Clichés. You know the kind of thing I’m talking about: “The grass is always greener,” is a common one, or “It was a game of two halves,” or of course, “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
When it comes to writing, many a hand-smacking has been given out by an overzealous literary teacher for making use of clichés in articles. I try to avoid it as much as I can, but there is one serious problem with trying this; clichés only became clichés because they’re pretty much always right – the grass is always greener on the other side, the game was rather obviously of two halves (okay, that one is always annoying)…
And, at least in the case of Unreal Tournament III, things have most definitely remained the same, despite a couple of rather cosmetic changes.
The big difference is naturally in the graphics; UT3 uses the Unreal Engine 3 (coincidence?!), to amazing effect, and manages to graphically surpass every third-party game release that has used the powerful engine. All the graphical bells and whistles are present here, and even better it all runs at a very nice frame rate on the console versions; the game also scales very well on PC, and like previous games in the UT series will play perfectly alright on systems that really have no right to run it at all (I ran the game on a rig well below spec at low-ish details simply as a test, and it consistently ran at over 30fps, which is purely amazing).
The art direction is also particularly impressive, resembling Gears of War (which isn’t surprising considering it’s made by the same studio) but with a brighter palette and more organic looking levels. However, while the grungy industrial areas, desert ruins, and oriental-esque temples are a sight to behold, there isn’t anywhere near the same amount of variety that was apparent in the old games, which seemingly ignored theme in favour of sheer coolness; it was quite common to have a game of the original UT and go from a sci-fi weapons plant to some contemporary-looking slums to an alien forest, with nary a familiar looking map to be seen. It isn’t a big criticism really, but it feels as though some of the character of the franchise has ironically disappeared in the attempt to make the levels more characterful.
The game sounds like, well, it sounds like a UT game really; the commentator is back, shouting “PANCAKE” and “MONSTER KILL” with wild abandon; the bots will taunt you with the typical “you be dead” comment that you’ve been hearing for four iterations of the game, and I swear the guns still have the same sound effects playing as well. Things sound good enough, but there is little variation, and certainly not much of the entertainment value inherent in the soundscape of other multiplayer FPSs of the moment (with TF2 being the obvious example). The voice-acting in the story mode, however, is a whole other kettle of poorly thought out sentence structure.
Oh wait, that’s right, we haven’t gotten around to discussing the big gameplay change for this year’s edition of the Unreal Tournament franchise: there’s no longer an actual tournament to be unreal at! Instead we have a group of soldiers fighting a mercenary war for revenge against the evil Necris across multiple warzones…that contain respawners, power-ups, and people crotch-thrusting while standing over your bleeding gibs; yes, it is as stupid as it sounds.
The cutscenes, at least, look amazing, and are produced with all the quality of those in Gears of War (albeit with less action), but the premise is so laughable, and the dialogue so poorly written, that it is impossible to remotely care about why Malcolm is ordering your team to play the same Warfare map for the sixth time.
What’s Warfare I pretend you care enough to ask? It’s a combination of the old Assault and Onslaught modes; capture power cores to form a link to the enemy node, but this time you have fancy special vehicles and missile launches and all sorts of stuff that manages to make the mode a little more interesting to play. It’s a great deal more fun than vanilla Onslaught was (and it was fun, feeling like Battlefield Lite), but it isn’t a good replacement for the objective-based thrills of Assault.
This becomes a real issue when you realise that a bunch of other game modes have also been assimilated or annihilated, with Domination, Bombing Run, and a bunch of others being cut; these modes may not have been overly popular when compared to your regular modes, but why remove something that works? Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, and Warfare hardly epitomise the old UT emphasis on having enough variety to suit every player.
At least the game still plays as well as it ever did. The Unreal Tournament series has always been the smoothest, slickest FPS game going (eat that Quake 3!), and UT3 has refined things to the point where shooter novices can pick up the controller and be moving around comfortably in no time; admittedly, said novices will still get absolutely owned by enemies that teleport across the map, wall-flip over their heads, and fire a rocket into their spines, but at least they’ll feel comfortable while it happens.
‘Comfortable’ is a word that fits UT3 like a non-clichéd appendage-warming garment. The changes that have occurred, barring a general beefing up of the prettiness, have petty much involved the introduction of a shonky storyline, a slightly upgraded game mode, and some baffling omissions.
Actually the more I think about it, the more I realise that Epic have finally managed to accomplish what they started when they first started releasing yearly iterations of the game (2003, 2004): they’ve turned UT into a sports game franchise! In true EA-like fashion, Unreal Tournament 3 is a slight improvement over previous versions of the game in some areas, and yet some things that players liked have inexplicably gone missing.
No doubt we’ll see Bombing Run come back with a different name in Unreal Tournament 4: A New Hope, and flogged as a new feature; hell, if they bring back the old single-player Tournament mode (sans cutscenes with vomit-inducing dialogue) and Assault, I’d be willing to go out on a limb and call it the most revolutionary Unreal Tournament yet!
Graphics: 9.5/10 (A gorgeous looking game with the very, very occasional instance of déjà vu with some samey map design.)
Sound: 6/10 (Sounds the same as the previous games, and the voice-acting and scripting during the cutscenes is cringe-worthy.)
Gameplay: 7.5/10 (The perfect action FPS has been refined to the extreme, with controls so smooth that nothing else even comes close to the freedom of movement on offer here… and yet some game modes have been removed for no apparent reason, the updates to existing modes and weapons are rather minor, and there is simply nothing here that is NEW enough to grab and hold your attention when compared to many other modern FPSs.)
Longevity: 8/10 (The bots are probably the best in the business, but are still AI constructs at the end of the day. Multiplayer is as fun as ever, but the limited modes mean you had best ensure you really enjoy Warfare and Deathmatch. The good news, however, is that UT3 still has the legendary modding potential that has made the franchise so popular, and if you are into the modding scene (and don’t own a 360) then the potential here is pretty much unlimited.)
Overall: 7/10 (It is very difficult to rate this game, as there is nothing intrinsically wrong with it; UT3 is fun, looks great, sounds alright, and has very robust single and multiplayer modes. The problem is that the same could be said about the previous three games in the series, and for the exact same reasons. UT3, for all the pretty graphics and woeful introduction of a story, is a very small step forward, and as such it is difficult to justify giving a high rating for a product that is pretty much just a visual upgrade.
If you buy UT3 you will certainly enjoy yourself, and you may even get a great deal of long term enjoyment if you really dig the game modes or enjoy downloading mods. Just remember that you’ll get the exact same thing from the previous version…and the next one too.)
-Tim Sweeney
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