Unreal Tournament 2004 was a solid first-person shooter. Sure, I still haven't experienced the multiplayer modes against humans, where I would be utterly wrecked in seconds, but I played enough of it for me to like it. An old-school shooter with glowing powerups and bloody and burnt chunks of meat scattered all over the floor.
How do you follow that up in the era of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and their push for more realistic graphics? They're beefy enough machines for all the giblets, aren't they? Should Unreal Tournament make its way to consoles?
Well, whether you agree or not, Unreal Tournament 3 made itself known on the homes of Master Chief and... what's the big Sony FPS? Killzone? Whatever, the point is that the tournament is more accessible, and now doesn't seem to be much of a tournament at all.
Keyboard and mouse at the ready, let's ignore the consoles and see what's what.
Fun Times
You play Unreal Tournament for the multiplayer, and then the modding of the multiplayer, introducing new maps, modes, and characters, and presumably even more things than I could possibly imagine. But I play Unreal Tournament from the comfort of a casual, uncompetitive single player point of view, and that means heading into the story mode where I see Marcus Fenix's younger brother fighting monstrous aliens in the dark.
I'm a fan of Warhammer 40k, where chunky bulky figures can be found everywhere, but I think the bulk of Gears of War is a little on the silly side, and both it and Unreal Tournament 3 are cut from the same cloth. These guys and girls are kitted out with armour and weaponry far meatier than is necessary, but it's all part of the look. A look I'm not too hot on.
These folks are defending civilians from an invading alien menace, trying to co-ordinate a plan to get some evacuations started, but with ships getting swatted out of the sky wherever you look, the situation seems a bit dire.
And then we get blown up. But not killed. Someone or something is making sure of that. Our sister here is the one who got us to a hospital, but higher powers that be have ensured our survival. Now, we're in a foreign land regarded as a kind of mercenary.
Bringing us up to speed, she tells us that the entire state of war has been changed by, essentially, the ability for the combatants to respawn. As a way of explaining how you can keep dying in UT3 but still make progress through the story, it's an interesting way to justify respawning. Absolutely bonkers, but interesting nonetheless.
It also means that we can engage in a little live-ammo target practice using rockets with our sister, because what could go wrong when you've got a respawner?
I haven't played UT2004 recently enough to remember exactly how it played, but UT3 is buttery smooth. I'm not sliding around the map like I'm on rollerskates, and I dare not try and fly with any rocket jumps right now, but I am liking how this game feels, and more importantly for me, how it runs.
I'm at that stage in this PCs life where its innards aren't good enough for the latest games I'm looking forward to (eventually) playing, even on low settings. It was never intended to be incredibly future proof, just enough to get through this 1001 list, which it has done quite well thus far. Playing UT3 is, to me, as graphically rewarding as playing Assassin's Creed Valhalla or DiRT5. It's not as pretty as either of those games, and I don't like the art style, but it's a joy to see in motion, running without any obvious hiccups or stutters.
That a game as graphically impressive can be so slick is a testament to great development, and many teams manage it. Just look all the back to Crash Bandicoot, and the tricks it pulled to get that running as well as it did on the PlayStation. I'd love to have replayed that for this 1001 list... #notbitteratall
What I'm saying is that UT3 feels pretty damn good so far, in this one on one deathmatch to get you grounded. Moving on.
In the shadows is a familiar-looking figure from Unreal Tournaments past. I don't know his name, I just know the look. It actually looks like someone is trying to merge Warhammer 40k with Halo. Nothing's original, eh?
The story here is that in a world where war has changed thanks to this respawning nonsense, how do you deal with it? The answer - obviously, when you think about it - is to recruit former tournament champs to run the show. This fella may not have a rank from any military, but his expertise in arenas full of respawn points is now invaluable. Again, absolutely bonkers, but let's go with it.
We're now introduced to a map, not that we've got a lot of choice of what we see on it. This is basically an excuse to hold a deathmatch here or a capture the flag match there. Like many multiplayer FPS games, the single-player mode serves as a taster of what to expect and a tutorial so that you're prepared for it. And that's what we get, starting with a death match against a handful of Krell if I recall. Whoever they are.
Weapons come in all sorts of shapes and sizes (mostly chunky, of course). From basic pistols and machine guns to bio-weapons and rocket launchers, each appears to have a primary and secondary fire mode to unleash hell upon your targets, providing you aim in the right place.
You'll have your favourites. Most weapons I never touched until I ran out of rockets, and if you keep running around the place scooping up ammo, that shouldn't happen too often. If you're on a harder difficulty, replace "running around" for "respawning closer to the weapon drop".
You know how a deathmatch works. Kill or be killed. The arena felt quite large for the player count, but I don't know if that's because of my choice of difficulty or just the story mode slowly getting us up to speed. And while the arenas keep changing environments, I continue to not quite like what I'm looking at.
If the visuals aren't winning me over, it's a good job the gameplay is, and at the start of the capture the flag round (such a civilized war we're fighting, isn't it?), we're given a Translocator, if I recall correctly, a device which shoots out a teleportation disc which we can zip to with a press of the Q button.
I guess it's pretty neat. It's like half of a Portal gun, but at least that can sort of be used offensively. This? This is what happens when you're farting around with and fumbling over a translocator when the enemy team approaches.
Luckily for me, I grew up capturing flags with just my legs, so I play the effing objective and get going, and UT3 even helps me out with a glowing GPS route back to my home base in case I'm lost.
The next mode we're introduced to was a little more plausible and involved controlling a central node so that the enemy core was vulnerable to damage. A ton of rockets later and that was that. It's not too bad a mode, I suppose, but wasn't wowing me, and I think UT3 knew it because the next mission of this bizarre war was more core demolition, only this time on hoverboards.
The control nodes on this map allow us to hop into some turrets to dish out the damage, and each team has some kind of energy core that they can pick up and run with to instantly switch a control node over to your side, without needing to take the time to destroy it first.
Turns out that this tank can be controlled by either team and while it can only drive forwards and backwards along the barge it's loaded onto, it packs quite a punch, especially when it's camped outside the exits from the respective bases.
Frustrations
While I farmed kills, I was sat hoping my AI buddies could get the job done, capturing the flag and bringing it home on their own, while avoiding enemy vehicles and whomever I couldn't demolish in a single shot with this tank.
It was this map that I really started to feel that there just weren't enough people on either side to make it as hectic a fight as I imagine Unreal Tournament to be. I'm imagining tight corridors and enclosed spaces full of walkways that are best traversed by a graceful rocket jump and other inhuman means of movement.
Instead, I'm sitting in a tank waiting for something to happen, admiring all the shades of olive green and dusty yellow, and whatever else was the hallmark of shooters in this generation. Basically, my view wasn't very exciting at all, and I was in the gunner's seat of the strongest weapon on the map.
Was the difficulty too low for a good fight? If I were to get out and do things myself, I'd just have to hoverboard my way through the enemy as best I could - when the enemy have vehicles that aren't insta-killed by this tank, being on a hoverboard isn't the best place to be. When you can't rely on your teammates for any kind of strategy, or even communicate with them, doing things alone is a risk.
My team managed to even the score with a flag capture, thanks to my dominant overwatch position, but they just can't do it again within the time limit. As the clock keeps ticking, I get warned about the rounds imminent finish. War can't end in a tie, can it?
No, it can't. When the clock stops, the next point wins it. We're in overtime, baby!
Ah, damn, gotta stop capturing footage. Oh well. Guess we'll pick this match up again later?
Final Word
That was an hour of Unreal Tournament 3 Black Edition, if that means anything to anybody (more stuff, I think, that's about it). It had some good points, definitely. It had some dull points, too, though I don't know how many of those are because of my choice in difficulty or insistence on playing the single-player only.
There's a lot that I don't really like in UT3 - the look, especially. Silly stories I can live with, to an extent, but what UT3 has in its favour is its gameplay, which is the only reason you'd want to play it, and it's pretty damn good.
I don't know if it's as old-school as UT fans demand, or if anything has been lost in making it accessible to players using controllers instead. I'm nowhere near to being well-versed in the ins and outs of first-person shooters, especially on the PC side, but I feel there is a great game here, somewhere, and a really good jumping-on point for new players.
Your mileage will vary with your skill level, and if you're hopping into any game well after release, you'll have to adjust your multiplayer expectations accordingly, because there's no way you'll get up to speed before diving into an active server, whether you've gone through the single-player mode or not.
I think I'll have to reserve final judgement until I pack a map with a bunch of bots and really put myself through a challenge, where I will no doubt get trounced and lose horribly, but I suspect will have a good time regardless. I'll steer clear of multiplayer. I don't want a repeat of Team Fortress 2.
Ooh, I wonder if I could mod in some good looks, seeing as that is my biggest gripe. Hmm. That's got me thinking... For now, though, I'll file UT3 away as impressive and probably out of my league, but well worth a play.
Fun Facts
The PC collector's edition of UT3 contained a DVD with twenty hours of tutorials for would-be games developers to make use of the mod tools, continuing the tradition of user-generated content no doubt highlighted in the history of the series and behind the scenes features on the disc too.
Unreal Tournament 3, developed by Epic Games, first released in 2007.
Version played: Unreal Tournament 3 Black Edition, PC, 2009.