Review: Unreal Tournament 3 - PC

by Nick Haywood on 24 December 2007, 09:52

Tags: Unreal Tournament III, Midway Games, PC, Xbox 360, PS3, FPS

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Whilst writing this review a whopping great 194 Mb patch was released for Unreal Tournament 3, making some changes and addressing some of the issues which have been highlighted by the review, the principal one being the lack of save game if you’re not logged into GameSpy.

This shows that Epic must be listening to the community in that you can now save your progress without needlessly, or in my case unsuccessfully, logging in. But this just exposes another error in the game mechanic, as you can go back and play previously completed missions, something I hadn’t done until I needed to harvest screenshots for the review.

Before you replay a mission you are given a warning that this will overwrite previously saved games, but I, not unreasonably, assumed this just meant the mission scores or something similar. Nope, it wipes out your entire progress through the game so far! And, infuriatingly, the missions you’ve already completed stay visible but are now locked… so once again you have to play through the whole bloody tedious lot. Utter, utter madness.

Click for larger image


Further, the patch utterly fails to address the GameSpy log in farce I’m still experiencing with Unreal Tournament 3 in that it still doesn’t bloody work. I know I’m using the right username and password as I can log in to the GameSpy website. I know it’s not a firewall issue this end as every other multiplayer game works perfectly well. But to be sure I popped the test machine out into the DMZ and, even with it fully exposed to the full fury of the raw internet with no firewall to protect it, GameSpy still didn’t let me log in through Unreal Tournament 3.

Now I might well be an isolated case but somehow I doubt it. My advice? Save your money and load up UT2k4.



HEXUS Forums :: 21 Comments

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Come on, how do you really feel:)

I've not got the game (having played it on a mates pc, I decided not to), but a friend had similar thourghts/problems as yourself, he binned it.

Maybe the patch would have helped, but he really couldn't be bothered dloading it.
I agree with this review wholeheartedly. I already knew that it was just UT2K4 in a new dress (a nice, shiny dress non the less) so my expectations were slightly different but the whole Gamespy thing annoyed the living crap out of me! It's almost as bad as MS live (and that recent game that mandates a gold account to play on-line).

I too didn't want a gamespy account so why do I need one to play on-line? Of course its a nice tie in with IGN and I'm sure the money was worth it.

I would also like to understand why Epic deemed it necessary to remind me where I downloaded the patch from every time I start the game? Of course this is a small thing and I know that it shouldn't bother me but it does :)

Anyway - I play UT3 and I like its new shiny dress. I like the new vehicles and I like the new maps but the tie-ins impact what is otherwise a good release.
I did download the patch and, in fairness to the game I sooooo wanted to like, I replayed it once patched and, sadly got just as wound up by it. My experience of the patched version is summarised in the HEXUS.afterburner on the page after the awards.

I spent all weekend thinking about the review before publishing it, to make sure this is how I felt about Unreal Tournament 3 and, sadly, my feelings haven't changed. Perhaps I'm of the mind that by number four in a franchise we should be seeing something new?

I wasn't all that impressed with Quake 4 but it did at least give us a decent enough, if slightly formulaic, single player game but Unreal Tournament 3, aside from the fact there's that ludicrous shoe-horning of a ‘story’ to try and justify a bunch of single player bot-matches, gets so much else wrong that it's just frustrating and annoying.

Ok, Crysis is mainly single player game and the whole ‘Aliens invade the Earth’ storyline is as tired as an insomniac after a seven day caffeine binge, at least it's mildly engaging despite some of the games bugs and flaws.

Unreal Tournament 3 had me nearly chucking my mouse at the screen with that daft FLaG explanation… rather like George Lucas' introduction of Midichlorians to explain The Force… daft and unnecessary.
TBH, it's even worse than the review mentions once you get into multiplayer..

Some of the maps have terrible glitches (which the patch doesn't address) - for instance the recreated deck level crashes the game on about 40% of people's machines for no apparent reason, another is some of the warfare maps where you get stuck in the scenery, and appear to half-fall through the level and end up back in the level with random non-responsive controls before the game crashes..

The real problem is that the weapon balance has been fiddled yet again to account for the consoles - which ends up a case of breaking stuff which wasn't broken in the last game, and makes everything feel rather “dumbed down”. :(

Hopefully some of the companies playing with engine will cobble together a better game as at least it seems like they've put a decent amount of effort into the engine - which is sadly lacking for the game.

Maybe after a few more patches and the modders get their teeth into it it'll be better - but I'm not holding my breath..
Cheers for that input Stoo.

I did suffer some of the ‘stuck in scenery’ stuff you mentioned but it only happened occasionally and just for brief periods of one or two seconds, so I put it down to me being a numpty and not jumping at the right time etc…

As to multiplayer, I'll take your word on it and I do believe you. I just can't experience it for myself as, 14 days on from installing the damn game I STILL can't log in with my fully working GameSpy account and I'll become French and change my name to Henri Le Clicke before I sign up yet another email address to GameSpy. :)