Unreal Tournament is an old franchise that is known for fun game play. The original was also a favorite because it played very nicely with decent graphics on unaccelerated hardware.
The big change was in Unreal Tournament 2004 with the introduction of vehicles. Unreal Tournament 3 continues with new vehicles and a new game mode. The new mode, Warfare, is a refinement of the UT2K4 mode onslaught. Your team fights the opposition team to link up nodes from your power core to the enemy power core. Nodes can only be captured in order and when you control a direct line from your power core to the enemy power core you can attack it. Destroying the enemy power core wins you the match.
Most of the other game modes are unchanged. The main difference is in the beauty of the game engine. Atmospherics are a nice touch. Also on many maps the distant objects are no longer an image map on a plane. They are now actual objects on the horizon so as you move the perspective on a distant skyscraper changes.
The startup is a little annoying as there are 5 sponsor bumpers.
The single player is a very good tutorial on the different game play modes. It struggles in the beginning to tell the story and make plausible explanations for the game play. The first is a description of "respawners".
The third map introduces CTF. The FLaGs or "Field Lattice Generators are... Oh, hell. Watch this video.
Once we get passed these little groan inducing bits, it turns into a semi interesting game. Overall the single player game is an average video game. It is good as a tutorial to get you ready for the fun of online multiplayer gaming. The problem is that there are fewer than 100 servers as of this writing that actually have players.
It could be a fun game if there were people to play against. Warfare may be new, but it doesn't feel too much different from Onslaught. The rest of the game is pretty, but still feels much like the earlier installments in the franchise. The current retail price of $49.95 is too much for what seems more geared at selling licenses for the Unreal Engine in other games.
The ultimate verdict is that this game would definitely be worthwhile at about a $20-$25 price point. That is if there are any online servers left at that point. So a short review as there really aren't many differences to point out from UT2K4.
