Comments on: Free UT3 Weekend From Tomorrow

By: KindredPhantom

KindredPhantom — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 12:47:08 +0000

“And presumably if you fancy some mod action you can take the opportunity to download Prometheus, The Ball, and The Haunted.”

You forgot Airborn.

By: SkUrRiEr

SkUrRiEr — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 06:30:05 +0000

Recently bought the unreal pack, and have now played through (for the first time) all of the “proper” single player parts of those games.

Unreal was, for it’s time, excellent: a good looking game with an interesting storyline that complemented the diverse locations and didn’t get in the way of the bad guy shooting bits.

Unreal 2 is a interesting single player experience, it was flawed, and I could complain about it all day, – and it had what was one of the worst endings I’ve seen in a game – but it did the trick, and given that it was essentially free with the rest of the stuff, worth playing.

UT3′s single player was a clever way of building a storyline around what are essentially multiplayer matches.

My impression of UT3 is that they’ve made it too complicated: The game modes are more complicated (Warfare: why do we need nodes that do stuff? and the orb just makes it too complicated.) The graphics are more complicated – don’t get me wrong, they’ve done impressive stuff with the engine, but you’ve gone too far when you have to *highlight* the other team so you can actually see and identify them. – The weapons are too complicated: we don’t need useless powerups (mines, slow fields, berserk, etc.) The menus are too complicated: I appreciate the wizard style setting up of games, but don’t go too far, hard-core gamers are going to play this and will want all the heavy options right there where they can fiddle with them. Hiding them away in menus is just a bad idea. As I kind of expected, they’ve fallen into the usual trap of recent games – that all gamers want is shiny shit with high polygon counts, and things like instant playability, storyline, fun, and humour don’t actually count. I really thought they’d do better.

After playing and enjoying the single player, and a couple of instant action matches, I still find myself firing up TF2 when I need a fun multiplayer experience – and if I want to play something more serious, my mouse seems to be magnetically drawn to the UT2004 shortcut. Nothing beats the balance of pick-up-and-play-ness and I’m-actually-doing-something-ness of Onslaught and Assault.

Oh, and speaking of the unreal pack, why the hell wasn’t UT2′s XMP included with UT2? Wasn’t that an official release? And where the hell is UT2003? – the CBPs for that had some great maps that were never released (that I know of) for UT2004! (and yes, I’m aware that UT2004 was supposed to completely replace UT2003, but still, having it on steam costs next to nothing!)

By: Random commenter #376788

Random commenter #376788 — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:51:04 +0000

All these free weekends fro UT3, and yet none for games such as Section 8, which is a game that really takes a weekend to get used to (playing S8 for only one or two rounds or so does not do it justice, as it takes time to understand the multiple game mechanics) and a game that is in desperate need of more players. Played UT3 on its previous free weekend (and I tried to enjoy it, didn’t stop playing until the weekend was over) and it felt very….soulless, as if everything was on cruise control, and you’re just shooting people over and over again for 20/30-odd minutes, occasionally doing the gametype objective (capturing a flag, etc.). In Section 8, however, the different mini-objectives within each round provide variety in matches, and completing these objectives give you a better sense of accomplishment. Section 8 has its fair share of flaws, but at its core there’s more heart to it than UT3, and ultimately more fun.

By: lumpi

lumpi — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:26:59 +0000

Hasn’t Epic more or less officially abandoned PC gaming? At least their adorable mascot, CliffyB?

By: lumpi

lumpi — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:21:42 +0000

@suibhne: Thanks for saving me the time to write all that myself. Exactly how I experienced Unreal 3.

Also it is, once again, time to point out how the PC gaming community was treated like crap by a games company. Where on earth should sales come for this game? Not to mention that the console release that was clearly pushed like no time before, was an equal failure.

But of course it was all piracy. Of course. And “the economy”. Not possible that Epic just released a POS game that never was about gameplay or community but just about releasing a console-focused engine to sell to third parties…

I would dig even deeper into my personal hatred of the graphical style which mixed brown-gray landscapes with metal-baggy-pants and hover-boards, compressing everything I dislike about current game art in one handy package… but I won’t even have to go there.

By: Vinraith

Vinraith — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:09:57 +0000

Props to any multiplayer game that has proper bot support, and even moreso for a game as moddable as the UT series. That said, while UT3 is alright, I still prefer the feel of UT 2004. The original is, of course, also still great (but getting too visually dated to tolerate, unfortunately).

By: Grey_Ghost

Grey_Ghost — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:04:11 +0000

The free weekend I played this turned me off it forever. Simply awful community playing this game. Besides, I’ve just had enough of arcade-y shit.

By: Po0py

Po0py — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:27:55 +0000

Actually Unreal 2 had a really awesome multiplayer. It was a hybridy ctf style defend your base game where you had engineers who could set up defense barriers and the attacking team would have to have to blast their way through to grab the artifact and return it to their base. Youyube Unreal 2 XMP.

By: LewieP

LewieP — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 18:01:54 +0000

So it is. I based my numbers on Shack news saying that the discount was going to be 66%, but it looks like everywhere else is reporting it to be 60%, for what difference it makes.

By: Rohit

Rohit — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:58:51 +0000

Good point. It’s like they picked the best maps for the demo – Turbine, Coret, Morpheus, Phobos, and something else?

By: Rohit

Rohit — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:57:03 +0000

UT99 forever.

By: ChampionHyena

ChampionHyena — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:29:50 +0000

Echoing the sentiments of mysterious, nebulous disappointment with UT3′s “feel.” Perhaps the absence of Digital Extremes? Hm.

Regardless. The original Unreal Tournament was… well, I’d hesitate to say it was my FAVORITE game, but I’ve certainly pumped more hours into it than pretty much any other game I’d care to name.

Heck, I still play it. Load up Xmaps, have it randomly hurl arenas and gametypes on me, bots auto-adjusting for map size and difficulty, and just grooooooooove.

There’s a thread somewhere in the BeyondUnreal forums regarding making old-school UT look a lot prettier, so if you’re worried about dated visuals, go read up and prettify your copy.

Hell, I want an old-school UT free weekend.