How does this all affect this review?  The next generation Unreal Tournament: UT2003 introduced much of the game features that are part of Unreal Tournament Three. Development of the franchise now is a balance between making sure the game is still the same but not the same.  My first impression of unreal tournament three was that "wow! it is exactly the same gameplay" at first I was disappointed but, then I was glad because I was able to actually play online and not feel like a total schmuck.

The multiplayer element of UT3 consists of the basic first person shooter mechanic with options concerning moves that are executable by your avatar, meaning your character can perform dodge maneuvers. Proficient players can, and will use this to their advantage, inexperienced players will die a lot. Options concerning weapons are interesting. Most weapons have multiple modes, some can be used in combination with each other. For those who are familiar with Unreal Tournament one other more recent developments was a weapon that fired a ball of plasma which would float slowly toward your enemy which could be ignited in close proximity with the primary fire of the same weapon. In the current iteration of the game, this has devastating effect. 

There are several multiplayer modes. There's a standard death match, team death match, duel death match, capture the flag, vehicle capture the flag and warfare.  Vehicle capture to flag is what is, its capture the flag with vehicles.  Warfare game mode is a power struggle between two teams. Where there are connecting power lines between each team's generator. Controlling the nodes between the generators allows your team to finally expose the opposing team's generator allowing it to be destroyed.  This game mode as in all game modes can be quite frustrating depending on your teammates and the map.  Missing from the Unreal 2K series is the football mode unfortunate but, I can guess why it was cut.

There are plenty of vehicles in UT3 and if you're a wheel man like me, you will have a lot of fun. Some of the vehicles seem a little fragile but, that is to keep the game balanced.  The Necris is the race that you fight and a single player. Their vehicles are cool, especially the Dark Walkers (something right out of War of the worlds). The alien like vehicles are something they get from the Krall corrupting the vehicle respawners or something like that. The Necris Fury (think sentinels in the Matrix) like the Manual says seems impossible fly but is actually a ton of fun once you get used to it. The vehicle selection varies per map and that can also be decided by server administrators. 

The single player campaign in UT3 does feature a good little bit of a story that chronicles the story of Ronin a team of mercenaries out for revenge on those who destroyed their home.  This provides a fine training and does give you a little more mileage out of your game purchase. The story itself is told through pre-rendered cut scenes and kind of narration between the bulk of the levels. The cut scenes are rewards for finishing a chapter. Chapters consist of series of multiplayer matches theoretically forwarding your teams objectives. This is where the  story telling kind of falls apart, it is just hard to suspend belief when you and your teammates are respawning all over the place, map after map. Considering the constraints I don't think you could do it any differently and it is the best attempt so far. 

Another reason I can think of to buy this title is; if you have any interest in doing modification on the UT3 engine games this is everything you need to get started. UT3 engine editor can be daunting but there is a tremendous amount of support and documentation.  If you're looking to showcase your talents as a level editor, modeler, or texture artist it might be a good idea to learn this engine. It has been licensed by many studios and neither EPIC nor Unreal Technology is going away anytime soon.

Verdict: Tasty
It is what I should expect from this title. I want my current generation engine and I want Unreal Tournament. That is what I got. The UT franchise as I recall was going to be evolutionary thus the UT 2003 title. Epic quickly figured out that you cant run that sort of yearly of development cycle and produce the quality they desire, therefore we never saw UT 2005 or 2006. UT3 is pretty enough and the gameplay is “right on”. It feels the way it should to me. If you like this type of game or like UT you will know what I mean or how it feels when you can pull off those rocket kills while spinning around jumping backwards off of a lift and meaning to do it – thats tight! Comments.