Xbox 360 Game News, Reviews, and Columns - XboxFocus

Unreal Tournament 3 Review

by Steve Wysowski August 18th 2008 3:17 PM CDT1 Comments

The Unreal franchise has always been one that eluded me. So, while one could imagine that I went into this game with no expectations at all, take into account that I adore Gears, I love Epic in general, and Unreal Tournament has a decent track record as far as I can tell. Needless to say, I started playing this game with some relatively high expectations; and for the most part, they were matched.

It took me about three seconds to realize that Unreal Tournament resembles Gears of War as much as Dio resembles an attractive woman. Unreal Tournament 3 is as fast, crazy, and (as the title states) unreal as you could imagine. The guns are from a time period that I would estimate is a few thousand years ahead of the Star Trek universe timeline, and your enemies and the player himself move at a blindingly fast speed. Once you get used to this entirely new change of pace, you should be able to find that Unreal Tournament 3 has a lot of enjoyment to offer. Yet, despite that, the game is also flawed, missing that extra something that could have brought it to even higher levels.


I hate to start dissecting the game this way, but the game's campaign is quite atrocious. The single player experience consists of a series multiplayer-designed matches; forcing the player to fight through a team of bots round after round. While that can work, it doesn't here. At all; the bots don’t play like real players would and your team AI is simply annoying. Not only that, but the game tries to wrap a story around the whole premise, as if these matches were actual battlefields of a real war. For example, a standard game of capture the flag would be described as a method to destroy the enemy's power generator. It makes absolutely no sense, and feels more tacked on as the game continues.

It's sad because the lame campaign wastes some pretty nice looking cutscenes. While the substance of the game's characters is about as deep as two-foot pool, they still exert some nice aesthetics, and it was enough to keep my attention span. To be blunt, I'm not sure why a single player was even developed at all. If I worked at Epic, I wouldn't have dissipated development time by throwing in a half-assed campaign, and would have focused all my attention to the game's biggest draw: it's multiplayer.

By all means, Unreal Tournament 3's multiplayer is just that. If you have any urgent desire for a multiplayer experience, Unreal Tournament 3, in the end, is just damn fun.

There are numerous maps and weapon choices at your disposal in Unreal Tournament 3. While the weapons are, without a doubt, the stars of this game, the exotic map and level design is noteworthy. Some maps are just well balanced, other maps are just plain beautiful, and some are just out there (so out there, that you'll probably never be able to truly understand them). One map has you transporting to different locations, others have you fighting over lava pits, and others have an assortment of insane vehicles lying around.


The game's weapons still steal the show. Each of the game's guns has two options for fire. So while there are only eight possible guns to pick up, there are 16 different rates of fire. The weapon choices are extremely varied, allowing you to choose from double-handed turrets to Bio rifles shooting big blobs of poisonous goo. They are easy to pick up and use, and the strategy involved is deep enough to keep gamers playing for month.

While it's a bit undeveloped in some areas, the multiplayer is atrociously addictive. No matter what the game mode, map, or settings can be turned on, you're always going to get some enjoyment from this game's multiplayer. There are some insane vehicles available for your pleasure (the tripod is other worldly), some really unique game modes, and some seamless hover boards for your viewing pleasure. This is a multiplayer gem that will be forcing you to come back for more, and will be a fixture in my 360 for quite some time.

Regardless how great the game's multiplayer is, I just can't get over the game's simply wretched single player. It's just not good at all, and a game's single player is something so critical to a game's success. Still, you could always bypass the single player entirely; and just focus on what makes this game so great: its incredible multiplayer. That was enough for me to like this game, and past its flaws; you should be able to like it as well.