The UT3 Beta Demo

[Kaboodles]

So it's out. Has anyone else tried it yet?

I haven't played online yet, so I don't quite yet know what to think about gameplay. The botmatches was pretty enjoyable, though I'm rather bored of vanilla UT now. Jumps feel less "floaty", which I'm not sure what to think about yet. The Dark-Walker is fun as hell, though kind of weird on a DM match. Goliath also handles much better than in UT2004.

I also really like the knockback and "Feign Death" features. Basically you get turned into a ragdoll and get up from where-ever you landed. I can't wait to see that in a Melee gametype (if we ever get one )


The GUI is rather poor. There's sliders for mouse sensitivity, with only integer values, so no fine-tuning your mouse sensitivity there. There's a real lack of graphical customization options as well, with only 3 sliders for the Advanced video options (Texture, World Detail, and "Screen Percentage"). There's also this annoying habit of prompting you if you want to start the game when you click the "start" button, which you can't disable.

The HUD is pretty blah as well. It doesn't convey information as well as UT2004's did, is rather ugly overall.

I'm also not a huge fan of the graphics. Sure it's pretty, but the excess of bloom effects make it rather hard to see. It feels like my character's myopic or something. The excessively art style is also just way too gritty. There doesn't seem to be anything smooth in this game at all, which Is rather weird. Not a lot of color contrast either. Everything seems washed-out, and the only vivid colors you see are from neon lights and weapon effects. I miss UT2004's color and general art direction.

Of course, I am running this on a laptop with a fairly low-end card, so I guess I can't really judge graphics until I can play it on higher settings.

What does everyone else think?

[General_Sun]

The gameplay's the worst thing ever. I don't think I'll be buying UT3. Instead of strategic ballet of UT2K4 UT3 is WWE. I am very sad.

[Menderis]

Seems like not all of the new graphicfeatures are not availible in the demo.

[Kaboodles]

The gameplay's the worst thing ever. I don't think I'll be buying UT3. Instead of strategic ballet of UT2K4 UT3 is WWE. I am very sad.

You know, there's guaranteed to be a mutator out there that changes it back to UT2004-style gameplay. I mean UT2k3 shipped with a "UT Classic" mutator that changed everything back to UT-style gameplay (or was that UT2k4? Hmm)

I actually like the gameplay changes. More emphasis on shooting, less on hopping about like an over-caffeinated rabbit on crack.

Seriously, there was no reason to ever run in UT2004. Just dodge-jump your way through the map. That's pretty dumb

[General_Sun]

Yes but the shooting's the least interesting part of the game...

[Menderis]

To be honest i either was bored. I hope at least the game will have a good story so it'll make me play through.

[Strider]

Alot of people forget that it is a beta demo. Not only is it a demo (which are usually crippled) it is also a beta.

This was probably made back in August and is nowhere near what the mainstream final product will be.

I see alot of complaining about I can't keybind this or that and tons of other minor things over at the Epic forums. People keep assuming this is what you are going to get and it is not.

Personally I found the graphics good and movement was not bad at all. Seems like the next step up un Unreal gaming. Yeah the Dark Walker was kinda cool (almost War of the Worlds-ish), but I will probably disable it (hopefully) for my server and stick to straight DM & Chaos servers. Maybe use it for an ocassional Friday night mod.

Time and patience.

[R.Flagg]

To be honest i either was bored. I hope at least the game will have a good story so it'll make me play through.

To me, this is nothing to worry about at all. I mean, Quake 2 would never have stayed on my computer, and I would not have played it online for the time that I did, if it had not been for Chaos. I didn't play Q2 for all that time, I played Q2Chaos.

I expect the same now.

[halprin]

The gameplay's the worst thing ever. I don't think I'll be buying UT3. Instead of strategic ballet of UT2K4 UT3 is WWE. I am very sad.

Welcome to what Unreal Tournament is all about! UT3 is Unreal Tournament! A return to what made it great!

[jb]

In my quick runs with it I think Gen Sun has a point. There weapons seems to be more "spammy" than comparted to older UTs.

[neolith]

There's a few things that I don't like about the game in its current form:

• Damage/life-ratio sucks. Everything is instagib, not even full armor prevents this. Even tanks go down with a few direct hits. I expect an instagib-mod to work like that, not the full game.
• Levels have lots of invisible boxes that prevent you from going to locations that you should be able to go. That is bad leveldesign.
• The menu is for consoles. I want a proper PC menu.
• The serverbrowser sucks and is not able to do proper sorting. For example when you want to sort for ping 2500 comes before 93 because it begins with a two.
• The vibrant colors of UT99 and UT2kx are gone. Everything looks brownish, dark or grey.
• The alt fire for the flak cannon got nerfed. It flies too slow and it's hard to aim with in comparison to all the other weapons.
• The shock combo got nerfed. Needs a bigger radius.
• The gamespy implementation sucks. UT3 needs a full restart for every game started from GS - more than often I find myself trying to join servers that became full while my UT3 was loading.

Most of these issues are tweakable though - I just hope that some more work gets done on this game, because behind these things that bug me could be a really nice game.

[jb]

Good Points Neo!

[Melekai]

Ok so the UT game itself is not a big wonder.. but honestly what were we expecting. the reason we are watiing for this game is to mod it! its the engine we want

the core UT thing died with UT. people expect more now.. hence why there are teams like this one giving them what they want.

hence why its great for us all to see what we like and what we dont like.
and to figure out what are "new features" that can be used by us. etc.

i ahvent had a chance to check it out yet. im getting closer every week to having enough cash for my new pc. looks like ill be spending at least 800 dollars on the upgrade. depending on when i buy .. maybe 1500 for something that will last me a lil longer.

[deadxatthexscene]

I've been playing this like crazy (and of course with a little bit of grease and warm up matches I've been pwning the DMs)

A few things to complain about, though I understand this is a BETA DEMO.

The menus gets like 10FPS while in game I get a nice 30-50... What the hell?

The original UT feel took awhile to get used to, I wasn't hitting jack for awhile, but it's not too bad.

Why put out a beta demo with no official servers? Talk about freakin RETARDED. How am I supposed to play a demo and judge it based off of a match full of lag and packet loss? (Uh, hello, my gun is shooting but I don't see any bullets).

WHY IS THERE A VEHICLE IN A DEATHMATCH?!? *DOH*

The serverbrowser, again, sucks donkey crap. It doesn't even do it's job. The console feel to it sucks. I too, want a PC menu and feel.

The damage is confusing... I was used to UT2k4 and I used to know how many shots of whatever weapon would kill something... and it seems sorta unbalanced, maybe its just me...

The overall demo was disappointing, but I know these will be fixed in the final. At least I hope so... Otherwise... Wow. PATCH PATCH PATCH! =)

That is all.

[R.Flagg]

You guys should join me on the NBS Crush VCTF server sometime. I haven't been experiencing lag, and it has been a lot of fun.

Last night I played almost all defense with the Scorpion. That thing is still a big-time manta killer. Shuts the mantas down right now.

There's definitely some rule changes and stuff I'd like to see done for ChaosCTF, but it's still fun learning the game.