Return To Home Page		March 16, 2008

Vehicles are superbly designed.

Where Unreal Tounament 3 does have a few issues, particularly when compared to its PC counterpart, is in its clan and team support more than anything. Unfortunately, at the time of writing this review, the in-game voice-chat is incredibly dysfunctional. Some players get it working perfectly, some players can't use it at all, some players are able to get it working, but cannot connect to 90% of the games then. It's something that the soon-coming patch by Epic is promised to fix, but at the moment the games' popularity and online activity is really suffering because of it.

Red Team is laying down the gunfire.

Likewise, the in-game clan support is non-existent. Even the simple 'clan tag' option available on the PC version would be great. Being a clan leader myself, and having spent a lot of time in a clan in Resistance: Fall of Man, this is particularly frustrating, and I know that it's not just me that feels this way.

There really aren't too many other big issues that UT3 suffers from. The frame rate may drop some if you are hosting a 16 player match; however, even if your connection can support it, it isn't recommended you do this unless you are running the PS3 as a dedicated server, similar to the case in Warhawk. Another issue is that currently, Australian players are only able to play against other Australians, New Zealanders, and players from other PAL regions, but again, the coming patch has promised to eradicate this and unify the servers.

Just cruising through the levels.

To look at this game, you start to understand that this is the game that was meant to show the power of Unreal Engine 3.0. Forget about Stranglehold, Turok, etc. None of them can hold a candle to Epic's own title. Unreal Tournament 3 looks amazing and runs very nicely. We only ever experienced any issues with frame rates or slowdown when hosting for 16 players and when almost all 16 were on screen blasting each other away with rockets. If you have seen Gears of War which is also powered by Unreal Engine 3.0, forget what that looks like because UT3 looks infinitely better. The upcoming big-name FPS releases are going to have to pull out some seriously awe-inspiring imagery to out-do this beast.

OK, so one more gorgeous screenshot.

Even audio is great. Okay so some of the voice-taunts are a bit lame, but that's the way UT always has been. If it weren't like that people like myself would complain! Weapon effects are amazing and the announcer is still as loud as ever! Fragging a group of gamers with rockets and hearing "MONSTER KILL!" sounds as awesome as ever!

I had my reservations right up until release of Unreal Tounament 3 given that I've had the PC version since launch last year, but I'm happy to report that this is one of the greatest shooters even on PC and the PS3 version lacks but a few details. Unfortunately, as it stands, I fear that its online life may be limited, especially if Haze hits shelves before this patch comes out, but with Epic promising it will be here ASAP, I'd still recommend this shooter to anyone with a PS3, with the exception of those who need realism in their games.

Review By: Michael Hutchesson