While I am definitely a fan of the Unreal series, this latest installment is
by no means the pinnacle of a great FPS action game-play experience. While it is
an enjoyable romp for the first few hours, it quickly becomes obvious that, like
most other titles in the Unreal series, that the single player missions really
are only practice for your multi-player excursions wrapped in flashy-looking
cutscenes and a flimsy “invading the planet, killing our race”
storyline.
There are some great things to be said about Unreal Tournament III, such as
the graphics, assortment of weapons, map variability and multi-player
capabilities. The single player missions are where the game lets itself down,
however. Yes, they've made an effort with some great-looking CGI cut scenes, but
make no mistake, this is no Gears of War-type immersion. Rather, you choose each
mission based on what ‘type’ of game you'd like to play (team deathmatch,
capture the flag etc) and dive into play, completely oblivious as to the
ultimate goal of the game. Vehicles do add a different element to the game but
don't feel quite “right” to control, and we could probably have done without
the superfluous hoverboard.
It wouldn't be fair to cover only the single-player aspect of UTIII, as
Unreal Tournament is very well-known for its multi-player fun. A few friends
and I decided to have a crack at the co-op Campaign mode, but only made it to
the 3rd level on Normal difficulty (were we bad, or was the difficulty much too
hard much too early? We decided to go with the latter for our
pride's sake).
In short, the game is not great for it's single-player campaign, but does
have some fun weapons to shoot and interesting maps to explore. Try the
multi-player and you may be satisfied with what you find, but there are
definitely some better titles out there. As mentioned earlier, the Gears of War
series not only looks similar to UTIII, but has a more involving campaign and
more interesting multi-player. Try UTIII if it's cheap, but don't expect too
much from it.