Unreal Tournament 3 [PC]

We got a chance to get our grubby, Unreal Engine 3 lovin' hands on a build of Unreal Tournament 3 at a Pre-TGS event in Sony's headquarters a few days ago. Even if the build was from E3, that doesn't mean that we didn't have a great time toying around with some of our old favorite maps and modes.

The first map we jumped into was Deimos, a hulking alien space station that features a massive turret that could be manned if you were brave enough to venture into the vacuum of space to find it. There's also an anti-gravity tunnel that can be ventured into for some slow-motion-like battles. During our exploration of Deimos we were lucky enough to stumble upon the Redeemer, which by now everyone knows as the SIXAXIS guided nuclear missile. Fire the sucker, guide it with the PS3 controller and watch people die. It's fantastic.

The next map we loaded up was the destroyed city level that we've detailed for you before and the level played just as well as it had in the past. The massive Darkwalker was still the focus of the level and wreaked an insane amount of havoc each and every time it was piloted. There was a bit of a bug in which the framerate would drop substantially when the screen filled with its primary mode of fire (a massive fiery laser). Mark Rein was on-hand to explain that it was indeed a bug and not a performance issue. His favorite line of the night was, "If there were no bugs we'd have shipped by now!"

Our last map was with the game mode Warfare and the map Torlan, an old favorite from Unreal Tournament 2003. We immediately sought out the hoverboard, jumped on, and started maneuvering the speedy mode of transportation with SIXAXIS controls. Things felt just as tight as always, but as soon as we entered into a firefight the entire level froze up and the game crashed on us. Much to our heart's dismay, our reasonably lengthy play session with Unreal Tournament 3 had come to an end.

Mark Rein said that they are shooting for a November release and did say that the PS3 version would have "most" of the content that would be found in its PC brother. He said that there would be a couple of maps that would be left out of the PS3 version simply because the system didn't have the resources to produce a smooth gameplay experience. But rest assured, the classic Unreal Tournament modding could still be performed and uploaded to your friends. Rein even told us that there were plans to allow for players to release mods for sale on the Playstation Network and that the most popular mods and maps would be compiled and sold in an updated Unreal Tournament 3 package later down the line. We'll have much more on Unreal Tournament 3 as its holiday release date draws closer.

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