Musings of a technophile

Unreal Tournament is a very special game to me, as it probably is the game I have played more than any other. I started playing it back in late 2000, and I played it pretty much every night for hours every night for about 6-7 years (I switched to UT 2004 in late 2003 though). Even now I still start a game up every now and then just to remember the old days. That being said, as soon as Unreal Tournament III came out, I jumped at the chance to get it – heading out immediately and buying the collectors edition at a GameStop the day it came out.

Unfortunately, UT III was not the game I had hoped for. The most prominent problem I have is the graphics – they are just too shiny or something. A few times I have run right by a weapon, not even realizing it was a weapon due to how shiny the walls were and stuff. I’m not sure if they thought that making every shinier would give it a better “high tech” look or what, but I can say that I hate it for sure. The next problem is just the continued tinkering with the engine. In UT99, the shock rifle (my favorite weapon by far) was an ungodly weapon that could pretty much kill anything with one blast. Unfortunately I guess so many newbs complained about it, that in UT 2003 they pretty much made it take something like 8 shock blasts to kill someone, although in UT 04 they change it to about 3 to 4. Still, it takes serious skills to be able to hit someone with that many blasts, and while I didn’t have so much of a problem with it, it still was aggravating that it took so much skill to use the weapon, and yet the results were meager compared to the rocket launcher which takes no skill and could kill someone with even just 2 rockets. Anyways, in III, it seems like they messed with this even more – because even though people say that it is the same damage control as in 04, something is off. Perhaps it’s that a rocket could now kill you with only 1 shot, or perhaps it was the shiny factor making it harder to hit the combo, but for whatever reason I found myself cursing the shock rifle again, as I had in 03.

There are various other “problems” with III – the lack of a menu (the game was developed for the PS3 AND the PC, but it seems like the PS3 got more attention, so while previous UT games offered about 500 options in the menu, III offered about..oh…9), the lack of taunts (I love my taunts), the lack of players (last time I played it I could only find one server online. ONE. Compare that to UT 99 or UT 04 where there was like 5000 in it’s day), but the reasons above are my main gripes.

Anyways, apparently two good things are happening. One, supposedly soon there is going to be a major patch to the game. I know forever there has been this post on the UT forums about improvements players have suggested to “make the game right” – could this be a compilation on them? Is this like the update the UT 04 was to the terrible UT 03? And two, if you bought UT III retail, you can now enter your key into Steam and add it to your Steam collection. I must admit that Steam is probably the greatest invention to gamers ever. Not only does it offer updates on new games that have come out, but it EASILY let’s you find, purchase, and download the games immediately to your computer. If an update to a game comes out, it will ever notify you and automatically install it for you – how awesome is that! The best part however, is that once you purchase a game in your Steam account, you can play it on any computer. Just install Steam, log into your Steam account, and download the game onto that computer as well.

I guess we’ll find out soon enough whether this will finally bring UT III into the limelight, or whether this will just be more garbage to heap upon the fire. Personally, I’m hoping for the best – I miss playing the old UT, the best game ever created.