Unreal Tournament 3

Once upon a time there was a nifty little game called Quake 2 with a nifty little map called The Edge. Its single-player campaign was good enough, but what made the game REALLY sweet was this single map played on multiplayer deathmatch mode. Producers took note of it and adopted the ever-profitable marketing strategy of "hey, let's milk the cow!". This is how Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament were born, and soon became unstoppable engines of fandom and finger-cramps for the thousands of insane gamers everywhere. The former had a rather short carreer (featuring only one expansion) before returning to the mode that made it popular (aka single-player), but the former, which also featured a different name (adding "Tournament" meant they could make sequels to it AND the original game without them overlapping) flourished and produced many (more or less retarded) offspring: Starting with Unreal Tournament 1 (which we will call "Unreal Tournament" from now on because i'm too lazy to add the 1), then Unreal Tournament 2003, 2004, and then jumping 2001 sequels down to 3.
You'd think giving it a more distinguishable name than Unreal Tournament 2007 would mean that it attempts to bring something entirely new and different to the scene, but other than "the usual", there doesnt' really seem to be something entirely GAME-BREAKING about it.
Let me elaborate on that. The game starts with an annoying "please insert username/password for online play" prompt instead of the normal main menu. I didn't really want to experience online play right now so i just clicked "play offline". Once you get into the main menu, you find that it has been drastically cut down. The plethora of multiple options in UT is no longer here, and it pains me like a piece of paper stuck in my ass to find that the options menu was toned down like this. No more UI color/icon customisation, for one. The game just chooses for you based on the team you're on, and i still can't stop myself from wondering why they would make the game more retarded like this. It just doesn't make sense. And while i'm at it, i also noted that there is no option for disabling the stupid jump-strafe that occurs when you press the same movement key twice in a row. I never liked that option, in fact i hated it with a passion since it hindered my playstyle, so thumbs down for the idiot who considered that it should be always enabled.
Moving past the bastardized options screen, the game still has a single-player campaign which can be played and hopefully completed. Hopefully, because after working to progress in this game for half a day, after taking a break i found that the game didn't save my progress at all when i got back to it. So it was either start the game anew and try to finish it in less than a day, or "fuck you, UT3". I chose the latter. Still, i feel like i got enough out of the campaign to form an oppinion, which is: don't play it unless you team up with a few friends and finish the campaign in online-mode. Seriously, the AI in this game is so idiotic that you shouldn't even bother. Your team-mates might do well in team deathmatch mode, but when made to do more complex actions (such as think instead of shoot), they become some of the worst liabilities this side of the Second World War. So stupid in fact that in a certain mission i actually competed against THEM for who gets the base-capturing powerup first, since if they got it, they would go kamikaze on the other team with it and die, leaving the powerup lying helplessly on the ground where it would eventually blow up. The game would have been easier if i could tell them what to do like in the former Unreal Tournaments, but the producers decided to follow the bastardizing habit and tone THIS down too. The command menu is now limited to about 5 orders that you can't even direct to one teammember at a time. And even with those, i didn't notice any bloody difference either. The idiots were STILL getting themselves killed, still taking their sweet time to defend a point that didn't need defending and still jamming our Leviathan in narrow pathways, while the enemy was coming in an endless line of endlessly respawning endless ugly alien zerg. Endless.
I guess i could bash the AI some more, but i'll move on and talk about the graphics instead. The game is as gorgeous as it is shiny, and features some of the most impressive sights i've ever seen in a game. It's no Crysis, but the grapihcs tend to concentrate more on fantasy than realism so who cares. Still, all the shaders and stuff make the background blend in with the characters to some extent, and it's pretty difficult to see them with an untrained eye, while the AI with its telescopic X-ray vision can see you from the other corner of the map through a fly-sized hole.
The difficulty has also been tuned up, as i could previously easily attain the rank of "unstoppable" or even "godlike" while playing with bots at the "skilled" level, right now i can't even maintain a killing spree for 5 seconds without getting my brain splattered by some precisely-aimed expertly-timed Shock Rifle combo. This is made even more difficult by the (seemingly) lack of health items on the map. And speaking of maps, i really wanted at least some re-makes of the old maps that made Unreal Tournament what it is today, and i was pretty disappointed when i found nothing like them. I guess constantly re-making old maps is a 2-sided coin for the producers, but they could have at least re-made Morpheus... that was my favorite, damnit.
As for the gameplay, well the Assault mode is gone (and the nice, sophisticated maps are gone with it) and the power struggle mode is now replaced by "Warfare", which is basically the same (build and control key points to make a link to the enemy base, rendering it vulnerable) but with one major element thrown in: orbs. An orb is the powerup i mentioned earlier, it spawns at your base (you get a new one everytime the old one is gone) or at the last key point you control that features an orb respawner, you get it like you get a flag, it behaves like a flag(meaning you can't drive vehicles around with it), and it instantly captures (and heals) enemy checkpoints for you, or if you take it to a checkpoint it will make it invulnerable until you go away or it explodes. If you die, it falls on the ground and explodes in 13 seconds (more or less) during which you can pick it up again. If it's an enemy orb, you can "use" it and it will explode, often killing you in the process. Warfare maps usually have vehicles (if not exclusively), and there's a thing about vehicle maps which pisses me off to no end: say you're walking down the street, happy that you just got your hands on a shield belt + rocket launcher combo, when suddenly, SPLAT. You get run over by a Manta, a Goliath cans your ass, or your face gets melted by a hellbender shock-rifle-combo. It's frustrating, and it makes the game outside of a vehicle feel like you're a lone infantryman in Command&Conquer. Dead meat, that is. Killing vehicles is damn hard if you don't have the anti-vehicle gun (called Avril here), and even with that, some vehicles are so heavily armored that you only scratch them. There's also a hoverboard which replaces the translocator in vehicle missions, but if someone so much as touches you while you're on it, you go down rolling (also losing any orb or flag you had).
Story-wise, the game finally tries to incorporate a complex story into the mechanics of a multiplayer arena-type game. Basically, you and your elite (ahem) squad are a bunch of guys who are really pissed off at the world because they got owned by some aliens whose leader is a female human. Because they're so pissed off, they enrolled into the mercenary corps to try to earn some cash and fame. This is where the "oh wait, you're kidding" part starts: apparently there's some new tech in town, and all over the battlefield there's that thar respawners that everyone's been so a-hooked on back in thar Tournament thingy. And cuz the enemy's a-respawnin everywher' you gots ta kill'em till they stop. That don't explain why the battlefield's the size of an arena, why you simply can't walk past certain points but who cares 'bout that detail mumbo-jumbo.
Seriously, with all its flaws and dumbness, this is still Unreal Tournament, the game that has made itself a brand. And whenever you see that brand, you know that you're gonna have some pure quality fun. So take it. Play it. Hell, it's Unreal Tournament.
PS: forgot to mention, Malcom's making an appearance too.