Finally, after years of waiting Epic released ‘teh demo’ (or at least an early version of it). This is a beta demo intended for feedback and bug reports. Straight away the gameplay hit me as tight, fast (though slower than UT99, gamespeed option in full game should sort this), more ‘weighty’ in the characters compared to previous UT games (which is a good thing) and some pretty nice graphics also.
Click the screenshots in this post to see higher res versions!
I believe the beta demo has restricted graphics (no highest resolution textures nor advanced effects) to keep the download size within reason. The full game SHOULD be able to take advantage of faster hardware better and ramp up the graphical quality quite a bit. That said, on a decent system now, even this demo version looks very nice indeed.
For me this game is more about gameplay than looks (even though it looks great!), it’s fast paced with most ‘eye candy’ reserved for out of bounds areas where it won’t block players (something UT2k3/2k4 often didn’t do, much to the annoyance of many players who had been brought up on the ‘pure BSP’ of classic Unreal Tournament). This game feels more like the original Unreal Tournament to me. More dynamic, less clincal. There are many non graphical improvements and tweaks which are bound to cause much debate. All I know is it played well and was pretty much bug free (not bad for a beta!). And the gameplay in general is very good, weapons feel powerful and action is quick and brutal!
The one downside is the demo has restricted the Field Of View to 90 degrees for Widescreen (same as 4:3) which is something I frown on, especially given the much publicised backlash against Bioshock for it’s poor implementation of widescreen in that game. It’s technically known as VERT- and instead of naturally allowing more on the sides of the display horizontally (just like the Widescreen hardware) it keeps the same FOV which essentially zooms in to keep the horizontal view the same regardless of aspect ratio, but this causes the top and bottom to be ‘chopped off’ somewhat. In essence WS users are punished because they get a restricted view compared to 4:3 users. Thankfully it’s not too bad in UT3 because the FOV is @ 90 instead of something ridiculously low to start with, but it’s not ideal and not very good for multi screen users. Hopefully this will be adjustable properly in the full version. Right now you can bring up the in game console and type ‘FOV 100.4′ for 16:10 widescreen monitors to get that ‘natural’ no restrictive field of view. This will need typing in each time you respawn though (unless you can make it stick in an .ini file or bind it to a spare key).
I have put a couple of shots on here showing the same scene with default FOV and with it adjusted to the ‘natural’ 100.4. As you can see there is not much in it but in game it makes a world of difference to ‘feel’ and enjoyability. If you were to compare the ‘vertical’ cut off points of the two shots you would see it’s more about that than the horizontal. The vertical point in the ‘corrected’ WS shots is similar to the 4:3 vertical, in the default WS shots you get the top and bottom ‘chopped off’ (to put it in simple terms) which restricts the vertical view and makes things feel cramped.
All screens were originally taken at my monitor’s native resolution of 1440×900 and resized to 1024x (keeping the 16:10 aspect ration). I have taken them with an uncapped ‘Stat FPS’ command to show frame rates with my hardware (for reference). I also used ‘Ghost’ command to take the shots from unusual angles to show the levels off, mostly in game the frame rates are a bit higher than I have hear because I’m framing for visual quality, in game you tend to not see as much at once so frame rates are naturally higher!
In game my frame rates are between 70 - 190fps depending on where you are, bots, map etc. On average though above 100fps which is good! 
The PC used had this spec:
C2D E6850 overclocked to 3.6ghz
Nvidia 8800GTX (768mb ram/slightly overclocked)
2GB DDR2 PC8500 Ram
1440×900
All settings in the demo @ Maximum quality and driver set to ‘quality’.
Related Articles
7 users responded in this post
UPDATE- If you have the latest Nvidia drivers, you can rename your unrealtournament3beta.exe to ‘bioshock.exe’ and then use bioshock in the 3D settings manager (profiles) to enable ANTI ALIASING for the beta!
It works on GF8 hardware as far as I know.
Trying 4x slowed my FPS by 1/4 so maybe too much hit for me but 2x should be fine.
Those screens look like crap. Is this the latest Unreal Tourney?
Please say it isn’t.
Wayne - yes it is but 2 things:
1. It’s only the beta and has reduced textures (medium quality) to make the download smaller. Full game should have higher res textures + a few extras.
2. There is no Antialising on the shots (UE3) but I have since forced it on in drivers and it looks better
Also, of course these are medium quality Jpegs with a bit of blurring on them so nowhere near as sharp as in game.
lastly, I’ve since found it looks better if you turn the brightness down a bit in game and use the ‘vivid’ or ‘intense’ setting for post processing which adds more colour and contrast to the graphics.
I will reserve final judgement of the graphics until I play the full game but in genereal UE3 shots can look a bit hazy or washed out, but look/feel better when you are playing (if you can force AA especially).
Hey nice GFX Card….I also played the demo, and not what I expected!
I’m still going to buy the collector’s edition….when its done…..its going to slaughter any FPS out there!!!
Until Crysis comes out…..
Nice review Mr Fish
Are you doing another review of the VCTF side of the game?
…and more importantly will you be mapping for it on full release?
laalex> I’m getting the CE version too. I’m getting Crysis also to really give my system something to sweat about.
Hey Wulfy!
I didn’t play much VCTF (I prefer regular) but I did try out the vehicles and loved the scorpion and hoverboards. I need more CTF maps to judge it properly though. I’m sure i’ll do a proper review on the full game though.
And yes I will be mapping for it, I wasn’t fully decided but since 2004 i’ve always had it in my mind that I wanted to make new maps for UT3 (and finish some older maps that I never released which now need totally reworking for the new engine!) however it looks like maps are going to take a long time to make in UT3 to come up to scratch but I will enjoy having a go anyway.
Thanks
Leave A Reply
Please Note: Comment moderation maybe active so there is no need to resubmit your comments