I agree...Designing a game for the lowest common denominator (consoles) is the failure of many PC franchises, once money gets in the picture, and publishers start demanding that games be designed with *every* system in mind from the start... rather than releasing first, then porting, which is the proper (expensive) way to do it.
I was very relieved, however, that the gameplay itself wasn't too much different (if at all) from UT2004, in my opinion (I play UT3 DM online every night. Feels the same to me, if not a little better, with the movement grounded a tiny bit)... but the menu interface took a HUUUGE hit, thanks to it being designed for the PS3... then again, UT2003/4's menu's weren't spectacular either, so I wonder if they're just forgetting how to make an interface more and more with each release. The UT4 main menu might look like this:
I recall explaining to Switch` when the demo first came out that, when in a match, it took 5 clicks to go from the ESC screen to advanced video options, and then to get back in the game, you had to hit Esc that many times.
They fixed it to some degree in the patch, but it's still hideous for anyone who has played Unreal games before.
Oh, and it took me 2 weeks to learn that you could even adjust your character's appearance... And I notice that most players don't know about the map voting tab. To the say menu system is in need of work is an understatement, I think... It
looks at least half-decent IMHO (I like the colors), but the functionality is just insulting.
- As for the actual game, it's a mixed bag for me.
The graphics for the most part are awesome-tacular. The weapons look awesome - my fav being the flack cannon, because you can see the self-shadowing really well, which gives it a super real look.
(Hey, there are two Gunreal shots on the first page of Google Image Search results for "UT3 flack cannon". w00t.
)
I guess I'll do a mini review while I'm at it. Too tired to work (or think) right now:
--== Graphics (other) ==-- As for other aspects of the visuals, the particle effects are sharp and crisp, and they didn't go
tooooo far over the top with the light bloom, like some games... Well, usually...
The water is usually garbage if you actually stop to look at it (looks fine if you don't) unlike Half-Life 2, Crysis, and other games that use real procedural shaders, or animations of caustic reflections to control the ripples. (here you've just got multiple panning textures, usually. Bleh. They could/should have done infinitely better if they're really trying to show off their engine. Of course, hardcore fraggers won't care, but if and when the water is observed, there will be teh_squint_of_digust
tm).
Map fire effects (torches, and also Darkwalker fire, etc) are, true to Epic's tradition, hideous (haven't they played any games with realistic fire??? I don't understand why they insist on spewing random orange firey particles and calling it finished fire) Good fire can carry such graphical OOMPH... Oh well.
Beam effects are another thing that stands out as needing a severe makeover. Look at this crap:
Where's the sense of power? It would have more visual impact if it shot out strands of yarn.
Explosions look alright to me. They don't impress, but at least they don't fail... I think Crysis won the explosions award for this generation so far: they pwn. In fact, I after I beat Crysis, I almost had to go back and play with the Gunreal explosions s'more, just to be sure...
Map visuals are super-top-notch (if you like art-deco style - no realism here, and it's certainly not for the faint of headache. The visuals are thick, rich, contrasty, and can hurt your eyes/head because you move so quickly through the levels, and don't have time to process all the visual information)... although I think they could have really capitalized on the visuals if they had employed more directional lighting (think of Half-Life 2's blue Combine spot-lights that were everywhere. They could have used some powerful lights to add a huge kick to the visuals, but didn't catch that one)
As for actual map visual "style", they have a gritty, strange futuristic look... everything seems to be made out of plastic/stone/metal with a layer of gloss over it. Like someone just went through the game and dumped various brands of varnish on everything. No simple materials anywhere. Nada. None. I looked for them, but couldn't find them. Actually, I did find a patch of rocks on the edges of DM-Sanctuary, but you have to jump out of the map and die to see them, so those don't count.
Sanctuary does happen to be one of the most visually awesome pieces of art I've ever seen, anywhere, for anything. And if you turn up the ambient sound to 10, and turn everything else down to 3 (so you can actually hear it - that's how I play) it also
sounds awesome. It's like a high-tension Thief soundscape blended with awesome visuals... for a map that has really sucky gameplay if you're anywhere but the central arena, and even that is a tedious place to navigate.
--== Sound ==--Epic is a company that needs to hire about 50 people in their sound department. Seriously, the sound (or lack, thereof) is one of the things that inspired me to start Gunreal. It's passable, but weeeeeeeeak when listened side-by-side with games like Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike, and many others. Every map's ambient sound volume (which is something like -255) is testament to how blind Epic is (I mean deaf) to the power of sound.
They need to play Bioshock and Thief 3, and learn a thing or two. Gears of War was a little better, but still fairly mute out in the levels, minus the gunfire and exploding monsters everywhere, of course. The people at Epic seriously need to get their heads out of their GPU's, and focus more on more important things.
--== Level Design ==--As perfect as the level design is (regarding DM and CTF mostly), I can't shake this nagging feeling that too many of the DM/CTF maps feel exactly the same (too balanced) with very few
interesting maps that aren't trying to be tourney maps. They're mostly designed to be 100% hardcore DM-centric (which, I recall, was their intention with designing all the maps entirely in BSP first, then detailing afterward)... It's like having 20 Rankins, all designed to be perfectly balanced in the same exact way... whereas in classic UT, you had neat stuff like Morpheus, Fractal, Peak, and other maps that didn't all play essentially like Rankin.
--== "Singleplayer" ==--
Like Turk said, yeah, the Singleplayer campaign is a joke. I don't understand how they can put so much time and effort into something like this... I mean, can't they look at their plans on paper, and say, "Hmm, you know what? Adding dialog and story this weak to a sequence of DM/CTF/etc maps is infinitely inferior to focusing our efforts on other, more worthwhile things."
...the problem is that I don't think Epic understands what those "other, more worthwhile things" are, because they really seem to hammer harder than other companies on certain things that they DO see as important... except that, unfortunately, the average gamer doesn't necessarily see those things as important (hardcore forum mongers not included - they are an elite 1% of the populace with a very different take on things, usually). If I had the opportunity, I would lay it down simply for them: 1) focus on better sound that rips your face off, 2) better effects (explosions and nit-picky details pertaining to the reaction of players/world to weapon damage) that make the combat more volatile and punchy (such as shattering glass everywhere, splintering wood, and awesome sounds to suit), 3) more focus on the gameplay feeling solid and extremely-well-cooked, not the graphics looking good (because this removes the free computer resources needed to do the aforementioned "well-cooking" of the gameplay and overall presentation).
If they focused on those things with strong emphasis, I think they would have a far better company at large. Right now they are mostly known for their graphics, and pretty much graphics... which is something that the most successful developers (Blizzard, Valve) treat as a tool, not a life-force for their games, which = more win for them, in terms of how many people play their games.
--== Voice-Overs ==--Let me just say that for the first week I played, until I got so used to the bot voices that I just didn't hear them anymore, I was mortally ashamed to admit to anybody I was even playing a game called UT3. It was disgusting. I had to call my brother from the other room, and have him come listen to something "amazing", and he couldn't believe what he was hearing.
"Smell burning meat. Make me hungry. (snort, snort)"
That is all. When human beings are present in your region of the country, put the game on mute, for many of the things that the bots say are so full of cheese, you'll have to evacuate your house and have it aired out for the smell.
--== Pace ==--I was never a fan of UT2003/4's lightning-paced movement, double-jumping, and overall uber-madness (hence Gunreal), and unfortunately for anyone like me, UT3 is more of the same. I was laughing the other day, when I was having a sniper match with someone on top of the sanctuary in umm... Sanctuary. It was hilarious. I was talking to somebody in my room about something, and absent-mindedly just bouncing around for like half an hour while this guy and I were trying to hit each other with the sniper rifle (an utterly futile career opportunity, for anyone interested). We both must've done 10 full circles around the roof, till our sniper rifles were nearly empty, and I stopped and noted how incredibly ludicrous it must have looked to anyone unfamiliar with the game (like the person I was talking to) seeing two guys spinning around on the rooftop, like snowflakes in a Christmas ball thing:
Give it a hard shake, and that's how I see a UT match with lots of players. Lunacy.
Two snipers on the same rooftop with gameplay like that = stalemate. So, what I did was finally pull out my Impact Hammer (I think I ran out of sniper ammo - I don't remember exactly), charge the guy, and of course get shot in the face.
...but for anyone who enjoys the lightning pace of the game, there's a lot going for it in that regard. Anyone who
doesn't will enjoy playing the (many) other good games of 2007. Bioshock is a game that wins, and Call of Duty 4 looks and plays 25% better than Crysis IMO, but I still like Crysis better, just because I'm not running around, popping guys who pop up all over the place like an arcade whack-a-moles game. Oh, and Crysis has a story. Sort of. Well, maybe not a story, but more like a
sense of direction... whereas COD4 is more like a hyper-realistic arcade combat training simulator with 500 terrorists popping all over the place for you to kill as you advance. Kinda simple, when you get over the fact that what you're seeing looks more real than reality. (screenshots don't do it justice. You have to see it in motion)
--== Overall ==--
Overall, my enjoyment of UT3 has been at the 7.5, maybe 8.0 level. I play several nights a week during too-burnt-out-to-work-any-more time (if I'm not playing Gunreal), and it's fun to slaughter mindlessly if the server has good ping. That's it, though... I thoroughly enjoy the visuals and the more violent frags, but the gameplay overall is just more of the same. It's 2008, and we've been playing UT games since 1999. That's too long to be releasing games with the exact... same... weapons and gameplay formula. (give or take a few new toys in Onslaught, but you also have to consider that ONS never competed with the vehicular combat of the Battlefield series to begin with)
