Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Ron Burke

Guess what – Unreal Tournament came before Gears of War.  Despite the enthusiastic push on the back of the box that states that Unreal Tournament III is brought to you by the same team that brought you Gears of War, those of us who have been playing the Unreal series are well aware of the series origins.  Thinking back into the not too distant past I can recall buying a second Voodoo 2 card to run them SLI simply to bring the original Unreal game up to its maximum potential.  After spending literally days on top of the tower in the map “Facing Worlds” snapping off headshots on the unsuspecting masses below, I knew that the Unreal Tournament series was here to stay. 

In March 16th of 2004, Unreal Tournament 2004 was released, marking the first time we’ve seen vehicles added to the carnage, as well as the brand new Assault and Onslaught modes which asked players to capture key points in a certain sequence to make the enemy core vulnerable to attack.  It was a massive hit and players flocked to these new modes.  Fast forward to November 19th, 2007 and we see the inevitable sequel, Unreal Tournament III.  Dropping the year moniker and updating the engine significantly kept the game under wraps for a long while, with only the occasional release of a screenshot that simply defied belief that it was real.  Welcome back to the tournament - sorta. 

The graphics in Unreal Tournament III are obviously going to get a great deal of attention.  Simply put, this game makes use of every shader, light technique, normal mapping, and visual trick in the book.  Here is the difference – Unreal Tournament III does it without taking any framerate hits.  I loaded up Unreal Tournament on my Quad Core Intel with an 8800 GTX and it ran beautifully, as it should. What amazed me is that it ran just as well on my 7800 GT on my single core laptop, albeit at a slightly lower resolution.  For as much detail and action as there is going on in UT3, the framerate is absolutely rock solid.  If you’ve got the gear to run it, it’ll run flawlessly at 1920x1080 at ultra detail without a hitch – you certainly can’t say that about some of the other FPS contenders this year. 

There is no doubt that the Unreal Engine 3 is hot.  It powers some of the biggest franchise titles of 2007, as well as newcomers like Mass Effect.  In fact, Atari, Activision, Capcom, Disney, Gearbox, Konami, Koei, 2K Games, Midway, NC Soft, THQ, Ubisoft, Sega, Sony, EA, Square Enix, TimeGate, and Webzen just to name a few have all licensed the Unreal Engine 3 to create their products.  To see it used so well by Epic is simply testament to what a developer that is familiar with the toolset can do.  Unreal Tournament III is simply the best looking game that a fairly average machine can run – the holy grail of graphical programming.  Tim Sweeny has been working on Unreal Engine 4 for two years already – as amazing as 2007 looked under this engine, 2009 is gonna look a whole lot sweeter.

As I write this I am listening to the Unreal Tournament III soundtrack.  In fact, I’ve owned every soundtrack to every Unreal game that has been released.  Jesper Kyd joins the crew to bring us a fantastic soundtrack for this series addition and he does not disappoint, bringing some moody ambient music to the game.  Rom Di Prisco hands in 18 of the 70 total tracks with some great electronic techno that completely fits the future Sci-Fi world.  My personal favorite track from Di Prisco has to be Mekalopolis as it features a very passive muted tone punctuated with sharp snare snaps and rolls.  Kevin Riepl, who worked on the soundtrack to Gears of War, rounds out the soundtrack team handling some of the more frantic orchestral tracks providing a robust sound for the more epic moments in the game.   All in all, a fantastic soundtrack that delivers three distinct styles in a sweet two disc set. 

The fantastic soundtrack makes a great comparison piece when compared to the voice acting.  Put simply, the voice work in Unreal Tournament III is high budget / low result.  The voices are crisp and well acted, but the writing takes itself so seriously that it enters the realm of self-parody.  The story basically says that your homeworld has been attacked so you must battle with the other various factions to bring them to your side (they come to your side but never actually help you in point of fact) so you can face off against the Necris Queen Akasha.  Teaming up with your sister, token moron Othello, religious nut Bishop, and series staple Malcolm, you’ll jet across the galaxy engaging in…actually does anyone care about this lame story?  Moving on. 

One thing that was great to hear was the return of the announcers.  You’ll get the soft and effeminate “Play” voice when you start, but when the bullets really start to fly you’ll be happy to hear “RAMPAGE!”, “PANCAKE!”, and “MONSTER KILL!” as you rip the other team to shreds.  This, combined with a great set of weapon sounds, makes for a pretty awesome set of sound effects – even if the storyline and some of the voice work is throw-away.

Have you played a First Person Shooter recently?  Yea, it’s pretty much just like that.  The controls couldn’t be more straight forward.  You use the WASD keys to move around, the space bar makes you jump, and the left and right mouse buttons handle normal fire and alternate fire modes.  If you like dying and respawning a lot you can hit F to Feign Death and C to crouch, but I have to admit that I’ve never seen either used in online play.  Scrolling your weapons is handled with scrolling the mouse, and G automatically switches to your (configurable) best weapon.  

The real change here is the hoverboard. While you can still use the Translocator in some maps, there are many other maps that allow you to use your new hoverboard.  Reminiscent of the hoverboards from Back to the Future II, the hoverboard allows you to quickly navigate across the map.  If you are hit by even the tiniest bit of flak from the Flak Cannon or take damage in any way you’ll immediately faceplant off of your board.  Obviously this takes a moment from which to recover, so you’ll want to be mindful of this whenever you tap the Q key.  If you are following a vehicle on the hoverboard, you can latch onto the back of that vehicle for a quick slingshot-ride.  Other than this skitchin’ beam, you can’t fire any weapons while on the board, but you can carry a flag.  It makes for a cool new element, but only time will tell if fans truly embrace the addition.

And now we come to the center of the hedge maze.  If December NPD numbers are to be believed, somehow this title has not translated all of this fantastic potential into sales.  Before we talk about how that happened, let’s talk a little bit about what is different about Unreal Tournament III.

Unreal Tournament 2004 introduced Assault, Onslaught, and vehicles all in one shot.   You’ll be happy to know that they have returned, but rebranded and combined into a mode called Warfare.  This new mode still asks you to capture linked nodes to make the enemy core vulnerable, but it also expands by giving players access to unlinked nodes that provide additional resources or respawn points.  For instance, during a later map you’ll use two unlinked nodes to trigger a countdown that damages the enemy core remotely instead of forcing you to assault the enemy base directly.  On another map, controlling one of the two unlinked nodes gives you access to a Necris Darkwalker or the Paladin Tank, providing an incredible advantage to whichever team holds that vehicle.  What makes this different than Onslaught is that each side also has a colored orb.  This orb will instantly capture any unprotected enemy node which makes for some crazy last-second save moments and incredible struggles over strategic points.  It’ll also prevent the enemy from capturing your friendly node if you are nearby with an orb.  The hitch?  You can’t carry the orb in any vehicle other than the Hoverboard or on foot.
In addition to Warfare we see the return of Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Vehicle Capture the Flag, and a one-on-one mode called Duel.  Duel uses a round robin elimination system where the winner stays for the next challenger and the loser goes home in small chunks.  Playing online I didn’t see many games beyond Warfare and Team Deathmatch, so not much has changed since Unreal Tournament 2004.

Also returning are the vehicles of Unreal Tournament 2004.  We see the Manta, the Translocator, the Goliath, the Cicada, the Hellbender, and several other vehicles from UT2K4, but all of them have been retooled and retrofitted with new weapons.  Some now have powered shields, most of them handle better, and all of them explode in a far cooler fashion.  Where we see a bit of a divergence from the usual list of bikes, airplanes, tanks, and personal location craft is the new Necris vehicles.  There are six in total and they are intended to counterbalance the power of the Axon vehicles from the ‘good’ side.  The Viper is essentially the Axon Manta, but with the added ‘bonus’ of being able to suicide into the enemy for maximum damage.  The Nightshade is a cloaking stealth vehicle perfect for sneak attack strategies or dropping off a flag runner.  The Scavenger looks like a Poke’mon ball with Doctor Octopus arms that can fire small energy orbs as well as spin like a pinball to run over enemies.  The arms allow it to travel up terrain normally impassable by any other vehicle.  The Fury is a powerful attack fighter that completely dominates the battlefield with its heavy firepower, a cue it takes from its big brother The Darkwalker.  The Darkwalker reminds me of the aliens that attack in War of the Worlds – they are large pods with huge black tentacles that keep it located high above the battlefield where it can unleash death upon anything that isn’t shielded by a vehicle or wall.   Similarly, the Axon Leviathan creates an multi-seat vehicle that sports a high-energy ion cannon, several smaller personnel weapons, energy shields, and really big ass tires for crunching players stupid enough to assault the thing directly.  If you can coordinate a team to man the behemoth it is almost unstoppable.

To help counterbalance some of the difficulty that the game tosses at you later in the single player game, you are given cards that unlock extra ‘support’.  Sometimes you’ll be outnumbered or given some other weighty handicap that has to be overcome with either skill or the addition of other bot players via these cards.  Occasionally you’ll get a card that gives your vehicles extra armor or the like, but overall there really isn’t enough cards available to really affect the gameplay.  Nothing will be able to help you in your duel against Akasha at the end of the game, so don’t sandbag those cards until then and expect to use them.

The retooling of the most popular gametypes, the inclusion of all of the classic modes, the return of all of the weapons from the previous titles, and the addition of quite a few new faction vehicles should have translated to massive sales, right?  Well I guess this is where Epic is a victim of their own success.  Unreal Tournament 2004 was a tour de force and introduced solid multiplayer beyond the standard fare at the time.  Unreal Tournament III doesn’t really bring anything particularly new to the genre its predecessors created.  While the bot support ranges from toddler to Marquis De Sade, in the end it just isn’t all that compelling.  The storyline does nothing to motivate you, and the gameplay often feels like a re-skin of Unreal Tournament 2004.  I guess in the wake of character classes, coordinated squads, and configurable player types; the world is looking for something new from the Unreal Tournament multiplayer experience.  I personally found myself dreading anything other than Warfare while playing the single player or multiplayer game, and judging by the game browser, I’m not the only one who feels that way.

Unreal Tournament III ships with a full editing system, as well as a character customization system.  You can choose from eight types of armor for each character, allowing you to toss on the cool cape-like armors and the like.  Since the system is in place, you know modders will be making the most of it.  Perhaps they can shore up the oversight of not including Mr. Crow?  Perhaps they can also bring me an updated Facing Worlds map. 

Speaking of maps, they are fairly evenly laid out with well-placed objectives dotting the landscape.  After playing for several days I can’t say that I felt any real imbalance from any of the maps – they are all top notch and well planned…for less players.  You do need to know that the game has been retooled for a more frantic gameplay with less players.  I can’t help but feel like this was directly related to the development of the game for consoles.  It feels like the game was scaled for roughly 16 players or less, so don’t expect expansive worlds with two teams of 12 players squaring off over that Big Keg O’ Health in the center of the map. 

I suppose the biggest question that plagues this game is whether or not the mod community will support it or not.  To be sure, this game looks infinitely better than its predecessors, so that’ll likely sway them, but I can’t help but feel like this game didn’t add enough to bring on many new players.  If you are a hardcore Unreal Tournament player you may be disappointed with this update in terms of gameplay – if you are a casual Unreal Tournament player you’ll probably just be disappointed that there are less people to play with. 

If I pop onto Xbox Live all I see are people playing Call of Duty 4.  If I check out Xfire, everyone seems to be playing Call of Duty 4 or Call of Duty 2.  Looking at GameSpy (the power behind the game browser in UT3) I see Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike 2, and Call of Duty 4.  In fact, right now just 731 players are playing Unreal Tournament 3 while the original Unreal Tournament has 1939 and Unreal Tournament 2004 has 4635 players.  When you compare this to the 21,439 players currently playing Call of Duty 4, you can draw only one conclusion – we are ready for something new, Epic.  Vanilla Deathmatch, kick-ass graphics, and Warfare just aren’t going to cut it, even if it comes from the people who brought you Gears of War.

Gaming Trend Score

83

1. Graphics: 100
2. Audio: 85
3. Controls: 90
4. Gameplay: 75
5. Value/Replay: 75
6. OVERALL:83