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Hellgate: London ^PC

Supreme Commander ^PC

Preview

Unreal Tournament 3

Format PC

Developer Epic Games

Publisher Midway

Genre First Person Shooter

27-Jan-2007 First hands-on with Epic's massive shooter sequel

15 Comments

Amongst the glitz and bustle of Midway's overly-lavish Las Vegas gamers day, every journalist's first port of call is centered just behind the make-shift sushi bar, in a off-side PC LAN-rig where Epic Games - now proudly touted as "the makers of Gears of War"- is offering press the first chance to try out their latest Unreal Engine 3 bad boy, the freshly-renamed and gorgeous-looking Unreal Tournament 3.

As massive UT fans ourselves, we waste no time in climbing over American blog scribes to get at the Midway-branded mouse and keyboards - but it's not so bad being a spectator either, as a rocket-flinging UT3 match is arguably as fun to watch as it is to play, especially with stunning graphic effects like this.

Upon jumping into our very first game - a Vehicle CTF match on an oriental-ish locale called CTF_Corruption - it's apparent that UT3 plays very much in the same vein as 2004, with familiar walking speed, field of view and weapon physics that put up few surprises.

Corruption is a rocky island littered with streams and waterfalls, and two oriental-style temples housing the good old flags. The design of the level is tight, with both sides of the map paralleling each other exactly but at the same time cleverly littered with diverse terrain and scenery to remove any impression of a blueprint, mirrored 'arena'. There's plenty of interaction to be found as well; a spinning windmill provides an interesting roadblock in your path to flag-y goodness, forcing you to time your vehicle acceleration to get through the gaps without getting flattened.

The weapon roster is a mix of oldschool favourites; the Rocket Launcher, Shock Rifle and Flak Cannon have all made a return, along with the graphically suped-up Bio Rifle, Enforcer and Link Gun, which all pack an absurd amount of polygons dedicated to making every nook and cranny of their make-up chug and move with each extra-satisfying blast.

It's not all same-old, same-old though; the Mini-Gun for example now packs a much more accurate blast radius and is extremely devastating as a long-range weapon. More exciting though is the revamped secondary function, which fires off single-shot 'nail rounds' which, if close to a hard surface, can pin your opponent to a wall for some hilarious and brutal rag doll kills.

Another facet of the game that has seen improvement are the re-tinkered and balanced vehicles, many of which have undergone very welcome visual overhalls. We found that the roles of each vehicle are now far more defined, whether it be as a scout vehicle, hard-hitting behemoth or nippy-ride to dispatch on-foot opponents.

As expected by far the most enjoyable vehicle to pilot is the massive War of Worlds-inspired Dark Walker; against infantry it's a near-invincible killing machine, tearing through flesh with its cool-as-hell flaming laser beam, which fires in bursts for you to drag across the terrain, taking out multiple opponents and leaving a scorching trail behind. It also has the advantage of being up to crouch underneath and behind terrain, proving troublesome when we trying to bullseye the bugger with our rather-sluggish Goliath battle tank - It's quite simply the vehicle to have.

The alien Necris vehicles - which also include a tank with liftable turret and speeder bike - did seem to give the red team somewhat of an advantage in our time with UT3 - the Dark Walker in particular managing to decimate our lowly blues time and time again - though Epic assures us that extensive balancing has undergone at the studio to make sure that Axon and Necris toys match up fairly.

Further into our CTF carnage, the most prominent impression we get from UT3 is a sense of ironing out the edges of previous installment 2004, which in many respects was a patch-job and update of the somewhat weaker entry UT 2003.

Aesthetically everything is a lot more pleasing; a fatal blow has your vision flinging across the floor in a brutal barrel-roll of death - even flinging out of vehicles, reload animations are beautifully animated and satisfying and under-water graphic effects are among the most stunning we've ever seen, as are many of the Unreal Engine 3 hallmarks scattered throughout the beautiful environment.

One of the most radical and foundation-shaking additions to UT is the Back to the Future hover board, which players can whip out and at any time for a quick trip to the battlefield. Not only do they seem to keep the battle alive by giving teams a quick route to the action, but they also eliminate the tedious and long map-trekking raised by UT2004's huge Onslaught maps.

In true Epic style, they've also had to go and stick tricks in there as well; holding down direction keys in conjunction with crouch has your warrior pulling off flips and spins that would make Tony Hawk blush, and got us killed at least twice when we were arseing around on the side of a bridge somewhere.

We're convinced that UT3 improves upon and irons-out all of the already-fantastic gameplay from 2004, and really could live up to Epic's promise of producing "the greatest deathmatch game ever" if it continues on course. High praise indeed, but the buzz and praise is undeniable among the Las Vegas combatants, and we can't wait to get a deeper sample whenever Epic decides to showcase the sequel next.

Andy Robinson

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Posted by starvinbull

i thought id have a look at the screenshots not being very impressed with the one that accompanies the feature button. then i realised that the image was 1/50th of an entire screen shot and now im impressed to no end. the 2 proper screenshots on here look better to me than crysis shots.

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