I played the original 1999
Unreal Tournament plenty, although only ever
against bots, and enjoyed it a lot. The weapons
were all very fun, levels looked great. However
lacking a proper single player mode I skipped
it's sequels UT2003 and UT2004, before returning
to UT3 released in 2007.
UT3 was advertised as having
a proper single player mode, much more than
it's predecessors. Unfortunately the single
player mode is really just a series of bot matches;
covering typical deathmatch, Capture The Flag
and Warfare gameplay modes.
I played on the lower difficulty
levels to avoid much replay. This made the deathmatches
laughably easy - even the 1 on 1 final battle
I won 20-4 on my first play through. But it's
the deathmatches I enjoy most, and often it's
team-based 4 on 4, for instance. However I was
playing on lower difficulties, so they should
have been fairly easy.
The Capture The Flag levels
were quite often easy, but there were a few
where vehicles are involved that were a bit
of a challenge, and then one huge levels in
particular (Sandstorm) that was extremely difficult.
But overall the CTF levels aren't very exciting.
I find myself just running like hell in most
of them, trying to avoid detection. Only twice
in the entire game did a team-mate manage to
capture a flag. They're completely useless.
In most cases I was better off continuing to
the enemies' zone and just stand around waiting
for my team-mate to inevitably drop the flag
so I could take over the run.
But it's the Warfare levels
that throw the game completely out of balance.
In these levels you have stations that you take
control of in order, until you get to the enemies
main station and destroy it. The opposing side
is trying to do the same to you. Some of these
levels were very easy, completing them in just
a couple of minutes. But then there were others
that were really, really difficult. It seemed
to depend too much on whether or not your team-mates
were being imbeciles. The Torlan Warfare level,
which was number 15 out of 41, for me, was by
far the hardest level in the entire game. My
team-mates just seemed to dick around and do
nothing. Even when taking over all stations,
I couldn't even GET to the final station to
even attempt to destroy it, while my team-mates
were plonking around at the start still. A bonus
card (which do a few things like reducing the
opponents enemy count) was a necessity on this
one. Then on the other hand you get to the penultimate
level, Warfare again, and it's done in under
five minutes.
So what I'm getting at is that
the levels are wildly out of balance, with some
that are too easy and the odd one that's too
hard for where it's placed in the list. And
that's all this game really is - a list of levels
one after another, some of which are poorly
repeated. There's a story going on about some
war and the character you're playing wants revenge
on the cliche hot chick who nearly killed him.
But the story is a boring and didn't enhance
the experience much at all.
The weapons are all the standard
Unreal ones; all very fun to use.
UT3 uses, obviously, Unreal
Engine 3. It looks great as expected with some
awesome looking backgrounds and setpieces. There's
a tonne of variety in the different settings
including temples, space stations, market gardens
and many outdoors levels. I guess it's hard
basing a proper single player game around so
many different settings, but I really wish more
developers would put this much variety and fantastic
looking environments into their games. Either
that or perhaps Epic should make a proper, non-console
biased, single player game like the original
Unreal. Once you actually go through all the
non-campaign levels and Titan Pack levels, you'll
realise just how good UT3 looks. In fact, I'll
go so far as to say it's the best looking game
ever made up until November 2007 (excusing Bioshock
and COD4 as I'm yet to play them). Sure, Crysis
has stunning realistic outdoor scenery, but
that's all has. What UT3 does is 3D art. The
rich details, creativity and artwork put into
each level is breathtaking, and just about every
large outdoor level has huge setpiece backgrounds.
Most single players games struggle to have a
few set pieces all game long - UT3 does it in
every single level! To me, a dark brooding island
cathedral with mixes of tech and giant sprawling
tentacles reaching into the sky is a lot more
impressive than the sunny Crysis islands or
flat plains of Stalker.
It's quite disappointing that
a game that looks this good was wasted on multiplayer
only with no proper single player. Sorry bot
matches really doesn't count.
That being said, the looks
are fairly similar to Gears Of War. The character
models might as well have been pulled directly
from GOW, while the textures and environments
all have that similar muddy colour palette and
blurry post processing effects. But UT3 takes
the artwork to a whole new level over GOW.
The final hurdle in UT3 to
mention, from a single player perspective, is
that the game isn't very long. Assuming almost
every level you complete successfully on your
first try, you'll be through it in five hours.
I'm going to judge this as
a single player experience, as I don't play
online, and as such because it's all bot play
it does probably warrant replays so you can
get a better look at some of the levels. However,
it is JUST bot play, which gets repetitive fast.
On top of that some of the levels (CTF and Warfare)
I didn't enjoy that much. In fact I cringed
every time a Warfare level came up. UT3 might
look fantastic, but it's not a proper single
player experience, so not really recommended.
