Unreal Tournament 3

Console/PC game reviews by 5punkers

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Baliame
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Unreal Tournament 3

Post by Baliame »

EDIT: Okay, mind that this topic here completely evaded my attention...


Unreal Tournament 3 - PC
Alright, since I don't see any reviews of this around, let's get bashy.

Graphics
I cannot complain at all about this: it's beautiful, but it eats lots of computer resources. It's runnable on old piece of hardware, but quite frankly on my ATI Radeon X1600 it looked like Doom 2, on my current video card, which I haven't memorized yet, it's more comparable to Crysis. It uses quite stunning new effects for a change, although most of the time, these effects also make you wonder what the fuck killed you because you couldn't see anything.

Gameplay
The singleplayer mode deviates from those of the old Unreal Tournaments, in fact, this isn't even Unreal Tournament, it's more like Tabula Rasa with less RPG and more big stompy robots. In the campaign, you proceed through designated points in a fabulous unnamed planet, which makes it seem like some ghetto war for turf where you can collect protection money. A noticable thing is that the two characters who give you briefing have a black english accent thing comparable to that of MC Hammer. Otherwise, the game follows the quite pleasant shoot'n'kill-shit-esque approach of the last 4 games with the same usual gamemodes. Which is getting quite old.

The protagonist is a non-ghetto guy (for a change, yay) who has a sister (that means no sex in the game, probably), and is ordered around by two times ex-champion Malcolm who you probably fought in the last round of each Unreal Tournament previously and also bears the previously mentioned ghetto speech. The game also seems to promote spontaneous declaration of war on innocent people, which is quite good if you ask me.

Oh yes, the game stores your campaign offline and online seperately. So if you start a campaign online then login server goes down (which happens pretty often) you're pretty much fucked unless you fancy starting a new one.

Artificial Stupidity (AI)
This is so long that I have to separate it from Gameplay. Basically the game features the EXTREMELY UBERDUMB and the EXTREMELY WTFPWN AI.

The earlier ones are also known as "teammates" although "blockers" would be a better expression. These uberdumb ai guys cannot take down a single guy who only has an impact hammer in 5v1, grab the flag in CTF then run around and fight stuff, get stuck in walls quite often, get inside vehicles then drive them into a wall and don't do anything for quite a while, or the most annoying aspect, in VCTF, they get in FUCKING vehicles then while I'm bringing home the FUCKING flag on a FUCKING hoverboard they FUCKING drive in front of me yelling "LOLZ!!!!111 I COVER you're ASS!!!11". Speaking of which, they have a useful habit of telling you the position of the enemy. Or it perhaps WOULD be useful if they'd like tell you where they were. When they spot a significant enemy anywhere in the map, they yell "Enemy <lol> here!". I'm still trying to figure out where the fuck is here.

The latter ones are those who use aimbots, wallhax, instagib enforcers and everything else at the same time. You may also know these bots as "the opposing team".

Sounds'n'shit
I cannot think of any complaints here. The sound effects (along with visuals) are well-timed and also well in-place. Voice acting is great, despite the fact that most of them is unnecessary, except for the campaign stuff of course.

Multiplayer
The game suffers from minor master server problems and other major retardation. First of all, the login server crashes quite often, quite an inconvenience. If you ever manage to log in you will notice two things in the server browser: The pings are quite high. I know. I joined a 2k ping server and it played normally. And that there are little servers. Oh yes, Epic messed up by releasing early without redirect support. Practically, this means only completely vanilla servers appear in your server browser. If we put all this aside, the multiplayer is quite enjoyable, adrenaline-rising, fast paced, and although it's full of douchebags as usual, it won't really affect your experience. Unless of course they're stealing the goliaths and ramming them into mountains.

Overall
Despite all the Yathzee-style bashing on the game, I believe it's quite enjoyable. Pros are the new storyline, which finally isn't another random tournament event, the stunning graphics and sound effects, cons are the rather irritating AI and multiplayer system, but despite these, the good is still seriously outweighing the bad, and at the end of the day, you realize you are playing quite an enjoyable game.

:starfull: :starfull: :starfull: :starfull: :starfull: :starfull: :starfull: :starhalf: :starempty: :starempty:
7.5/10: "Sweep first, buy if you like."
Last edited by Baliame on February 3rd, 2008, 4:18, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by FatherJack »

It's all a rather familiar tale for me. This game is basically more of the same UT2004 stuff - I suppose it looks better but it's all so fast that's kind of irrelevant.

The bots on your team were always total rubbish, and the enemy ones rather good - I seem to recall the only way I was able to complete the tournament ladder in the older games was to jump through various tactical hoops to recruit Malcolm, simply so the opposition didn't have him. Of course he immediately started sucking once on my team.

Mostly I had to do everything myself, which was problematic given the team-based nature of some of the goals, but they seem to have dropped something from the previous release which actually made it bearable.

Voice Control.

Yep, good old fashioned 1980's Voice Recognition. The old one had it. It wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but the crucial "defend the base", "get our flag back" and "hold this position" actually worked! I'd scream at them to stay put, go and get the objectives myself, then shout at them to either guard or get the flag back while keeping where I was free from enemy harm.

It was like voice comms, but with people that actually did as they were told..sort of. More complicated things like "capture point A" or "no, you fucking twat, I said A" seemed to be lost in translation and they often got bored/distracted and started doing their own thing (which was always of course the least desirable thing ever) but it got me through the SP ladder..just about.

Haven't tried this new jobby with MP yet, infact the only time I've encountered the big robot things was in the SP demo - that sort of thing just jumps out to me as a twat magnet, and I don't need that level of frustration when playing.

MP on the previous release started out okay, but degenerated quite quickly into people being squished on spawn by autistic Manta pilots, over and over..forever. It's an experience I haven't exactly been burning with nostalgia to repeat.
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Post by deject »

I really just can't be bothered. UT3 holds no interest for me.
Baliame
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Post by Baliame »

Well yes it's basically UT2004 with a few new maps, a new campaign, a next-gen engine and necris vehicles, which are utterly overpowered, stompy thing takes 3 goliath shots, during which it can take down 6 goliaths. Now imagine that dumped in a TDM level, where it's 4v6 (6 enemies) and only they can use the stompy thing. Oh yes, I actually had to turn it down to Casual difficulty to complete it.

In fact FJ, the problem is that in VCTF you actually need to work as a team to capture the flag. Since they are faggotretards who don't have the ability to defend me, I have to overwatch them while they take the longest goddamn route possible home.
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Post by HereComesPete »

I've completed this on normal, I concur with pretty much everything mr bubbles said :above:.

I've enabled AA through the nvidia control panel because the game doesn't use it otherwise, doesn't really need it though, it's purty.

By the time I faced akasha and her necris goons I was scoring 100+ points in objective games and my ubiquitous fat black gangsta team mate would score 10 or maybe 12, the other 2 scoring about 20-30 points each. Their team of 6 would score (at worst) double my best bot or more, each. :roll:

I recall one tdm where the score was 50-48 to me, and I mean me because I had a bat shit crazy surgical game with the flak cannon and was 45-6 on the k/d. I re-played that level a lot, more so than any warfare map in fact, that was the point when the godlike AI showed up and treble back-flipped over my head and double enforcered my brains out my face. A whole new skill level was required.

The final fight is the most annoying thing on the game. 1v1 with akasha, She, like Baliame says, is a wtfpwn style AI. She pretty much head shots you as you spawn, then proceeds to collect the shield belt, the vest, helmet, thigh pads and then tops it all off with a rocket launcher and the u-damage. Getting in close is death, even with the flak cannon, she bounces like a crack whore having a fit on a fix, then carves you up.

I won this with iron sight sniper head shots :), at medium range she shock rifles you whilst performing her gold medal winning floor routine, long range she'll try and snipe. I found that the only weaknesses she has is the lock on times for head shots and her path around the arena. So I practiced in instant action until not using the scope was entirely natural, and shot her in the head a lot, it took a few goes. But then I won and clicked too many times and missed the final fmv as a result. :x

At least the 1.1 patch fixed the fmv's not working on nvidia cards, the only reason I played the campaign was the rather thin story, I quite like it, and the game didn't fucking work.

4/10 before patch, 7/10 after.
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Post by Dr. kitteny berk »

Question is. worth having a 5punky server?
HereComesPete
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Post by HereComesPete »

Weeeelllll, we don't seem to hate it, but I doubt we'd play it either. I guess we could have 5punkers take on some uber hard bots.

Also, the real question is 'will it blend'?
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Post by Dr. kitteny berk »

I imagine it'd take the same role as Q4 - A game a lot of us own, but never really gets played, apart from at lans.
Baliame
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Post by Baliame »

Until the non-vanilla servers not showing up is fixed, I doubt. Everything this game does, UT2k4 does it better, except for the graphics.
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Post by Hehulk »

Advise me please, I enjoyed UT/2K3/2K4. Will I enjoy this?
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Post by Dr. kitteny berk »

Hehulk wrote:Advise me please, I enjoyed UT/2K3/2K4. Will I enjoy this?
Well, it's the same game, just shinier.

I'd imagine so.
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Post by FatherJack »

I've never been a massive fan of the series, but would probably put the original UT at the top in terms of gameplay and fun. Oddly, as it (to my eyes) seemed merely an attempt to fix what was horribly, horribly broken in Unreal MP.

I've never got used to the "feel" of it, if that makes sense - and it can't be an engine-specific thing as Quake 3 feels like ass, whereas Bioshock is just fine.

I think they overcomplicated things - while class-based games like TF2 and BF2 might appear more elaborate, there are actually only a very few set actions each class can perform.
In UT you have a plethora of weapons, double-jumps, dodges, powerups, hoverboards, vehicles only vulnerable to certain weapons and the accursed translocator. Any "class" (since there are none) can do any of these things on the fly so it makes counter-strategy an impossible goal to shoot for.

It's like when they put grappling hooks in Quake, or people discovered you could basically fly with the gauss gun in HLDM - there are too many possibilities to think about and your success against a player using all the tricks in the book is mostly based on luck.
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Post by MORDETH LESTOK »

On Sale $15.90 USD - weekend pricing

Gogamer.com
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Post by spoodie »

I forgot I have this game.
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Post by Vowles »

Bought this today on steam. Never played an Unreal. Jumped in a TDM server.. and holycrap. Its like playing online for the first time, mayhem. need-les to say I ended up with about 4 points...
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Post by Dr. kitteny berk »

If you can find UT2004 cheap, we're playing it on wednesdays a bit, and sometimes fridays.

It's... Fun... Kinda...
HereComesPete
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Post by HereComesPete »

IT will melt your eyeses precious!
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Post by Vowles »

Bought'd
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