TyReview

Unreal Tournament 3 is one of my favorite games on both the PS3 or the 360 because of a few important reasons. For one thing, the PS3 version still stands as the only console game to allow mouse and keyboard input. This type of control scheme would benefit any real-time strategy (RTS) or first person shooter (FPS) released on a console, but this is still the only game to be released that allows it. It also happens to still be the only console game that has allowed user-created mods (that don’t have to be created in-game) allowing for seemingly limitless possibilities that even if you ran out of mods to install, you could fire up the PC modding tools and craft your own video gaming joy. On top of that, it also happens to be a hell of a lot of fun.

In case you’ve never heard about the Unreal Tournament series, it is a franchise that has been around for several years on the PC and was one of the premier online multiplayer FPS experiences back when that feature was still in its relative infancy along with other earlier games like Quake 3 and Counter-Strike. Since the FPS genre has evolved so much since then and is now overcrowded with copycats and boring rehashes of the same ideas, what does Unreal Tournament 3 bring to the table that makes it (hopefully) worth your gaming dollar?

Well, since I’m on the subject of money, I should mention that since it has been more than a year since the game first released on the PC and PS3 and many months since it’s xbox 360 release, you ought to be able to find the game for relatively cheap nowadays. I’ve heard of people being able to snag this diamond in the rough for 20 dollars and even lower, and although it’s sad that it can sell so low, it just makes it that much harder not to recommend. With the huge patch and “Titan” content pack released for the PS3 and the PC a short while ago, you’d do well to pick it up now.

So anyway, on to what’s in the game. You might be used to FPS games having a memorable single player campaign, but unfortunately UT3 doesn’t do so well in that regard. The single player campaign revolves around an interesting way of playing several specific multiplayer maps with up to 3 other buddies against some amount of enemies with a predetermined set of rules. Along the way, for most of the campaign you are given a world map to choose your next destination, although the choice here is limited and sometimes the path only leads one way. Depending on a few specific choices made on the world map, some maps are either easier or harder, but for the most part you can relax. If the going gets tough you can even quit and continue at an easier difficulty level which also happens not to affect trophies or achievements either unless you’re on the last level of a specific act. There are 5 acts, with the first one consisting of one map and the last consisting of around 7 or 8 compared to the middle ones which contain around 10-20 each.

I mentioned that the campaign had co-op, and rightfully so as it pretty much amounts to you and up to 3 others against some bots that could actually be completely remade in a multiplayer session if you so desired. The cutscenes included to flesh out the campaign somewhat tell a pretty dry story that goes so far as to laughably attempt to explain the reasoning behind respawning in a multiplayer game. The graphics are great, however, so feel free to sit back and enjoy the show. Although the campaign is a pretty poor attempt to include a feature touted by other games, it’s a nice touch and certainly a good way to ease into the game before being pummeled by other more experienced players. The co-op is a great feature that had to be included in a campaign like this anyway and helps to make the quest for the many campaign trophies/achievements much more enjoyable.

Now that the obligatory campaign is out of the way, let’s get on to the meat of UT3, multiplayer. There are two basic ways FPSes do multiplayer nowadays, let’s call them the “Halo” way and the “Call of Duty” way. As opposed to being like a game such as Call of Duty, where you spawn with a set of weapons you asked to spawn with, in UT3 and other games like Halo, you will (usually) spawn with a basic weapon or pistol and have to pick up the better weapons as you play. As you get to know the maps and the weapons, you learn what works best for you, when particular weapons spawn and where they are located. There are several game modes in UT3 including deathmatch/team deathmatch (and one-on-one deathmatch called Duel), capture the flag (with and without vehicles), and warfare which involves the control of nodes on the map in order to expose the opposing team’s base that is destroyed using whatever weapons available. With the recent Titan patch, you also get two new modes called Greed and Betrayal. Finally, each server can choose the existence and amount of bots as well as  mutators including basic handicaps, speed increase/decrease and a new one (again in the new content pack) called Titan.

The weapons are a great mix, and each is comparably deadly to another in the hands of a skilled player, as it should be. I’m pretty certain they are the same as they always used to be in the Unreal Tournament series, although possibly tweaked to perfection over the years. You can use the Flak Cannon pretty much like a shotgun or a grenade launcher depending on the fire mode and the rocket launcher does what you could imagine and you can lock on to enemies if you target them long enough or shoot three at once. There’s a basic pistol that can be dual wielded, a link gun that can both repair vehicles and shoot like a futuristic small machine gun, a chaingun that gives a constant stream of death bullets, and an unfortunately disappointing bio-gun that shoots out globs of radioactive goo. You also have a fun, hard to find mini-nuclear missile launcher that you can manually control and a rocket launcher meant as an anti-vehicle gun. Everything here is pretty much standard for multiplayer games of its kind, although I do feel that this is one particular set of weapons that I have the most fun using over other games.

There are something around 50 maps included in the game, and even more added in the recent content patch. When you play a deathmatch or regular capture the flag map, you’ve got intricate map designs with weapons and powerups placed in strategic locations that will take a long time to remember, but when you do you end up with a superb earned advantage over your opponents. The vehicle-ctf maps and warfare however have many continually-restocking weapon caches that make finding a good weapon a breeze and the strategy is placed at the forefront. The power weapons are placed in strategic locations just like deathmatches. Overall I’d say the map design is top-notch and obviously one of the focuses during development. For a mutliplayer shooter like this, you’d better believe they did this aspect well.

The modes, although seemingly lacking in variety are a blast to play. Deathmatch (and team deathmatch) will always be the same no matter what game you’re playing so there’s that. The basic capture the flag mode is the weak point in my opinion, as continually attempting to walk over to the other flag without the comfort of vehicles gets pretty tiring after awhile. You do have a special, ctf-only weapon called the translocator that can’t be used elsewhere that shoots out a disc that you can teleport to any time you’re not carrying the flag, so if you want some of that action you’ve got to play CTF. CTF with vehicles is another story however. Each side gets the same vehicles on a respawn timer similar to the special weapons and powerups. This mode just seems to have a lot more oomph to it than vanilla CTF. Warfare is great fun although possibly confusing at first. Thankfully, this being my favorite mode, the developers have significantly more maps made for the mode. This is one area that my second favorite mode, VCTF lacks, as the amount of VCTF specific maps is unfortunately quite low.

It’s relatively simple to set up your own game and play, and this is likely the best way to get a good game going. Although there are an OK amount of servers available at any one time (at least on the PS3) it is obvious that this game unfortunately has succumbed to a small population that keeps it going, so the longevity of the game is in question. With the new release of the huge titan content pack, there seem to be alot more people playing. Also, with the addition of trophies and steam achievements, and the length it takes to get the 360 achievements, there will likely be a decent population for the time being. There’s an actual achievement/trophy for getting 200 kills on 50 different days, as well as winning 500 ranked matches so despite taking longer than usual to collect the rewards, it does keep the online community as strong as possible.

Despite the overall greatness of the multiplayer component of the game especially comparing the amount of multiplayer maps to other games, there are a few problems to mention. For one, even if you have a good group of 15 other people in your game which is certainly not unheard of in game i’ve hosted, you lose all of them if you want to change the mode for some variety. This means you either stick with the current group you have or instead create a new game and wait for more people or invite everyone else in if you can. On the 360 this is no problem with the recent players list, but the PS3’s version of that feature doesn’t work even with the new patch, instead the in-game friends list has to suffice and not everyone seems to even know how to use it.

Another thing worth mentioning is that if you choose to allow the maximum players to be 16 in a PS3 match, the PS3 tends to have a performance dip as the server gets more full. This is still possible however, even with the warning given that a dedicated server ought to be used for more than 12 people. The real problem though is that after a LOT of great rounds in a row with this many people, the game in my experience has the tendency to crash every so often requiring a restart. This is unfortunate but thankfully only happens after a long period of playing on a non-dedicated server.

Overall I could continue on and on about what makes this game a must-buy, but suffice it to say if you like multiplayer FPSes, this one is one of the best available. The mouse and keyboard support on the PS3 is overwhelmingly great and deserves a purchase right there just for that, putting it pretty much on par with the PC version despite the lower 16 player limit compared to the higher limits of PC, moddable servers. The xbox 360 version is worth a look, but unfortunately may never see the new content that the PS3 and the PC got, although it does have achievements which the PS3 lacked at first. The titan mode is an awesome, free mutator that changes the game significantly when used, the many new maps are more than welcome, and the two new modes offer a unique way to play multiplayer that I haven’t quite gotten into yet but are very intriguing. This game gives you more than enough multiplayer content than anything you could expect at its low price that shouldn’t be hard to find, so when you strangely see it in a bargain bin or heavily marked down for clearance or such because of its age, you should snatch it up. The multiplayer population might not be guaranteed to last forever on the console versions, but that should be even more reason to get it while it’s still fresh, new and exciting. Of all things, with the unique keyboard, mouse and mod support and recent extremely generous free DLC that rivals criterion’s Burnout Paradise offerings, you ought to buy it just to do your part to encourage the practice for other games.