Unreal Tournament III (PS3

Unreal Tournament 3. Twitch gaming at its finest. God how I love thee. Let’s not waste time here, UT3 is good, very good. And while not much has changed in the core gameplay, everything about it is top notch and makes you want to keep playing.

Single player consists of battles against AI bots in different match types and number of players. The story this time is based in a war, not a tournament. You and your team of 3 try to defend your home colony and fail. Left for dead you sign up as a merc squad in the hopes of getting a shot at those who attacked you.

The cutscenes between matches are nice. Funny thing as I watched though was I got this Gears of War feeling all over again. As in, “hey change that guys skin color and you’ve basically got Marcus Fenix”. Good voice acting helps these scenes along. But again, you’re really just doing matches vs bots.

The one thing I want to do is point out the slight absurdity of the story. So essentially all out war has broken out. The respawners from the original UT games are now being used on battlefields, meaning that the wars and fights will never end. The main premise of these matches is disabling the enemy respawner, thus allowing you to kill everyone finally and not let them come back.

So they took this idea and ran with it all the way through. CTF matches? The flag is what powers the enemy respawner and you have to grab it and bring it to your respawner to destroy it. Riiiight. Nevermind the fact that the flag has to be destroyed 3 times to win, or that the flag magically teleports back to the enemy base. You see? The game is all sorts of fun, but don’t shoehorn the story in to fit the game mechanics. But then again, why are you playing this for singleplayer?

Now before you go running out, I want to point out two things. One, there is no splitscreen. You heard me right. There is online co-op for 4 people together to run through the campaign mode (so basically your team vs bots) but up the bot difficulty and you could have some fun there. PS3 owners, I’m looking at you…..You will hate the Warfare game mode in singleplayer as your AI teammates will be complete idiots every once in a while and forget that bad guys blasting your core need to be stopped. This is why I’d like to do co-op.

So let’s talk control. The SIXAXIS work perfectly fine as your controls. R1 is fire, L1 is alt fire. R2 switches guns in order, L2 gives you a radial dial menu to select the one you want. X is jump and double jump, O is to bring out the melee hammer, square is for entering and exiting vehicles, and the D-Pad issues commands and taunts. Pressing down allows you to play dead, so you can hide or hopefully issue commands without being killed.

Now onto the biggie. Yes the game supports USB mouse and keyboards. It does not support Bluetooth ones however (based on discussions on other boards). I popped in my mouse/keyboard and just started blasting away. KB/M controls are fully customizable just like the PC version.

Multiplayer requires you to create a character. You choose a character model from about 16 different ones, then tailor their helmets and armor. While each section of the customization only has 3-5 different options, keep in mind that you are not going to stop mid battle to look at some guy’s armor.

Once in you can search for a game, either quickplay or make specific searches for what you want. From the server list you can see if the game allows KB/M or if it is a ranked stat match. Online play was nice and smooth and I saw no issues there. I’m also not using a headset, so god knows how well the voice chat is.

Gameplay seems to be a little slower than the PC version which I played as well, however the speed is still faster than most console FPS games out there. The graphics are amazing, with some real jaw dropping visuals, and the sound, well it has it.

The guns are back and have been tweaked and slightly changed, but for the most part function as before. Rocket Launchers still have the multi fire alt ability, bioguns fire out the larger shots which stick to people, and shock rifles fire the large globe of energy that can then be detonated with another shot. Flak cannon doesn’t seem to be as powerful as before however.

Gameplay types range from deathmatch/team deathmatch/CTF to Warfare (control nodes to open up the enemy power core to be destroyed) and others.

Overall, I’d say if your PC doesn’t want to run it, the PS3 version is no slouch. With the KB/M support you’ll be fragging people in no time. Yes, you can import user mods and everything into the game as well, so you won’t be missing out on much in terms of that (done through a menu choice on the game). I’m very happy with the game, and while COD4 still reigns supreme in my mind as the definitive multiplayer console FPS right now, UT3 will definantly be getting a lot of playtime thanks to the pick up and play feel and the sheer arcade speed. Easily one of the best looking PS3 games out, and if you get it come play co-op with me.

VERDICT = B+, BUY IT