Unleashing the unreal: epic unloads the full power of Unreal Engine 3 for the latest Unreal Tournament title.(Gaming)

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

With a massive fan base spread across the entire gaming spectrum--from professional PC garners, to the rood scene, to the casual and console gaming world--creating a next-generation update of the Unreal Tournament series that would please so many disparate expectations was a daunting task, to say the least. Thankfully, the crew at Epic Games came through in spades, producing a first-person shooter and online multiplayer game of unparalleled visual quality. And it's one that delivers all the heart pounding, adrenaline-pumping, ultraviolent combat action that players expect, and with the full per-pixel lighting and 64-bit HDR glory of the new Unreal 3 engine.

Unreal Tournament 3, which marks the return of the franchise on the PC and its console debut on the PlayStation 3, also features a new single-player story line, a new race of vehicles (see "Vehicular Violence," pg. 20), cinematics worthy of the silver screen, updated weapons, and more than 40 maps to traverse as players defend humanity against the alien Necris invasion. The hugely successful online multiplayer series was never sold on its riveting interactive story, but rather, as its trailer promises, on "unprecedented battlefield warfare" and "unbelievable carnage." And both of those run rampant throughout the title's six game modes: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Vehicle Capture the Flag, Warfare, and Duel.

For Epic, the key to creating a successful next-gen game that would meld the best features of previous titles was to stay the course set by Unreal Tournanzent 2004.

"Adding the vehicles to UT2k4 was a scary change for us at first, but once we nailed the feeling we were going for, it all clicked. In the end, that feeling is exactly what we were aiming for with UT3,'" says Epic artist Paul Jones. "The higher gravity and stronger weapons produced more personal, grounded battles, where you can connect with your weapons and vehicles (since they're really the star of the show). So, when we want to make a change to a franchise staple, we do a lot of testing, and then more testing, and then we test our testing to make sure we're really sure."

Nonetheless, Epic's criterion for making changes was simple. "We asked ourselves two questions: Is the change fun, and does it make the game better? If it fits both those criteria, then the change sticks," explains Jones.

In fact, the biggest change gamers can expect is not in the gameplay, but rather in the stunning visuals, character animations, and physics. The game's futuristic film-noir and sci-fi Gothic settings are a wonder to behold, with huge, Necris tentacles sprouting from the ground and feeder tubes pouring into and infecting the urban landscape, as giant tripod-like Darkwalkers stalk the streets. "There is so much more detail in all the assets. The increase in the number of polygons, the extra realism, the quality of the lighting, and the extra polish put into every pixel of this game shines through in the final product," says Jones.