Unreal Tournament 3

How would warfare change if death had no meaning? How are disputes settled when anyone who dies on the battlefield is immediately and painlessly reassembled by a convenient, easily-deployable matter reconfiguramatronagog? This compelling intellectual quandary is scintillatingly proposed by the newest entry in the quiet, thoughtful Unreal Tournament series. In a cerebral, artistic tour-de-force, the notion is explored through countless gentle, poetic fights to the death with generous gibbing, spindling, incinerating and general evisceration of combatants amongst loud explosions and shouting mayhem. Yes, let’s lean back in our respective tea cozies, loosen our lapels and have a little fireside chat about UT3

First Impressions by Tanx
Video Game Reviews by a Very Busy Math Teacher

Game: Unreal Tournament 3
Platform: XBOX 360
Played For: about 10 hours

Actually, in answer to the previous question, it seems that warfare doesn’t change much… it is still about economics more than anything. Apparently each time a soldier is resurrected in the Unreal world it costs vast sums of money, so waging war by attrition can significantly drain your opponent’s coffers. Controlling ground and cutting off access are also important, and these three themes are represented ad nausea in the Single Player campaign by the three game modes, Death match, Capture the Flag and Control the Important Places and their so-called Nodes

My ever-eager-to-gib cousin CotangentX and I gave the story a spin, assuming the roles of Fenix and Dom… I mean Reaper and Bishop… sorry, bit of a Gears of War flashback there. The heroes of UT3 come from the same school of swagger as in Gears… excepting that the personalities are even more generic than usual. You have your angry-at-everyone-and-everything-teenager-appeal-hero, your spunky girl-power sidekick, your representative member of the Jamaican Voodoo Posse from Predator 2, and of course an “amen” spouting clergyman turned soldier named Bishop. With necks thicker than their thighs and giganto-armor, I guess it is no surprise that I spent much of the game wishing my character could just jump a wee bit higher to get over that tiny ledge in front of me…

Now, the good news is that UT3 does what it intends quite well. This is a pretty decent arena combat game, with some fun Halo/Matrix hybrid vehicles, competent bot AI (except when the guys on your team are busy stealing all the vehicles before you can get to them, the jerks), generous gibs and fairly smooth online play so long as my neighbor isn’t talking on her cell phone (darn wireless network!) CotangentX was particularly pleased with one of the heavy tanks, which goes into a ground-braced stationary mode in order to fire off a REALLY BIG GUN that blows everyone and everything to smithereens. I generally went with the giant War of the Worlds tripod thingies as my chosen vessel of destruction, while entertaining myself with Orson Welles impressions. It was good that the vehicles were fun, because I felt the gun selection was a little drab. The rocket launcher seemed to trump most of the other weapons, although using the Flak Cannon would occasionally get you dubbed a “Flak master” which is clearly a title I want on my resume.

But I miss the original Unreal single-player FPS back on the PC. Declared too difficult by many players and somewhat eclipsed by Half-Life, the game really didn’t get its due. The bad guys were tough, yes (even now the bot skill level has like ten settings from incompetent noob… what we chose to fight against… up through inhuman god-like malevolent tyrant) but the game managed a real sense of wonder as you explored a feudal technology alien world actively being subjugated by a different alien star faring species. Breathtaking starry skies, giant rotting castles and quietly menacing derelict spacecrafts were cool places to explore… it is too bad the series went to exclusively tournament play . And as to the plot, well, when a certain central character betrayed our heroes to someone for something, I realized I had no idea who we were, who we were fighting or why, or who this dude was and why he’d want to sell us out to someone. So much for that gripping plot point.

Will I play it more: Not unless Scum gets himself a 360