Unreal Tournament III Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)UT3 is probably the fastest FPS on the consoles at this time. With lightning fast gameplay and stunning visuals. I only noticed very minor texture pop ins and the occasional framerate dipsbut really I'm being nitpicky here, UT3 looks and plays fantastic, near perfection for it's style of gameplay and probably the best looking,best performing game currently on the 360 to date.

With the addition of 5 New Maps for the 360 version, 3 of which are wholly new and 2 are reinvisioned versions of the PS3/PC version with Necris themes. All of the maps look quite good and some are fantastic looking.

I've noticed that they improved the 360's version , by tweaking the core controls with a 'minor' aim assist , I noticed that the bullets track a little better and behave more realisticly. I don't prefer aim assist myself ,BUT , I will say the 360 version is the most refined version yet ,aside from the HUGE GAP ,of not supporting user created mods, it is the most polished port.

The split-screen is fun,if your into that, UT3 360 supports split-screen online multi,co-op,local,and System Link. (no split-screen ranked matches though)

All DLC that's available for the PS3 is included in the 360 version (ASIDE FROM USER created mods)

(If your still into UT 'fast twitch'style gameplay)
The multiplayer is liquid fast and fun, with Game Modes DeathMatch ,Team DeathMatch,CTF,Vehicle CTF,Duel, and last but not least Warfare which is a team based mode involving Capturing and linking together 'nodes' with your orbs ,so you can destroy the enemies core. Warfare adds a little strategy to the twitchgameplay mechanics of UT3.

UT3 is so fast,so frenetic , you'll barely have time to come up for air .
I was playing UT3 for about 7 hours and didn't even realize it, there's definitely no down times in UT3.

The single player campaign ,is little more than glorified BOT matches, but that's not such a bad thing as the enemy AI are really about as close as you can get to real humans, (sometimes better) especially on the harder settings.
There isn't much of a story in the campaign,but that's ok I don't wanna watch a bunch of mini-movies anyways. But It would've been nice to have a deeper 'in-game' story mode,instead you get the occasional little cutscenes in between matches. ATleast you have access to all online matches offline as well. Some of the MAPS areabsolutley stunning as you progress into the game,these maps by far look superiorto just about any game on the 360. There were quite a few 'jaw dropping' moments in the maps. When EPIC said in there early interviews with various magazines that UT3 'makes Gears look ugly' , They weren't kidding. But the comparison ends there,don't expect a Gears style cover system. UT3 is pure unadulterated lightning fast gameplay. I can't get over how fast this game performs. Other games like Gears,RSV, move at snails pace compared to this game,its insanely fast. You know some games slow down your player to help the graphics perform better, BUT UT3 , turns the dial past 11 and it still looks smooth as butter.

Switching weapons are mapped to the RB and LB respectively and of course all have some form ofalternate fire (LT),
at first I would've preferred a quicker layout of weapon toggle, BUT , the controls are really easy for any 360 FPS veteran ,you shouldn't have any problems jumping right in and playing.
The vehicles all drive and perform closely to Halo's Warthog ,there quite easy and intuitive as well ,with a little learning curve ,that's a perfect time to check out the campaign's offline BOT matches to hone up your skills for online.Especially sharpening your skills for capturing nodes and learning the best routes in the maps.There's also tons of unique flying vehicles .

UT3is a fantastic game on the 360 ,with the only real downside to the 360 version is the lack of 'user created mods' and the lack of a 'real' story in the campaign , BUT THERE IS TONS of game content offline with the BOTS.

I've seen from interviews from EPIC you can expect some solution for user created mods most likely in the form of DLC ? who knows? . But the 360 is so meaty ,so full of game content it really is an exciting game and the lack of user created mods should'nt detour you from picking up a copy for yourself. If your looking for a deep single player story campaign and don't have LIVE access I would suggest renting it first, as there's no real deep story here ,BUT , even offline the BOT matches can be fun. There's just no match though for human counterparts online,UT3 true shining feature is the Multi-player and it's one of the best looking ,best performing games on the 360 to date, if not THE BEST.

I got through the camapaign's single player in about 17 hours. I gotta admit the BOTS are extremely impressive on the harder settings and you get (8) difficulty settings from Novice to Godlike. Trust me these BOTS will test even the most skilled players. You can even play 'instant action' offline ,and manually set Bot skill levels,number of combatants,Goal Score,Time Limit,Opposing Bot Faction,and Force Respawn toggle. WOW what can I say ,stuff usually reserved for online play only is ALL available to the non-LIVE players. Very nice indeed.

Overall UT3 is much better than I had expected. EPIC really knows what there doing when it comes to Unreal Tournament style gameplay and they tweaked the 360 to its maxium limits and to my surprise ,the game is exceptionally smooth,clean,and fast paced with out so much as a hiccup or a very rare framedrop on the 360.Definitley pick this game up a very,very solid FPS.

PEACE

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Product Description:
Unreal Tournament 3 marks the return of the premiere tournament-style first-person shooter. Players engage in intense and hyper-real battles with other human players online or against incredibly realistic Unreal artificial intelligence. Unreal Tournament 3 unleashes the full power of Unreal Engine 3 taking graphics, gameplay, and challenge to a whole new level.

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Unreal Tournament III Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Oh yes it does look better than Gears but plays a lot different.Think of this as Gears meets Unreal Tournament 2004 but with many modifications, additions and tweaks.

Here is my review of the Good, the bad, and "Ugly" on all about this game...


First... The Good:

The most noticeable thing is the graphics and sounds are un-freaking-believable!Look at this game and then look at Halo 3 and you will laugh at what Bungie considers next gen graphics.Whatever?THIS is next gen graphics.Best looking game on the PS3 system by far.Why didn't SONY hype this game is beyond me?It is THEIR Gears or Halo 3 for the system.What people say is true.Gears of War meets UT2004 is exactly how it looks, feels and sounds.Just to let everyone know that I am not a PS3 fanboy and I own both systems.I love Halo 3, Gears of War, Call of Duty 4 and the like.I am just reporting on my opinions between them.They all have something for everyone to enjoy.If you like fast FPS games in the tradition of Quake with fun vehicles but with truly next gen graphics than this game is for you.

This game has cool looking characters with exchangeable armor, vests, boots, helmets etc... like Halo 3 has.All the characters have a Gears "look" and the vehicles all have a Gears style to them. Some of the alien buildings have alien tentacles inter-woven into them and pulsate in and out.The distant vistas are really awesome and distracting and it even has the volumetric lighting that Halo 3 has.The shadow lighting is done very well.The quality in the graphics is just unbelievable and really shows off what the PS3 can do.I can't wait to see it on 360 to compare them.

No lag when I played except on just one server I played on.When I switched to a different one it ran great the whole time I played.just depends on who you are connecting to I guess.

UT3 controls really well with a PS3 controller.I was fragging in minutes with no problems.You can even select servers with no keyboard/mouse allowed to keep it fair.

Weapons overall seem stronger and have more punch.All the "hold to charge" up the weapon to release (like on the big truck in UT2004) has been removed except for the rocket launcher.The Truck has a laser on the back that just shoots normal like a turret and no charging is necessary.

Good change to the anti-vehicle Avril rocket launcher:The rocket launcher that you use to shoot down vehicles has limited ammo of like 5 shots or something.Thank god.In the old UT2004 it was annoying that you can fire off practically unlimited rocket ammo at the enemy with almost no way to avoid getting shot if you were in a vehicle.Now you can hide and hope they run out of rockets after a few shots.You are warned when being locked on and can see the laser pointer line from where it is coming from so you can fight them with your vehicle if you want.In UT2004 you never really knew where the rocket was coming from.

Sniper riffle works really well and they removed the lame laser/Lightning riffle.I killed 5 people in a row the first time I used it.Any Sniper fan will like this weapon.

I has new cooler weird vehicles!Twice as many as 2004.There are new vehicles to use and they all have a secondary weapon or feature on them.Some have cool additions like a turbo speed boost feature on the jeep.Some that stand out are the tentacle alien vehicles that look like they are strait out of "The Matrix".There is a flying alien vehicle that looks like a tentacle squid (alla Matrix) and another one that crawls on the ground like a spider-octopus.You can turn into a ball and roll over guys running on the ground, bounce around with the jump button then unfold back to an octopus of death again at will.Really fun vehicles all over the place.There are a bunch of other cool vehicles but I won't go into all of them but most of them are really fun to use.

A really cool new addition is the new hover board that will remind you of Back to the Future 2.Everyone has this available at spawn and you can't loose it.You just press the square button and you're off!If you are near a vehicle you can also just press square and boom you enter the vehicle.All the controls feel right and are easy to use.

On the board you move about twice as fast as running and can jump and even do tricks like 360s/720s and the like.If you get shot while using it, you will "eat it" and have to get up from the crash and can't shoot until you are all the way up standing upright.This takes a few seconds and it is sort of a penalty for getting shot while zipping by.It is hard to shoot people when they are on it sometimes so it feels good to see them eat it when you do.Looks really funny watching people slam face first into the floor when you shoot someone zipping by on a hover board.

When you use the hover board you can't shoot but you can use an auto targeting "Laser Tether" to any vehicle near you (that is on your team) if you press the shoot button.This is really fun and it speeds up your movement as fast as the connecting vehicle is going.So if a hover Manta flys by, you can shoot your laser tether on him and start flying over the terrain like a water skier (on land).If the vehicle stops, you can move forward to the side and zip by really fast like a sling shot and detach your tether to get killer speed.

While in hover board mode and you jump off something that is really high you will always crash land so you can't just use it and move anywhere you want without consequence.I love the new hover board addition.You won't get angry when people take all the vehicles and you need to get to a node really fast. Now you can just hitch a ride with the tether and hover board.All aboard!

The Jeep (with blades) has a cool new feature where you can turbo into a group of enemies and press the square button to power eject out of it.You fly 100 feet in the air and down below the jeep will PLOW into the bad guys without slowing down and then explode upon impact with pieces flying everywhere killing anyone that gets hit by it.VERY cool.

New really cool addition is the Power Node Ball that changes linking nodes strategies.It will help a team that is losing have a chance at a comeback if all the nodes are taken.

When the game starts, a node ball appears in a little generator near the core.If you take the ball you can't get into a vehicle but you can still use the hover board.This Node Ball will make ANY captured node change to your team's node if you run over the node beam while it is in your hands.

If the node isn't captured yet and you run under the node (with the ball) the node will become yours without having to capture it with the link beam.If you see a bad guy running up onto your node a computer voice will warn you that an enemy is approaching with one.If you kill him the ball will fall to the ground and a 25 second countdown ticker appears over it.If it counts down to zero the ball re-appears at their base.If another bad guy runs over it he can still pick it up.OR if you want you can go over to it and press the square button to sacrifice your life and destroy the ball so they have to start all over from the main base with a new ball.This new node ball addition will make some really crazy game sessions back and forth.

There is a new stealth vehicle tank that as soon as you enter it, it disappears.It drives kind of slow but you can drive it into an enemy base undetected or take it to a node to add defense to your node area.Once you press the deploy, it un-stealth's (can be seen) unfolds and you have a mine layer and a large time displacement force Jell-O field thing.You can deploy this thick Jell-O wall over a node and anyone that walks into it will walk super slowly.All bullets or rockets or even vehicles that touch or go though this wall will slow down super slow.This reminds me of the force field suits from Dune.You can use this to create a choke point in a hallway or defend a node.This is a cool defense to keep your node alive for a little longer if it is being attacked since rockets or bullets will move so slowly while in it.

The graphics on the Power Core at your base looks even better.It looks like the power generator from Spiderman 2.As you shoot it, protective cover panels break off the surrounding energy core ball (like Tron) and looks really cool.When you finally destroy it, parts of junk and parts will get sucked in as the ball gets bigger and then explode just like spiderman 2.Cool visual.


The Bad:

I hate online multiplayer games on the PS3 since no one uses a headset.For all the time I played UT3 online I NEVER heard anyone say a thing.None of the other people outhere on the PS3 network has a damn headset and the UT game supports it.Thank god that the game has a computer voice that tells everyone where they should be and what node is being attacked and such.It helps, but there needs to have communication when playing.If the 360 is as good as this version I will def go and use that one instead.

Also Epic made it a "press right directional pad" to talk (alla warhawk and Halo 3) instead of just talk when you want like Gears.I hate that.

Since this game is so new there is hardly anyone playing right now.There was only like 8 servers online to play with last night.Small amount for a new game.This will change in the next few weeks when more people get it.

Okay now the Ugly.....

There is nothing Ugly in this game.One of the best looking games of this type out there if not the best.

Other than that I like the game a lot and is a really fun multiplayer game.Call of Duty 4 is a blast but if you want a game with furrious action and fun vehicles this is the best place to play.Sorry Halo 3.

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Product Description:
Unreal Tournament 3 marks the return of the world's premiere first-person shooter debut on PlayStation 3 computer entertainment system. 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 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!

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