Infotaxis Blog

One of the longest series in PC gaming history, Unreal has forever held a unique place among first person shooters. Since it’s rise to fame in the 90s, it has been the fast-paced shooter. No game requires the player to react as quickly as those in the Unreal series.

The most obvious improvement is the graphics. UT2004 looked great for the time, and was extremely scalable - but UT3 blows it out of the water. With a totally new engine backing it, it has all manner of new graphical enhancements, many of which made possible by DX10’s more efficient archihtecture. Everyone knew that the graphics would get better, so this isn’t the focus of the review.

If you’d like a good representation of the graphics, however, check out this screenshot.

My personal favorite game mode was Onslaught, introduced in Unreal Tournament 2004 along with the vehicles. VCTF (vehicle capture the flag) is also here, provding a very different focus on the same theme. In Unreal Tournament 3, the Onslaught game mode has been renamed to “Warfare”, and includes some new features:

• Upon pressing Q, you have access to a hoverboard with grappling ability
• There are objective maps, where specific tasks must be completed besides simply fighting over points and cores.
• New vehicles, including a full compliment of Necris ones (extremely fun)
• Orb feature, allowing instant point-capture and point-shielding

These features all redefine the experience of what is now the Warfare gametype. The hoverboard has become an integral part in the routine performed by every player to get to the action. It can absorb a hit (not without taking damage, of course) as you are knocked off, allowing you to live through some otherwise fatal scenarios. It allows you to jump higher than without it equipped, letting you get through obstacles. It is obviously much faster than walking, as well. The most important (and overlooked) feature of the board, however, is it’s grapple. You can’t fire from the hoverboard, but you can latch onto vehicles, going along for the ride. This is very useful, considering the high volume of players (up to 64) and relative shortage of vehicles. It also creates interesting strategies such as grappling onto a flying vehicle and being airdropped into the enemy base. You can carry flags and orbs while on the board, meaning that the grapple is invaluable for stealing a flag or moving an orb to a point. With every new feature comes changes just as monumental.

I have only played one objective map so far, but the gameplay difference was astounding. In the map I played, you had to first capture a point in the middle which wuold lower a bridge. You then had to drive the goliath (making sure it wasn’t destroyed) over the bridge while holding the point. The goliath had to make it’s way to a pressure panel, at which point a door would open, exposing the enemy core. This all happened as the enemy team tried to do the same thing. It essentially was a gametype in and of itself. Even the normal Warfare maps have changed a great deal, especially the ones featuring Necris vehicles.

The Necris vehicles are amazing. Tricky to get a hang of piloting, they offer a strikingly divergent set of vehicles to bring into combat. There is the jet bike known as the Viper, which can fly up into the air and launch itself like a suicidal missile (ejecting it’s pilot). As well as being devilishly fast, and devastating to large vehicles or groups, you can use it to fly and jump over obstacles if you are skilled enough. The Necris include many new vehicles, perhaps the most iconic of which is the Darkwalker.

The Darkwalker is very similar to the gigantic walkers from War of the Worlds. With several legs, it is able to walk up and down terrain obstacles (dynamically animating it using one of the newer game technologies now included in the Unreal engine). It can also crouch. It fires twin beams that decimate almost anything, but the turret from which these are fired spins very slowly, meaning you are a high-risk target. The turret on the bottom of the larger one helps this, allowing the walker to fire down at enemies, but it doesn’t pack enough of a punch to do the job. The Darkwalker simply needs an escort. A good vehicle for that job is the Nemesis.

The Nemesis is essentially a tank with an anti-air/infantry turret on top. It has the ability to become taller (though slower) and have more firing speed. It is good against the targets that the Darkwalker is not, and vice versa, making them a great combination.

My favorite vehicle (though I’m torn between this and the Viper) is known as the Scavenger. This vehicle is a seat surrounded by a shield orb of some kind, and it has three legs. The legs are retractable, allowing you to bounce across the field with impressive speed. Toggling back and forth, and using it’s small boosters to jump (in legged form), this is a hard-to-master but very manuverable vehicle. It can run infantry over in legged form, and do heavy damage to vehicles when crashing into them in ball form (or infantry, but it’s impractical). In addition, the Scavenger has a small orbiting energy sphere in legged mode that can be directed with a targeting laser. This orb will orbit and crash into the target repeatedly, doing damage to vehicles and making a good counter for things like the Darkwalker.

The answer to the Raptor for the Necris is the Fury. This is essentially a flying darkwalker with weaker beams. It is very manuverable, just like the Raptor, but instead of having a secondary weapon, it can jet forward at incredible speeds. This burst movement allows the Fury to evade the aim of vehicles like the Darkwalker and Goliath. In the hands of a skilled pilot, a single Fury can take on a whole team by itself. In the hands of a noob, however, it is simply a clumsy target…

Since this game is very high quality, fun, and builds on the same time-tested gameplay of the Unreal Tournament line, it has few negative points:

• Less moddable than Unreal Tournament 2004 (though still plenty moddable)
• Removal of some game modes (Assault, Bombing Run, Double Domination)
• Removal of race bonus mutator
• Removal of several key character races
• Less character appearances per race
• No lightweight character options. Every character is wearing huge armor, no exceptions.
• Issues with menu lag when server browsing
• The name doesn’t make sense. There were already three Unreal Tournaments. Even accepting the odd change to numbers instead of years, it would be number four in the series… Unreal, Unreal II, Unreal Tournament 3 perhaps? Who knows.

 I, being a VCTF/Warfare player, have focused on this aspect of the game. There are many changes to gameplay for the other modes as well. If you’re a fan of the Unreal series, there may be a few points that annoy you (such as those I listed above), but UT3 is definitely a welcome and well-done addition to the series.

By the way, the entire Unreal series (Unreal through Unreal Tournament 3) is currently available on Steam for $60. This is how I picked it up, and I recommend it over retail or single-game steam purchase - you get the whole series for just $10 or so more than UT3 by itself.

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This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 11:06 am and is filed under game review. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.