PS3 Review – Unreal Tournament III
Unreal Tournament is a series that has been around since 1999 on the PC, 2000 on the PlayStation 2 and 2001 on the Dreamcast. I remember losing hours of my time to this game with a bunch of friends huddled around the television. Being deemed “Godlike” with everyone around to see how skilled you are is so satisfying.
This popular series finally made its way over to the PlayStation 3 back in December of 2007 in the form of Unreal Tournament III (3), one of the few games that came out on the system before releasing on the Xbox 360. While it was a good game when it released and had mod and online support, there was no splitscreen and trophies were not even a consideration at the time. If I had reviewed it when it first came out, I’d have given it a 3/5. But with the recent Titan/2.0 patch and DLC content, this game is seeing a lot more playtime on my PlayStation 3.
First, the offline options. You can play through the campaign, which has a basic story included. But like most first-person shooters it is not the main draw of the title. Prior to the Titan/2.0 patch, there was no option for splitscreen options. With the Titan update, however, you can duel it out in splitscreen mode. This allows for only two players at any given time, which is a bit of a disappointment but better than the alternative. So while the glory days of 4-way split screen are gone in this installment, there’s still plenty of fun to be had with two people and some clever bots thrown in for good measure.
There are so many vehicles it's not even funny.
Graphically and acoustically, the game holds up nicely. It obviously utilizes the Unreal Engine 3, with high-definition texture and shader maps, and nice surround-sound audio that really adds to the game. Nothing really stands out, but at the same time nothing looks or sounds bad either. Regardless, the vehicles here are creative and fun to drive and maim people with.
If this game were judged solely on its single-player component, you’d have a pretty bare-bones title. The original Unreal Tournament was designed for multiplayer, and so was this iteration. Firefights can contain up to 16 players in one game, which is plenty most of the time. However some of the maps are incredibly large, and even with a completely filled server you can still occasionally find yourself alone for a good deal of time. When things get hectic, however, there is usually little to no discernible lag (Of course your mileage may vary according to network conditions, internet connection speed, etcetera) and games progress at a frantic pace that can really get your pulse pounding.
47 Trophies can be yours!
The recent Titan/2.0 patch has really pushed this game over the edge. You now have trophies galore, a ton of built-in maps, split-screen support and even some new game modes. All of this for free as well! I’m not completely sure why the price of this game is so low given how fun it is, but it is definitely worth (more than!) what it’s selling for! It’s also worth noting that mod support is exclusive to the PlayStation 3 in terms of console versions, and can completely change the way you play the game. The Titan/2.0 patch also made the process of installing these mods easier, with an in-game mod browser/downloader.
The two things really holding this game back are a lack of custom soundtrack support and “only” 2-player split-screen support. While the game is not perfect, I feel those two small blemishes fail to take away from what is ultimately an extremely fun, easy to drop into fragfest which I know I will be playing until Unreal Tournament 4 drops years from now (Between Killzone 2 sessions, of course).
PlayStation LifeStyle’s Final Score
Mod support means countless free levels. Mixes frantic, old-school gunplay with next-gen perks. |
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9 Responses to “PS3 Review – Unreal Tournament III”
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April 16th, 2009 at 9:14 AM
Nice review thanks,
When I bought a PS3, I had planned on buying UT3 when it came out, and so that I did. Unreal tournament 2004 was by far, my favourite game on PC, the sequel was going to be awesome!
Unfortunately when it released, the product was not at all up to the standards of it’s predecessor. Many little things plagued it for me, but the biggest nail in it’s coffin ended up being the lag (and the way it handles it). (others include; taking out my favourite game mode of bombing run
; removal of the ‘double tap’ to dodge – leading to a WAY too console-y play of the game; not allowing PS3 gamers to play WITH PC gamers and a lame reason to cover it <- this would have kept me playing TBH)
Now, I live in Australia, so usually contend with a fair ping, but this was awful. There were few to zero people servering in my country partly because this was when very few people had PS3’s. Couple that with the fact the few (2-3 per gametype) Midway dedicated servers had a bug in their code (that wasn’t fixed over the 3 months or so I played) that made them lag even when on a low ping…
Now normally I could have dealt with that. UT and games like it, have always been ranked as my favourites, but UT3 has a terribly “in your face” way of handling it’s shooting/hit mechanics. I don’t know if you’ve experienced it, but whenever you ’shoot’ under a high ping, you have to wait for that shot to be sent to the server and back before it’s ‘calculated’ into the game. This leaves you needing to account for the lag into ‘leading’ every shot on opponents… I could adapt, but it wasn’t what I’d call ‘fun’. TBCH I guess I didn’t play UT2k4 online much, so maybe it did the same thing and I never noticed??
It’s final nail for me, was Warhawk came out soon afterwards. And that’s UT3’s biggest curse. It just isn’t anything ’special’ any more (certainly if they keep removing it’s gametypes!). Mod’s are cool, but until the 2.0 patch released, I couldn’t be bothered downloading them and installing them in such a horribly tedious way.
I haven’t played much now that the Titan pack is out, a little when they released the patch for trophies, but not much more. (I leant it to a friend
) I know that the pack is HUGE, as Epic’s patches have always been, and fixes some/most of my gripes, but for me, it still comes back to it no longer being ’special’ enough 
Alex
04/16/2009 at 3:13 PM
Thanks for the comment! Hmm I didn’t experience that sort of lag. The latest patch/DLC really does make a big difference, I love the new Greed mode!
Give it another shot, perhaps some of your issues have been fixed now…
April 16th, 2009 at 9:21 PM
[...] If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!This popular series finally made its way over to the PlayStation 3 back in December of 2007 in the form of Unreal Tournament III ( 3 ), one of the few games that came out on the system before releasing on the Xbox 360. … View post: PlayStation LifeStyle » PS3 Review – Unreal Tournament III [...]
April 16th, 2009 at 10:51 PM
love this game.
April 21st, 2009 at 9:34 AM
Thank you for reading and replying too Paulmichael
I will be giving it a good shot after I get it back off my mate. Can’t give up on such a good series just yet, even if I was disappointed originally.
I just cross my fingers that the original makers of the “alien swarm” mod for UT2k4, remake it for UT3 (and on the PS3 too
) I loved that mod, hahaha
Alex
04/30/2009 at 12:25 AM
No problem. So, did you give it another shot yet?
May 30th, 2009 at 10:03 AM
That game is actually pretty fun. i lost it and had to rebuy it.. especially after there new titan pack
September 18th, 2009 at 10:09 PM
I LOVE THIS GAME! I hate Halo, Gears, and most EVERY OTHER SHOOTER, but I played twice on my friends 360 and decided to buy it on “dat Triple” (hahaha), and this is one game, I Will NOT take back!
November 3rd, 2009 at 10:25 PM
the game is great especially after they added a co op feature in an update and titan pack free online.
November 4th, 2009 at 6:37 AM
This game is going for 30$ now and a TON of free items in the PSN.
December 4th, 2009 at 5:23 PM
I bought this game when I got my PS3 last year for $40 I believe and hated it. I recently rebought it for $18.99 in a buy one get one free sale at Gamecrazy and love the new updates and exclusive DLC plus trophies.