headshot! It’s epic indeed! (no pun intended)
[Hands-on Impressions]
Title: Unreal Tournament 3 (BETA ver)
Platform: PC
Game’s platform specs: Intel Core 2 Duo 6600 @ 2.857Ghz, 4×1GB DDR2 , Powercolor AIW Radeon X1900, 2×320GB RAID0 Seagate HDD, WinXP SP2
Game settings: all default except 1920×1200 + Hardware Audio AL
Unreal Tournament 3’s beta was unleashed today and of course, I have been waiting for this day to get a hands-on experience on the game.
eeks! own3d!
Before you play
While you must remember that this is a BETA, changes are definitely not finalized and the software is subjected to bugs and even crashes for some. Gamers who download the beta will experience hands on with the usual death match and the vehicle CTF (something like onslaught in UT2k4). The campaign mode is of course, disabled in the beta. In addition, anti aliasing is only available to directX 10 card owners on Windows Vista only. There is a patch for WinXP x64 and Windows Server 2003 users as well.
Lock and Load!
Installation was smooth and within minutes I have the game up and running. Unlike the previous Unreal Tournaments, you are greeted with a login screen after the credits. Uou will need to register a username to create a profile of your own and login. There is also a option to allow you to play offline though. Accounts are tied to gamespy IDs and this option provides an extra layer of security to prevent cheaters (of course, when there is a will, there is always a way).
The menu of the game is so much smoother now and gives a sleek feel to it, there are tabs and 3D navigation kind of browsing. The options did not provide the maximum graphical options and advanced features though. I am pretty skeptical that my gfx card is unable to take it at 1920×1200. About time to save up for dx10 card and crossfire it ? ;P The games supports hardware physics and hardware AL is optimised for X-fi. While I have the X-fi, it is unfortunate that I was unable to test out hardware physics.
the walker is gay
Gameplay?
In the beta, the following gameplays are available to you
- Deathmatch
- Team Death match
- Vehicle Capture the flag (CTF)
- Duel (basically deatchmatch but 1 on 1 only)
There are 2 maps in Deathmatch / Team Match – Heatray and Shangrila. Both maps with an unique flavor and you duel it out against your enemy. I had a try on a multiplayer server and against bots as well, they were impressive and damn! I do hope I have a better graphic card to load up the graphics to the max.
Shangrila is a asian themed map with lush fauna in the surroundings (no, it is not a forest map). You spawn inside an oriental looking building and have a taste of the weapons available to you. Weapons are definitely looking so much better now and the Enforcer pistol and the jump boots brings back memories.
I almost got burnt to a crisp
Heatray gives players a try on the new “vehicle” known as the Dark Walker. If you have watched the movie, War of the Worlds, yea..you get to pilot that a destructive war machine that looks a little like that. This small map is based on city in ruins and the dark walker is in somewhere of the middle of the map. At certain intervals after the machine is destroyed, a carrier will hover above a fixed location and spawn the Dark walker. Packed with 1000hp and has a secondary seat. The slow moving death walker is something not to deal with carelessly.
die you bitch
Vehicle Capture the Flat (VCTF)
Big guns and vehicles are available in this demo and in the vehicle CTF, it is no doubt that it has the best looking map ever in the demo – Suspense. Although I have a direct X9 card, the graphics were awesome and the gameplay’s exciting. In vehicle CTF, the hoverboard is available to you at default and trust me, you will find it effective. Flying vehicles like the raptor looks slower to me but packs more of a punch than its predecessors and the manta is the only thing that I find pretty much unchanged. Got your vehicle destroyed and tired of waiting for it to respawn? use the hoverboard!
Do take note, the bots in UT3 seems to have much better AI, I was suprised that they can maneuver any vehicle with agility and ferocity.
shangrila
My overall impressions
As the game is the scheduled for a PC release in 2007 and a PS3 release in 2008, this beta gives new and existing unreal players a feel on what UT3 has to offer. The engine is definitely awesome and with a high end rig, you will get to enjoy HD kick ass gaming. How about those with low end graphics? Unforunately, you will have to tone down the options by a lot.
There are a few things that I am disappointed in the beta demo though, which is the lack of Warfare gameplay. The “warfare” gameplay mode is one of the most arguing gameplay that players have been waiting for. Those who were expecting this mode in the beta will be very disappointed. I am one of them.
The text look smalls on 1920×1200 and unlike Ut2004 which offers an option to increase text size, there wasn’t any in the demo. Perhaps the alternate way is to modify the config files in the UT3 directory.
backstabbing with my raptor in multiplayer map. I am sorry, auauasd (the player’s alias)
Unreal Tournament 3, highly anticipated FPS, scheduled for a Nov 2007 release is available for preorders.
Click to view the full 1920×1200 of a nice headshot pic - unreal3_sus04.JPG
