Unreal Tournament III
I’m sure somewhere, someone is universally offended at the concepts present in Unreal Tournament III. Rehash is probably good way to describe it if you’re one of those types that has to render things down to a single term, I prefer to say “rehash, but…”
UT3 is a culmination title which features every multiplayer cliches and catchphrase. Nothing about the game hasn’t been done before. UT3 is a game designed around the core principle that high-speed multiplayer is king and packs the roster with muscle-laden hulks snarling out dares that death holds no sway over their prowess with a weapon that could lay waste to a small continent in a single shot. We are treated to sexy (but oddly enough, fully armored) women, the typical black guy with facial tattoos, revenge against aliens and a main character that is Marcus from Gears of War (seriously, compare them folks, its the same dude.)
Single player missions in story mode is at best a thinly veiled selection of missions based entirely on multiplayer concepts including point defense, capture the flag and capturing power generators. The formula is jumbled with a few added features including weapons and abilities that form some pretty clever ways to allow two players to mutually support each other in assault and defense.
UT3 seems lazy in single player mainly because all of the cutscenes and story while generic (revenge on aliens that destroyed your homeworld) is complete window dressing. The levels are simply multiplayer maps with a collection of bots and generic multiplayer goals attached to them. Everything is carefully detailed and even capture the flag has some protracted (if somewhat cute) explanation as to why they are called flags and why they happen to look like them as well.
Everything in UT3 is so deadly serious that it has a certain level of kitsch attached to it. There is simply no way you can’t smile at the sheer determination and grizzle, the washed out colors, the growls and one-liners. I’m sure people think the female swaggers and the chiseled jawlines are absurd, but I see UT3 as a homage to a style, much like the film “300″, it’s all about the niche inside the genre.
As lazy as it feels, you simply cannot fault UT3 for what it is. Is it unoriginal? Sure it is, has it been done before? Many times, but everything in UT3 has this strange polish to it. It has some control issues, mainly it feels like the player is skating on butter. Starting a strafing attack usually leads to your character staying in motion for a split second even though you’ve tried to change directions. Strafing in a circular pattern seems to be a favored method of the developers.
UT3’s shortcomings are based in the view of the developers that multiplayer is the real reason to buy this title. I can understand this to an extent, Unreal and Quake were for a time, the masters of genre and recapturing the past success seemed like a solid idea. Gears of War was no doubt seen as their single-player experience so UT3 was left with an identity crisis. A game somewhat abandoned in creativity where the developers tried to offer the solitary player some measure of an experience while still being obsessed with online gameplay
As a multiplayer experience, UT3 feels old and dated. Capture the flag? Come on guys, the generator defense missions and the cooperative gameplay elements add an extra dimension but UT3 feels like a title that should have been made to the 1999 title, not a genre that has had ten years of evolution behind it. Still I can’t help but praise UT3 for some of the small details but it all feels like a massive case of afterthought, adding a story that the creators tried to shoehorn in to their title without doing anything but the most basic elements to develop it. The frustration is present in the fact that they really seemed to work at this, but it doesn’t matter because there seems to be a fear that the single player might somehow detract from the multiplayer obsession.
UT3 deserved something linear, its own mythos and thats where the final nail in it’s coffin comes in to play. Multiplayer is generic, you cannot have a generic level meant to drive a specific story. The explanations of why this deathmatch particular or capture the flag has significance is hollow, it’s bullshit from people trying hard, really hard to hide the fact they had no interest in offering anyone but the online crowd an experience.
The final summation of UT3 is a question:
“How does it feel to play a game that the developers don’t care about you playing?”
I might have been mad at being treated like the bastard step-child, I thought the obsession with multiplayer only titles died out, apparently some folks haven’t gotten the memo. Still UT3 is just good enough at what it does to quell the annoying focus and let me have fun. I want to steal me a Necris walker!
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March 2nd, 2009 at 12:43 pm
UT3 seems like a game that Epic had no confidence in. Apparently it shipped with some Gears of War 2 footage as a selling point? What did Gears of War 2 have to promote? I always see marketing gimmicks like that as a vote of no confidence from the publisher. They simply don’t think the game will sell on its own merits.
Also, for a game that has been out less than a year it sure hit the $20 mark fast.
I think it’s too bad that they’re struggling with this game. The original Unreal Tournament was an standout success, finally toppling the behemoth that was the Quake franchise. Sadly, everything Epic has released since then has disappointed. Maybe it’s time to just let the franchise die and focus on either Gears or something new.
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:58 pm
The entire thing strikes me as a 1999 idea transplanted to 2008. A sequel to something everyone not only forgot about, but played better evolutions of since. Unreal Tournament is one of those games where the creators seem to have spent a lot of time trying redecorate a house that needs to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up.
There is nothing wrong with UT3 per say, but not being able to fault something and liking it are two wildly different things. I like multiplayer, don’t get me wrong, but you understand UT3 wants to be a game with epic multiplayer matches at it’s heart, in the end people who want a story mode they can play alone aren’t high on their list to care about.
It feels like you’re buying half a game and then you are tossed half-measure attempts to pad the game with a story mode the developers didn’t really seem to want. Toss in the attempts to revive gameplay modes like capture the flag and it leaves you with this strange sense of deja vu coupled with questions like who can take capturing a flag in a shooter seriously anymore….
Give me plain old “the team left standing wins” any day of the week.