. Most are standby items, so you still have your Shock Combo by pairing up an alt-fire Shock Rifle ball and then hitting with the normal blast (it looks awesome and if you're hit by it, you get to watch your gibs get funneled into the resulting vortex), but the real standout is the continually improved rocket launcher.
The original Unreal Tournament introduced a rocket launcher that could be alt-fired to load up to three shots at once, which made for some great kills -- particularly for folks that weren't the best of shots, but UTIII lets you prime the shots, then shoot them in a spread or spiral or kill the rockets and fire the warheads in an arc. It makes what was already a great weapon that much more valuable, yet none of the other weapons feel slighted by it. Pulling a translocator kill is still a blast, as is using the Impact Hammer to give yourself an impromptu rocket jump. In short, everything about the old games is here, and it's all awesome stuff.
The levels, too, recycle and update older maps like Deck16, Hyperblast and Coret in fantastic ways. I'm not a tournament player, so I haven't absolutely fallen in love with the layouts of previous games, which may tell you exactly why I dug seeing something familiar yet rendered entirely new with the Unreal Engine 3's fancy normal-mapped coat of paint. What's even more impressive, however, is how imaginative some of the newer maps in the game are -- particularly the ones that take place on the Necris (those would be the bad guys in the game) homeworld. Because of their Matrix-like use of metallic tendrils and creeping sense of infection to any native architecture, the engine and designers Epic have made some of the most incredibly intricate levels I've ever seen. The whole over/under nature of Vertebrae with it labyrinthine, criss-crossing passageways, tunnels and walkways -- not to mention heavy use of the translocator -- makes for a kick ass map (and one of the most harrowing flag runs you will ever make in your life).
