Another Game Of The Year?

Do you play games to embrace reality? I don't, I would rather escape it. This is why Unreal Tournament is so appealing to me, from low gravity maps, to alien characters, UT3 is my new addiction. So far I've been having a blast just fighting the bots, the vehicles are great, and the hoverboard in particular is a really fun and welcome addition. The graphics are ridiculously detailed, and everything seems more dark and sinister than previous releases of Unreal Tournament. The game play is faster paced than most first person shooters. The opening music is reminiscent of the first UT GOTY, and thus brings back fond memories of LAN parties and personal frag goals. Weapons, and characters have been carried over and updated in this latest release. One change I'm not sure I like is that they did away with the adrenaline system so now I can't "cheat" the newbies... ah well. If they were going to get rid of something, it should have been that good for nothing bio rifle.

The graphics requirements are stiff, my NVIDIA 6800 which easily plays UT2004 at its graphical highest at 1024x768, is not keeping pace with UT3, thus I would recommend, and personally plan on, upgrading to the latest NVIDIA GPU. The solution for people with older graphics cards is of course to play with low detail settings and low resolution. I have managed to squeeze 1024x768 resolution at detail level 1, and while game play is at decent speed I'm not enjoying the level of detail I paid for.
The vivid colors in past UT games were not forgotten! Post processing options allow you to change the intensity of the light, no, not the brightness, the lighting. I was disappointed on "default" post processing, but after switching to "vivid" and then to "intense", my eyes were bathed in highly contrasting, beautiful colors. Now, once I get my big video card, and start seeing 70 frames per second at highest detail settings, I'll be a very satisfied gamer.

The maps there are many maps, without sitting down and counting each one in the list for every different game type I can tell you now that there has to be over 20 different ones, and with the editor included to create your own who cares if you don't like one, make a new one. As I stated before there are different maps for different game types and anyone familiar with FPS should know that there are specific maps for capture the flag, deathmatch, and so on.

The vehicles are mostly the same in UT3 as in previous games with additions such as the dark walker, like from war of the worlds. Maneuvering the different vehicles is fairly simple because all of the commands can be customized to whatever you like in the menu. Did I mention how much I love the hoverboard?

Modifications or mods are the bread and butter of the UT series, and this is emphasized in UT3. Players can create their own maps, sounds, characters, and for the most part create their own games in which to do battle. Entire web sites have been set up for the sole purpose of UT3 mods.

Online play Haven't touched this much, I can only imagine the crazy kids online who camp at spawn points waiting for a n00b like me. I've had bad experiences in the past playing FPS online because of all the cheating, so I'm content for now to play against the bots and stair step my way up with them, and possibly do the multiplayer LAN thing soon.

The characters are now customizable in the game with several different accessories to choose from. Helmets, goggles, boots, torso, and more are available. Once you finish, you can spin the character around to see how well you have put it all together.

The weapons have their roots in the first UT release but have been updated and modified heavily both in looks and physics from previous releases. All the major weapons have been carried over into UT3, such as the rocket launcher, flak cannon, sniper rifle, and redeemer. Most notably different however is the advent of the canister gun which fires several different kinds of ammo, like sticky grenades.

The sounds Very loud to say the least, I am impressed at the progress and level of detail incorporated into the sound. When my character jumps I can hear the "weight" of the character, you have to play to understand what I mean.

The menu system is different than UT2003/4 with a white and red theme being the dominant colors for this release. I find the menu system a bit cumbersome to navigate at first but almost a week of playing has changed that to second nature.

Of course there are some changes that could have been made to perfect UT3, and as a matter of fact the reason I rated it a 4 star and not a 5 was because it did not ship with a Linux client in the box. Everyone is different though, and prefer different settings,or colors, and I'm sure there is someone out there who digs the bio-rifle; UT3 embraces this by making the game as customizable as possible and is how UT3 DOMINATES the other FPS games.