More vehicles!

Another new vehicle was a one man mini-tank that rolled on alien tracks and fired twin energy weapons; it also could raise its turret up in the air so it could pop up and deal out some death to the Liandi warriors. The big new vehicle in the UT 3 demo map was the two man tripod that owes a lot of its visual look to the Tom Cruise War of the Worlds remake. The three legs can actually move the tripod up and over certain natural obstacles in the map and its main weapon, two very powerful energy cannons, can take out most of the other vehicles fairly quickly. The other manned position controls a machine gun turret that can take out threats from directly below the tripod. This vehicle’s main weakness is that it’s extremely slow in movement and that the energy weapons fire for only a few seconds before they need a little time to recharge. One other “vehicle” in UT 3 is included in every player; a hoverboard that the player can switch to by hitting the “Q” key that allows for much faster movement in the map than just being on foot; there are no weapons except for a grappling hook in this mode, however (what do you mean, except a grappling hook? There’s no other weapon you’d ever need if you ever played Quake… -ed.)


In playing several rounds in the UT 3 CTF map we found that the game was a little more faster paced than previous games in the series. Having the hoverboard option helped a lot in getting around the map quickly when a vehicle wasn’t available. We do think that at least at the moment the Necris vehicles are slightly more powerful than the Liandri counterparts; we hope that Epic will do some more balance testing to rectify this. Visually UT 3 uses Unreal Engine 3 (as does many of Midway’s other upcoming games) so the game looks terrific with great looking character and weapon models and impressive lighting and visual effects. There were some nice little art touches like seeing leaves occasionally blowing around in the air and black smoke coming out of the Hellbender’s exhaust ports.

Epic is planning to release UT 3 for the PS3 and Xbox 360 in addition to the PC, and Morris told us that all three versions will have the same content (the press demo was played on a Dell XPS 710 PC). There is no word yet if Epic will allow players of the PC and Xbox 360 versions to play against each other. Morris did confirm that Epic will release a multiplayer demo of the PC version before its release but could not confirm if the same will be done for the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions. Of course, people who don’t want to play online can always play against bots and Steven Polge is back once again to breath AI life in the bots. And yes, the “double kill” and “rampage” awards for killing more than one enemy are back as well.

Of course, there is a lot more about UT 3 that Epic isn’t discussing yet and in the months leading to its release we plan to find out and hopefully play more of the game than just a few minutes at a press event. However, based on our brief time in our vehicle CTF map demo, fans of the previous two (or three if you want to get technical) games in the series should be getting excited by the new title’s prospects. Unreal Tournament 3’s faster paced gameplay and new vehicles are just flat out fun to experience and we can’t wait to get our hands dirty playing the new Warfare mode. Look for a lot more info on Epic’s next multiplayer shooter in the very near future.