Unreal Tournament 3 Preview

E3 2006 First Look Preview

Unreal has a well respected history in the PC first person shooter genre. For the next incarnation they are turning everything up a few notches, and also supporting the PS3. Those familiar with the series will be happy to know that along with Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and CTF, their bringing back Onslaught and introducing a new Warfare mode. Combat doesn’t just take place on foot, there are many vehicles, ground turrets, and even strange robot looking combat vehicles. The variety of combat will be implemented across play modes.

A clever new element is the hover board. It may seem small, but one of my pet peeves of the Battlefield type games is how long it can take to get somewhere when there aren’t any vehicles around. If you have a long distance to travel, you can put away your guns, and hop on your hover board. You can even jump and show off some tricks, but you probably won’t be focusing too much on your boarding skills with bullets and explosions all over the place.

The level that I had a chance to see incorporated taking over checkpoints, grabbing the orbs, and using your shock rifle to charge and hold the checkpoint. There were portions of the level where you had to get past a chokepoint, and would jump into a turret to take out the enemies on the ground, and in the air. There were also sections of the level where the fighting caused a rock formation to tumble, crushing the vehicle sitting below. Near the end of the level, the somewhat organic looking 3 legged robots had to be dispatched.

UT 2007 appears to borrow the best of past games, and introduces enough new elements to make it one of the more intense and exciting next-generation shooters. UT 2007 is due in, you guessed it, 2007.

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