Unreal Tournament 3 was one of the first games to be announced for Epic’s Unreal Engine 3 and has been one of the most highly anticipated PC titles along with Call of Duty 4 for a long time. Midway have showcased the game at press events in Las Vegas and Birmingham and now it’s time for ClanBase to give you a review of Unreal Tournament 3.

Game Overview

Developer: Epic Games
Publisher: Midway
Genre: First Person Shooter (FPS)
Platform: PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Rating: M Website: Offical Site

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Introduction

It’s time to grab your flak cannon and prepare for battle

The Necris invasion has begun, and your clan was one of the first to be slaughtered. Head to the front lines and join this Epic battle to defend humanity while taking your revenge. Unreal Tournament 3 marks the return of the premiere tournament-style first-person shooter. 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 and hyper-real battles with other human players online or against incredibly realistic Unreal artificial intelligence. Over two dozen weapons and vehicles have been upgraded and enhanced for maximum killing potential. Take on all comers in a variety of game modes including Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, an all-new Warfare mode and more.

System Requirements

The minimum system requirements for Unreal Tournament 3 are:

Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista
2.0+ GHZ Single Core Processor
512 Mbytes of System RAM
NVIDIA 6200+ or ATI Radeon 9600+ Video Card
8 GB of Free Hard Drive Space
The recommended system requirements for Unreal Tournament 3 are:

2.4+ GHZ Dual Core Processor or better
1 GBytes of System RAM
NVIDIA 7800GTX+ or ATI x1300+ Video Card
8 GB of Free Hard Drive Space

Multiplayer

If Unreal Tournament 3 is to be a success then it has to deliver one of the best multiplayer games that there is, it is the multiplayer aspects that made the Unreal Tournament franchise what it is today, the unreal community won’t settle for second best and Epic Games knew this when designing the game. You have to remember that Epic stressed that the aim if Unreal Tournament 3 was to make a better game rather than just risking an older version.

In the multiplayer side of Unreal Tournament there are four different gametypes that can be played, Capture the Flag, Deathmatch, Warfare and Vehicle Capture the Flag. In addition to this in the future we will see a number of mods built by the community, mods such as Team Arena Master (TAM). As well as the four gametypes there are a number of mutators available to customise your gaming experience, the most popular of these has to be the InstaGib rifle. For those of you who are unaware: the InstaGib is a 1 shot kill weapon assuming that you hit your target, a mutator which requires both good aim and movement if you are to be anything apart from a sitting duck.

As previously mentioned there are four gametypes currently available for Unreal Tournament 3 they are:

Capture the Flag: Capture the Flag or CTF is primarily a team based game however it can also be played 1 vs 1. The object is simple, both teams have a flag in their base, their objective is to go to the enemies’ base, take their flag and bring it back to their own flag, once this has been done they will receive 1 flag capture and the enemies flag is returned to its stand. Capture the Flag can be a very tactical gametype and it takes a lot more than pure firepower to win.

Deathmatch: Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch is quite simple in concept. It’s every man or woman for themselves in an attempt to rack up as many frags as possible. Timing and map control can be paramount, especially when you have to know when there is a shield available, the double damage amp or a health keg. Keeping your opponent away from these can help to ensure victory.

Vehicle Capture the Flag: Vehicle Capture the Flag or vCTF has the same game principles as CTF however there are vehicles which you can use to fight in and move you around the maps. The translocator has been replaced with a hoverboard which can be used at most times, even when carrying the flag. It is not possible to carry the flag in all vehicles as when you enter some the flag will be dropped. As there are vehicles involved, the maps are somewhat larger than the standard CTF maps and the vehicles bring a whole new element to the game.

Warfare: Warfare is a brand new gametype for Unreal Tournament 3 and is the evolution of Onslaught which was included in Unreal Tournament 2004. The goal in Onslaught was about capturing a network of nodes and by doing so made the enemy power core vulnerable to attack, with the main objective to destroy your opponent’s power core. Warfare also has some objectives which are similar to those seen in the Assault game mode of Unreal Tournament. A limited form of resource management will exist in the form of tarydium mines or fields that must be captured; the more a team captures, the faster it can build vehicles and turrets, and the more bunkers it has the more tarydium it will need. Bunkers will possibly serve a similar purpose to power nodes in Onslaught. In addition to this each team will receive its own orb. An orb is critical to a teams success as if you use it at a vulnerable enemy node you’ll instantly capture and fortify the node. Warfare will be a very demanding gametype that will be very tactical, a good team game but communication will be key to your teams success here. Deathmatch is what we are all used to, both Duel and Team Deathmatch have been well developed, the weapons seem to have been balanced however I still expect the Shock Rifle, Rocket Launcher and Flak cannon to be among the weapons of choice but surprisingly there is one noticeable weapon missing from the Unreal Tournament 3 armory, the Lightening Gun. The maps in Deathmatch have been well designed and there are fourteen maps included with the retail version of the game, including the demo maps DM-HeatRay and DM-ShangriLa, we also see the return of an old classic map from Unreal Tournament, which was also remade for Unreal Tournament 2004, the legendary DM-Deck.

With Capture the Flag I must admit that I was somewhat disappointed to see only six maps available included in the retail version of the game, Capture the Flag has historically been one of the larger Unreal Tournament based gametypes, especially for InstaGib, and looking at the six maps only five on them would be playable at a tournament level. CTF-Vertebrae is a technically brilliant map which has some awesome graphics however for competitive play the map is to large, instead of playing the standard 5 vs 5 in Capture the Flag you would need to play something in the region of 10 to 12 players each team for the map to work.

Fortunately the five remaining maps in Unreal Tournament 3 Capture the Flag have been well designed, between them they promote team tactics with various check points, there are some nice open areas which will promote some open fragging and the maps seem very balanced for both red and blue, again as with Deathmatch we see the return of another classic Unreal Tournament map, the return of CTF-Coret.

With Vehicle Capture the Flag there are again only six maps which includes vCTF-Suspense which was also available in the Unreal Tournament 3 beta demo. Unlike the Capture the Flag maps all six of the vCTF maps have been well designed and work well for the gametype, the maps are much larger than the standard CTF maps and support an array of vehicles, the maps promote some epic battles in their design. With vCTF there are a few restrictions that you need to consider, the first being that if you are carrying the flag you can’t drive or be passenger in a vehicle, once you enter a vehicle you will drop the flag. Instead you need to either run or use your hoverboard. The hoverboard replaces the translocator in vCTF and Warfare games and it is basically a hovering skateboard, the hoverboard is quite quick and is narrow so allows you easy entry to places that other vehicles can’t go. The hoverboard is a welcome addition to Unreal Tournament 3 but whailst you are using the hoverboard you can’t use your weapons, also if you are hit when you are using the hoverboard you will be knocked off, even by the slightest of damage. In he event that you fall off the hoverboard you will have to wait several seconds before you can stand up and move which gives your enemy a perfect chance to kill you. It is also worth mentioning that for PlayStation 3 players of Unreal Tournament 3 the hoverboard and redeemer both support the 6 axis controls which are available to the PlayStation 3.

Another feature I like in vCTF is the ability to grapple onto passing vehicles and hang on to them as they take you around the map at higher speeds, although a player can’t carry the flag on a vehicle they can get onto their hoverboard, grapple onto a team mate’s vehicle and be returned to safety at a mch higher speed. The grappling ability even works of vehicles which can flysuch as the Raptor or Manta. In the vCTF maps the weapon placements and power ups are well placed, the only issue I had was that the AVRiL came will limited ammunition but once you get used to that it is no problem. The maps are very well designed and the vehicles themselves are easy to control, responsive and the modelling has been done to a very high standard as we expect from Epic. vCTF is a worthy addition to Unreal Tournament 3, it will be intresting to see how well it perfroms in the upcoming months against the ever popular Deathmatch and Capture the Flag.

Unlike the Capture the Flah game modes Warfare boasts twenty one maps which are very large, some are up to three times bigger than the maps in Onslaught for Unreal Tournament 2004. As we have already stated Warfare in the evolution of Onslaught.Warfare improves on onslaught in a number of ways, from the addition of the hoverboard, which makes the huge maps a lot easier to navigate, to the introduction of other elements, such as off node control points that you can capture in order to give your team an advantage. For example, one node might give your team access to the air vehicles, the other feature is the introduction of the orb, a special sphere that can change the outcome of a game.

In Warfare each team will receive its own orb, an orb is critical to a teams success as if you use it at a vulnerable enemy node you’ll instantly capture and fortify the node. Something that used to take a lot of valuable time in Onslaught. The orb also helps protect a node as for the enemy to obtain the captured node they will have to first destroy the orb before they can destroy the fortifications around the node. Warfare is a well designed and thought out game mode and has been executed to perfection, it has taken Onslaught to the next step and will appeal to both the Unreal fanboy and new players to the game series, Warfare has huge potential and I can see it attracting players from games like Battlefield. In Warfare we see the old Onslaught map Torlan make it’s way back into the new game type. How much of a success will Warfare be? How competitive will it be? These are questions that I have asked myself many times over the last few days and I still haven’t come up with an answer.

As well as playing the standard game modes we have also tested the InstaGib mutator, the InstaGib rifle is one of the most popular mutators in all of the Unreal Tournament series of games, playing InstaGib in both Capture the Flag and Deathmatch you notice some differences, in Deathmatch the refire rate has been increased, it is slower in Capture the Flag but not by much. Again the InstaGib feels more like it did in the original Unreal Tournament than in Unreal Tournament 2004, with the movement also changing there will be some time of readjustment, especially for the Unreal Tournament 2004 players. We all know that the InstaGib mutator will be very popular from the start, there were some concerns with regards to the InstaGib mutator in development from the Insta community however the game developer Epic Games have not disappointed them and have delivered the Instagib community an excellent mutator to play with. Currently the maps are more suited to normal weapons but it won’t take long for custom maps to be released which suit the InstaGib community more.

When Unreal Tournament 3 was in development there where various statements and promises made with regards to the gameplay of Unreal Tournament 3, one of them was that the feel of Unreal Tournament would be brought back and that the game would be more fast paced than Unreal Tournament 2004 ad that the game would be more of an in our face shooter.Have they delivered on their promises? The answer is simple, yes they have. This has been achieved by removing the dodge jumping that was in Unreal Tournament 2003 and 2004, increasing the level of gravity in the game and the weapons are more effective when they are up close to your opponent. The results of this are amazing, the gameplay is so much faster than in Unreal Tournament 2004.

The gameplay doesn’t disappoint on the PlayStation 3 either, you can control the game either by the controller or you can use a USB keyboard and mouse as Unreal Tournament 3 has keyboard and mouse support for the PlayStation 3. The content is exactly the same for the PlayStation 3 however the two versions of the game are not cross compatible for online play.

The multiplayer side of Unreal Tournament 3 has not been a disappointment with the exception of the Capture the Flag map choices however that will soon no longer be an issue as map packs are scheduled for release. The gameplay varies a lot depending on which gametype you are playing but there really is something online for everyone. Unreal Tournament 3 will be seen across the world in major tournaments for the professional gamer and at LAN’s across the world for the casual player. On the whole the map design has been excellent, the gameplay is what we all expected and hoped for.

Unreal Tournament 3 is unlikely to win any awards for originality. It’s a game that provides exactly what you’d expect from an Unreal Tournament game. We all know that different people expect different things from their game’s, the largest achievement that Epic Games has made in Unreal Tournament 3 would be that Unreal Tournament 3 meets and passes all of those expectations. Unreal Tournament 3 does not disappoint when it comes to the multiplayer game and it can look forward to a very successful future both here on ClanBase and all around the world.

ClanBase Multiplayer RatingAddictiveness

10Overall Score

96%Gameplay

10Game Balance

9Map Design

9Teamplay

10

Single Player

Unlike its’ predecessors the single player side of Unreal Tournament 3 isn’t based on a tournament where you compete in different solo and team gametypes in order to win the tournament, instead Unreal Tournament 3 has a single player campaign where you follow a character named Reaper. Reaper has had his colony destroyed by a fearsome alien race known as the Necris and has sworn revenge for the loss of his colony.

Once you start the single player campaign there is a long cinematic cut scene which introduces you into the single player campaign and gives you some background information on what has been happening, it also introduces you to the special ops team which Reaper becomes a part of. The quality of the fully voiced cut scenes and the writing quality of them where impressive and the first scene does an excellent job in setting the scene for the following plot.

After watching the first cut scene you could be forgiven for thinking that Unreal Tournament 3 was going to have an in depth plot with some unique battles between the humans and the Necris. However this is not the case as the single player campaign is more like an extended training mode for the multiplayer side of Unreal Tournament 3. The single player gameplay is what we have all seen before in Unreal Tournament games, the campaign is simply a sequence of deathmatch, capture the flag and warfare contests which are populated with bots which have varying levels of artificial intelligence. With this being said there are some redeeming factors as the campaign is broken up into chapters with each chapter having a new goal for you to achieve. In the first chapter you are rallying against the Axon Corporation in an attempt to steal their vehicles which are needed to help you in the impending Necris attack.

In the single player campaign you can invite up to three human players to play with you, this can either be friends from your buddy list or random players invite from the internet. You will all team up on the same side and battle with the famous bots and can play over several difficulty levels. Each mission is basically a multiplayer game, with the bots serving as the opposing team members as well as any friendly slots not occupied by human players. The first mission is a simple ten-kill deathmatch, the second is a longer deathmatch, the third is a game of Capture the Flag, the fourth a round of Unreal Tournament 3’s new Warfare mode, and so on.

When you play a new game mode for the first time you will be guided by an informative tutorial for the game mode, something that even the old school Unreal Tournament player may find useful, especially for Warfare. The tutorials will also allow the opportunity for the players to familiarize with more unusual equipment.

The majority of the action is what we are used to in Unreal Tournament game’s, fast paced action, fragging and movement. However this time the developer Epic Games has gone one step further than before. Something new has been added tot he game as a bonus, occasionally you may receive special cards for winning a specific match or performing particularly well in a battle. The cards can be used once and are stored in an inventory on the world map screen. You can select any cards that you have before a match and they will give you a bonus for the duration of the next map, some of the cards can give you additional hit points, reduce the number of players on the other team, increase vehicle armour and so on.

There are a large number of maps which spread over the various gametypes. The maps help to keep the game varied and have been designed well. With the maps we also see some of the old favourite maps return from previous Unreal Tournament games, maps such as Deck, Coret, Hydrosis and Torlan. Also included is the powerful editor, UnrealEd which allows you to create your own maps for you to share with the community. One bug bare that I do have is that there are only 6 Capture the Flag maps. Capture the Flag has been one of the more popular mods for Unreal Tournament based games in the past and I expected to see more maps for this gametype.

Graphically Unreal Tournament 3 is very impressive, the graphics look great and have been optimized to maximum effect, this has resulted in the game looking good even on lower specification pc’s. In Unreal Tournament 3 there is also support for PhysX cards. It isn’t a requirement however if you ever get the chance to play Unreal Tournament 3 with a PhysX card please do so as it is awesome. With PhysX Epic have been able to raise the bar by including some additional content to the game, this combined with the graphics makes the game exceed any expectations that I had. I know many of you reading this would have played the demo but you really can’t compare the finished product to the demo. They are miles apart from each other.

The sound on Unreal Tournament 3 does a brilliant job in making you feel that you are a part of the game. There are some subtle sounds which can make all the difference. You will also find that there are some of the old favourite Unreal Tournament music tracks which have been updated and included in the game.

The success of the Unreal Tournament franchise has always been down to the multiplayer side of the game. It is the multiplayer that will determine the success of Unreal Tournament 3. Yes, the single player is fun to play, yes you can logon for 20 minutes, have a great time then turn it off, but to me that isn’t Unreal Tournament. To me, Unreal Tournament is about going online, playing a few games and having fun with friends. So let’s take a look at the multiplayer aspects of the game.

Single Player RatingAudio

9Overall Score

92%Gameplay

10Graphics

10Immersion

8Value

9

Conclusion

Epic have been very modest on the system requirements for Unreal Tournament 3, on a low end PC the game looks like Unreal Tournament 2004 however if you want to run the game in highest detail with high frame rates you will need to have a powerful system with a GeForce 8800GTX graphics card. Epic have done an excellent job in making Unreal Tournament 3 look good, but not only look good but look good on older PC’s.

Why did I give graphics a 10/10 score? This is something that I will be asked so I will explain it here now. I reserve maximum scores for graphics not for games which look good graphicaly but games which push the boundries and to me Unreal Tournament 3 has done this in a few ways. First off PhysX has been introduced into the game for thoes lucky enough to have a PhysX card, on some maps the PhysX elements give the map a whole new challange, they look stunning and can effect things like your jump. Second the game looks awesome on a high end PC, the texturing, models have all been done to such a high standard, also you need to see the PlayStation 3 version in HD and 1080i, the final reason for giving graphics a 10 is because of how well the game has been optimised so that it looks good on older PC’s.

As for the maximum marks for multiplayer aspects of the game, well just play the game with some friends on teamspeak or ventrillo and it won’t take you long to work out why Addictivness, Gameplay and Teamplay all got maximum scores.

Unreal Tournament 3 is a must have game for any Unreal Tournament fan or any first person shooter, Unreal Tournament 3 is a serious contender for game of the year.

ClanBase Overall Rating

Overall Score

95%

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