Unreal Tournament III: Old School Enhanced

For fans of the original UT on PC back in 1999, your long wait has finally come to an end.  And man did it take a while to finally bring back the old school feeling into the next-gen age.  When UT 2003 came out, I found it to be blasphemous and a horrid attempt to extend the franchise.  Well, so did the creators, as they’ve Xed out UT 2003 by naming the fourth game UT III.

This game was created solely for the online multiplayer experience, so if you can’t handle face-paced and intense online battles and prefer campaigns, stop reading and move onto another game: this isn’t for you.  While there is a single/co-op campaign, it’s there to teach you the basics of all game types, as well as introduce you to levels and weapons (in case you’ve been in a cave and never played any of the other UTs).

The newest edition to the franchise is the Warfare game style, where two teams fight to destroy each other’s core by linking nodes.  At first, this will seem so foreign that you’ll become intimidated and refuse to play it again.  However, constant practice will have you reaping the benefits in no time.  While the other game modes focus on killing each other in a massive frenzy of carnage, Warfare is a strategic mode which not only requires teamwork, but also the use of a headset.  Well, it doesn’t require it per se, but communicating with your teammates puts a huge advantage in your favor.  Even more importantly, how can you own a 360 and not have a headset?!  Warfare is by far my favorite game mode; I can even brag about being ranked 44 in the world on the 360 release.  It’s intense and all sorts of entertaining.

The other game styles are the basic ones: deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag (CTF), and vehicle CTF.  I believe those games speak for themselves.  If you aren’t feeling up to a heated competition, try out the player matches.  In these, you don’t have to wait for a full room to start a game and can jump in the action at any time.  You can even invite your friends into the game at any point, provided that the map hasn’t been maxed out (up to 16 players).

However, if you feel ready enough for big-league competition, test your skills out on ranked matches.  This is where the big guns come out and true sportsmanship tends to shine.  Of course, there will always be those foul-mouthed, arrogant players out there, but ranked matches tend to be filled with professional gamers who are in it to win, but always appreciate a good match.  A thing to keep in mind is that while it is frustrating to lose a match, rankings are not based on your win-lose record, but on how you perform.  For instance, your team may get rocked in a warfare game, losing 4-0 without a single hit on their core (and you can thank the commentary for stating “humiliating defeat”), if you score 300 points, that’s a big boost to your ranking.  Only the good and experienced players tend to realize this.  If you continue to let your fingers do the talking and practice good sportsmanship, your gamertag will begin to get recognized, respected, and feared.  There are a few downfalls of playing a ranked match, but they’re so minute yet worth mentioning.  Just like many other games, you cannot invite friends to a ranked match.  Also, every ranked match will spit you back to the main menu after each is finished.  Lastly, you have to wait for the match to fill up to the minimum capacity before the host can start the match.  This is warfare’s biggest problem, as many are still intimidated by the new mode, but it’s completely worth waiting.

Unreal III is an incredible relief to a franchise which could have been easily destroyed had another UT 2003 been developed.  A lot of thought was put into level development and gameplay.  The weapon system has been balanced out better than almost any game that has come out in years.  Some of the old guns have been combined while other have been reinvented.  The biorifle, for example, is much more useful than it was in the past.  Then there’s the addition of the hoverboard.  This could have been botched so bad as to make it useless and really bring the game down, but the verdict is out: the hoverboard is amazing!  You’ll find yourself trying to use it in other games, then quickly realizing how much you miss it.

If you’re in it for the achievements, then you’re in for a long battle, as the majority of the achievement are based on how many times you receive certain rewards (e.g., Flakmaster).  Each reward requires fragging opponents a large amount of times with a single weapon.  Each achievement require that you obtain this reward 20 times, so you’ll be playing a long long time to be getting all of these achievements.

All in all, Unreal Tournament III is a blast and well worth the $60 you’ll fork out.  At almost any point in the day, there are people playing, although Warfare tends to be more of an American fascination, so you’ll have to get on during the US night time if you want to enjoy the mode.  While I fully love the entire game, design, and online enjoyment, there are a few bugs (using the hoverboard sometimes has a glitch) and requiring the gamer to press right on the D-pad to talk is just annoying.  The latter, however, has a glitch, just like CoD4.  Hold down right on the D-pad so that the mic icon is displayed.  Unplug the headset, then let go of the D-pad.  The mic icon should still be displayed.  Plug the headset back in and BLAMO, you can talk your head off without having to use a button.  The price is that if everyone is using the glitch, it can slow the server down by hogging up all the bandwidth.  The controls are quite smooth in the default mode, but if you want to change things up, you can highly customize your layout, which has greatly improved my game.  Unfortunately, there are certain functions which are considered “required” and can be a burden.  The weapon select function is useless, but “required,” so you’ll have to sacrifice one button for this.

That being said, UT III gets an 8.5 in my book.  I’d give it more, but the campaign gets boring and beating it on the insane difficulty is just that: insane.  I spend over 1.5 hours on one level without a decision as to the winner.  The graphics are surprisingly smooth, considering the constant action which you are engaged in.  For those who enjoy realistic and slow-paced FPS games, you’re going to hate this.  Take a look at the name and decide how the action is going to be: Unreal.

~ by myke on August 15, 2008.