Well I actually played and completed UT3 a while ago, but due to aformentioned fail, I've only just got around to a write up. UT3 is excellent. There. Uh, so I'm expected to write more? Ok...UT3 is the latest and greatest in the series of Unreal Tournaments...which have had a long and good history of online multiplayer fragfest with relatively lame singleplayer that was just really a training mode for the real game, which is online. UT3's Singleplayer is relatively transparent, as the campaign is a series of botmatches tied together into a campaign. Yet heres the magic, while its just a series of botmatches, it doesn't just feel like a string of botmatches. Stuff happens. Your team talk. And its not just 4vs4 deathmatches either, sometimes the odds are in your favour, sometimes they're against you, and theres a good variety of objective style matches and CTF as well as some onslaught. So true, UT3 may be primarily an online FPS shooter. But it's campaign is quite enjoyable, varied and does actually feel like a campaign for once (UT3 features a military campaign with a plot, instead of the previous UT2K3/2K4 which had their campaign mode as tournaments working to the top).

That's the basics covered, now onto...COOP. Oh yes, UT3 has coop. This means whatever flaws its singleplayer has are instantly absolved...because COOP is the best form of multiplayer there is. Theres simply no experience better than working with friends to accomplish objectives. And yet, for the amazing fun and player interaction of COOP, its a sorely overlooked feature, I can think of games that would outstanding with COOP (Crysis, Call of Duty IV). So it has coop, whereby in coop, a real person replaces one of your squad members. They still 'say' scripted dialogue and they still have the same ingame appearance and name, but it gives a great sense of being a squad. You can have up to four people in multiplayer, and your progress can be saved and continued. And honestly, I think that's what made UT3 great for me, especially what made the singleplayer good; it wasn't just botmatches. And you know, we won some, we lost some (and damn the end bitch is hard). They even left plotspace for a UT3.

And then...finally, graphics. Unreal Tournament 3 is based upon the Unreal 3 engine for which the Unreal series of games, and Unreal Tournament series of games have such close ties with. UE3 is very much a next-generation engine, and its seen very wide use in a large number of games already...UT3 is quite a late title on UE3, and its been optimised. And optimised...and optimise. The game runs excellently on a range of hardware, from (now) aeging X800 cards up to modern HD3870s and HD2900s (My coop team had a variety of rigs including a P4/nVidia 7600, a C2D/HD3870 and a C2Q/HD2900 (mine)). The game ran and looked amazing on mine, at 1920x1200 with everything cranked up. There is one tiny complaint; the game no longer says "HOLY SHIT" when you max the graphics, as per UT2K4. I miss that. But yeah, the graphics are excellent, and they don't look too shabby on low end either, but best of all, they run smoother on low end, so older PCs don't have to miss out on the fun. Also, you should be aware. This game has no anti-aliasing. None whatsoever. But its actually a non-issue, and I didn't notice any jaggies in my playthrough, and I'm kind of an eye-for-detail person (graphics whore), so that's a majorly impressive trick. The game (and UE3 engine in general) is designed to run without AA, so meshes and textures are designed appropriately to minimize edge aliasing. It's pretty sensible, and something that's a far more sensible solution than over-rendering a scene and downsampling high-frequency angles.

Anyways, time for the final verdict, and I'd call UT3 a very solid purchase, and well worth picking up. I'd going to rate it at 85%, which may seem harsh given the glowing writeup I've given it, but its only complaint is the single player, which while vastly improved in UT3 over previous iterations is still weak compared to the SP interaction of other games. Don't let this stand in the way of your purchase though, its still an excellent game and the COOP makes it all good.