Review

Platform: Xbox 360
Developer: Epic Games
Publisher: Midway Games Inc.

Reviewed by Samuel Altersitz on 8.12.2008

Review Rating: 8/10

Before I begin this review, I want to warn readers that this score really depends on your ability to get online or on a LAN with Unreal Tournament 3. If this was just a review of the single player campaign, the score would be much lower. The Unreal Tournament multiplayer always shines while the singleplayer is normally mediocre. Unreal games, without the Tournament part, are Epic's single player Unreal universe game. If you are planning on picking up UT3 just for the single player aspect, I would recommend renting it first to see if you would enjoy it.

However, if you do have the ability to get online with Unreal Tournament 3, then you will almost surely not be disappointed. UT3 is some of the most fun you can have in an online FPS.

Unreal Tournament 3 is actually the fourth game in the Tournament line of Unreal games. First there was Unreal Tournament, then Unreal tournament 2003, then Unreal Tournament 2004. Now we have Unreal Torurnament 3 which was previously named Unreal Tournament 2007. Epic Games decided that since UT3 was using the Unreal Engine 3, that it should be named appropriately-- especially because UT2004 was more of an expansion and upgrade to UT2003.

UT3 takes a few steps forward and a few steps backward when trying to move the Unreal Tournament series into the next generation. While the upgrade to Unreal Engine 3 adds to the game graphically, Epic decided to play it conservatively when it came to game modes. Death match, team death match, duel, capture the flag, vehicle capture the flag, and warfare are the only modes found in Unreal Tournament 3. Gone are the modes of assault, mutant, last man standing and invasion. The mutators also seem to have been stripped down in UT3 compared to past versions. Spree rewards have been altered, as have the multiple kill awards... and the multiple kill awards again stop at Monster Kill (6 kills in a row, all within 3 seconds of the last kill), which harks back to the days of Unreal Championship on the original Xbox. Also, the Xbox 360 version is missing both the character customization ability found on the PC and PlayStation 3 versions and the ability to download user created maps and modifications found on the other two versions.

Unreal Tournament 3 does have a single player mode that is supposed to have a cohesive story behind it, but unfortunately it's just like single player modes in previous UT games-- training for the multiplayer modes. The story is unimportant and easily forgotten and even goes so far as to try to explain exactly why we need to capture flags in the war (flag is actually FLaG for Field Lattice Generator which allows the teams to respawn, capturing it powers it down forcing a retreat of the losing team). It is also kind of a pain in the rear to play through when you are by yourself because your team's AI is complete junk in every game mode except team death match. The enemy AI is very competent in all modes (and in a few cases outnumbers your team). The story mode also loves to throw you into CTF/vCTF and warfare matches the majority of the time which is where your team blows the most. Thankfully, you can play the campaign mode cooperatively, up to four players over Xbox LIVE or two players using split screen on a single Xbox 360. If you are going to play through the campaign, do it in co-op mode.

All the main weapons are back in this iteration of Unreal Tournament. The impact hammer, enforcers (and they can be dual wielded if you pick up a fallen foe's enforcer), the bio rifle, shock rifle, link gun, mini-gun (it is the Stinger version taken almost directly from Unreal Championship 2, though without the ability to move your secondary fire shots around by moving your targeting reticule), flack cannon, rocket launcher, sniper rifle and AVRiL Anti-Vehicle Rocket Launcher (for vehicle matches only) have returned. The Redeemer mini-nuclear missile launcher has also returned but the new version does not let you switch weapons while you hold it; it also drops for others to pick up if you are killed while holding it. All weapons have two modes of fire (the sniper rifle's secondary fire is the zoom), and some have three modes. For example, the rocket launcher can fire one rocket at a time (primary fire), up to three rockets in a spread (secondary fire), three rockets in a tight spiral (while charging secondary hit primary fire once) or it can lob the rockets out like grenades (while charging secondary hit primary fire twice). Experimentation on each weapon will let you know what modes they have.

There are some complaints about weapon balancing, though. Dual enforcers are pretty deadly, as is the link gun's primary fire. The Stinger mini-gun's main fire does seem a bit weak at times and the flack cannon's secondary fire is fairly weak unless the shot hits an opponent directly. I'm not too concerned with the way most weapons work, except the link gun; its primary fire takes off 25 points of health per hit and fires incredibly fast, making it a very easy weapon to spam kill people with. Conversely, the link gun's secondary fire seems very weak for killing people compared to the primary fire unless you can keep them in the beam for close to 5 seconds (as opposed to the second and a half it takes to kill them with the primary fire).

Some weapons are missing, however. The ripper/ripjack is gone as is the lightning gun and the shield gun. I'm happy to be rid of the lightning gun, but the loss of the ripper/ripjack hurts because that was a second weapon you could get head shots with. I should mention that the ripper was only in the original UT and the ripjack was in Unreal Championship 2, so this shouldn't be that big of a shock.

The armor power-ups are slightly changed. Now there is a shield belt worth 100 armor points, a chest plate worth 50 armor points, a helmet worth 20 armor points (or one sniper head shot, whichever comes first), thigh pads worth 30 armor points and the jump boots (no armor bonus, but they let you double jump higher for a few jumps). These can be combined on the maps where multiple pieces are available, offering more protection. As a note, the shield belt is the only armor power up that absorbs all damage taken, first; the others absorb some of the damage taken while still letting some damage through to the player.

The power-ups are also back. The damage amplifier (named UDamage after the UC2 version), berserk power-up (which increases your firing rate while you have it), invulnerability power-up and the invisibility power-up are all here. On a fun note, if you can get both the UDamage and the berserk power-ups at the same time, you hear the announcer call out "JUGGERNAUT". The power-ups drop off of people if they are killed with them (obviously the invulnerability power-up won't, since they can't be killed), so you can grab them from fallen foes.

If you're a fan of vehicular combat, then Unreal Tournament 3 will not disappoint. All the vehicles from UT2004 (pre-Editor's Choice Edition) are back, along with a whole slew of new Necris vehicles. The old vehicles have been rebalanced and some of them have been changed slightly (the Scorpion's primary fire, for example); and the new Necris vehicles are just beauty in sci-fi design, while still being balanced with their normal human counterparts. Vehicle controls can get some getting used to, but once you have them down the vehicles are pure fun.

Unreal Tournament 3 does have a ton of maps to play in, with the disk shipping with over 40 maps split between all the game types. The maps are gorgeous thanks to the Unreal Engine 3. The maps are incredibly well designed with everything seeming to just fall into place when you are running around them; just note that the power-ups are designed to be slightly hard to get to. Whether you play death match/team death match or duels, capture the flag/vehicle capture the flag or warfare, you won't have a shortage of great looking maps to play on the disk. Unfortunately, you will have a shortage of the mod community's player made maps, but hopefully Epic will find a way to get some of those to Xbox 360 players.

Unreal Tournament 3 shines in its online multiplayer component. The online action is fast and very much unlike any of the more tactical first person shooters that are on the market today like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare or Rainbow Six: Vegas 2. It may come as a shock to some people who are more used to the more tactical, less action based shooters; but the old school feeling of just this fast action, double jumping, wall jumping, no reloading FPS just makes me all giddy when I play it. It returns me to what I prefer in FPS games... lots of fast, insane action where I have to constantly watch my back, sides and even above or below me to escape the incoming death that is always looming.

UT3 can support up to 16 players on Xbox LIVE; though there can be some problems.

First off, some people host very laggy games. The game even tells you when you go to host a match that cable and DSL connections should be able to comfortably host 8 player matches, but any more might not work out so smoothly. However, since there are so few Midway/Epic dedicated servers (and no ranked Midway/Epic dedicated servers), you end up finding a lot of really laggy games where residential cable and DSL hosts try to host 16 player matches. This can cause a lot of people to think the game’s netcode is bad when it is really just that people are trying to host more people than their residential cable or DSL connections can handle. Check what your ISP gives you for upstream bandwidth before trying to host games of more than 8 people. Remember, the server machine has to know where every player is, what they are doing, and is using prediction at all times for hit detection. This means there is a ton of incoming and outgoing information on the server Xbox 360. The fatter the pipe, the better.

Second, there is no party system. I realize that most Xbox LIVE games do not have a party system implemented; but at this point in Xbox LIVE's lifetime and how many people love the way that Halo 2 and Halo 3 and other games with party systems work them, it seems to be just laziness or ineptitude in game design to have a very online focused game and not implement a party system for it. This, of course, really can mess up people in team based games where people end up on different teams from their friends-- and the interface for changing teams is kind of non-intuitive.

Third, the online server browsing is a bit of a pain to work with. The only indicator you get when browsing servers is whether it is a player hosted server with the host playing or a dedicated server (either player made or Midway/Epic hosted). There are no ping indicators, forcing you to join a match to see if it can actually support the amount of players it has as its maximum. There are also no mutator or bot use indicators, again forcing players to join before finding out if any mutators or bots are active on the server. Not everyone likes bots or mutators, so not having these indicators is a major letdown.

Finally, and most damning of all, is Epic's voice chat implementation for Unreal Tournament 3. Epic decided to cut down on bandwidth usage by forcing users to hold a button down to talk. Not a push to talk, like in Halo 3 games with more than a certain number of players, but an actual hold to talk. Putting it bluntly, you have to hold down the button you have mapped to talk the entire time you are talking. And, to top it off, the default button is right on the directional pad; quite possibly the most useless place for it on the entire controller when playing a FPS game-- especially one as fast paced as UT3. Thankfully players can remap the button to one more useful if they want. Players have also found a way to glitch the mic into an open mic format. However, this isn't a huge problem in death match; but in any team based game type this is quite possibly the worst idea in voice communications since the original Unreal Championship's use of voice channels (nothing like being 5th on a 5 person team and not being able to talk to anyone else!). In the team based game types, open team communication is an absolute necessity and holding a button to talk just makes those game types not as much fun as they could be.

If you join good servers and remap the hold to talk function to a more intuitive button, you can have some great fun in Unreal Tournament 3. I've been pretty much addicted to death match, myself, while a friend of mine is a warfare junkie. I can easily jump into playing for a few hours after I get home from work and not be bored. I'm addicted to the fast action online; and I tend to host my own servers because I am on a really nice 20 Mb download and 5 Mb upload connection, so I tend to host very lag free games (and even with my connection I still limit the players to 10 to make sure the game remains lag free).

This can cause some people to believe I have host advantage when I win matches I host, since UT3 does use server side hit detection. I think, though, on a connection like mine the host advantage should be minimal. I also don't win every match, as there are some people who come in my games that can completely school me. For people hosting on residential cable or DSL connections, though, the host advantage might be much more noticeable. Obviously, the host can't have any advantage when it is being run as a dedicated server.

The only other main gripe with Unreal Tournament 3 is the inability to turn off auto-aim. While you might hear people comment that the auto aim is so great and hit boxes are so big that just firing a sniper shot in the general direction of an opponent will get you a head shot, it isn't quite that bad. It can be noticeable when using the hitscan weapons (pistols, shock, sniper), as the game will often resort to the Halo style of sticky reticules; where the reticule moves with an opponent or moves off of your intended target (like a shock ball for a combo) to focus on an opponent. I realize that analog control sticks aren't as precise as a mouse and keyboard for aiming, so some aim assisting is necessary on consoles, but the sticky reticule does get annoying fairly quickly. Server hosts, at the least, should have the option of turning it off.

While these issues may sound game breaking, I really only focus on them because I am such a fan of the Unreal Tournament games and Epic Games in general. They aren't game breaking or annoying enough to make me stop having fun with the game. They are annoying enough for me to want some things patched as soon as possible (server info, auto-aim toggle) to make the game better. I also think that Epic should have stuck with the tournament style of campaign with a cohesive and interesting enough background story found in Unreal Championship 2 over the attempt at a war themed single player campaign mode found in Unreal Tournament 3.

So, bottom line? Unreal Tournament 3 is a really good online game that is loads of fun to play for even long stretches at a time provided you find good servers and remap your hold to talk button. Its single player mode is mediocre, though, and easily ignored (even though the achievements for the single player mode are worth more, individually, than the multiplayer achievements). If you like fast paced online FPS games, then you should pick up Unreal Tournament 3. If you don't go online often with your Xbox 360, you can skip this title.

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8.4.2008 - Screenshots (6)