Sometimes, old games are better than their later sequels. I was trying to play UT3 with a friend recently, and sadly it became obvious that, in some ways, Unreal Tournament 3 just isn’t as good as the original UT was. Here’s why:
1. The multiplayer often doesn’t work out of the box, (and when patched requires port mapping).
While port mapping isn’t a problem to a lot of us, it is to lots of others. You shouldn’t need to be technically adept to be able to play UT online against your friends. Given that the Unreal Tournament franchise was effectively born of fans wanting to play Unreal online this is a real disappointment.
2. Face!
The favourite multiplayer map, Facing Worlds, is making a noticeable non-appearance. UT2004 had two versions of this map, a modern one and the classic one. I refuse to believe that no one on the Epic Level Design team thought “Hey, why don’t we include this level that has always been a favourite among fans and that is simply iconic to a huge chunk of them.” If they thought it they should have said it and if they said it they should have been listened to. While on the subject of levels…
3. Not enough maps
The maps that are included in the box are all great, but you’ll be disappointed if you expect it to compare the volume of maps in the UT GOTY edition. Expecting heaving contribution from the modding community is almost a given, but leaning on them this heavily isn’t giving the gamers enough variety and doesn’t meet the high bar set by earlier games from the UT series.
Don’t get me wrong, UT3 is a great game, but these issues really do stain the game for me. When I’ve made a UT3 Face I’ll be sure to make it publicly available through INX, until then I’ll go and have a go on UT.
- John
Play nice. Play Face.
Now if you’d have made this post before the official bonus pack (with Face, by the way) would’ve been available, you might have had a point with #2.
http://utforums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?t=608057
#3, there’s plenty of community maps (although admittedly, most servers don’t play them). Have a look at the forums here.
I entirely agree about #1 though. Although port mapping is _not_ necessary if you just want to play online, it is for being a server – and what’s worse, it requires your NAT to be able to not map outgoing ports. Which my router’s NAT isn’t – so I’m screwed, and unless I buy a new router, I won’t host period. Now that’s seriously annoying.
That is true, I agree with J. Connecting to servers or to people is just not straight forward anymore! Lots of fidgeting around with ports, and when you still can’t figure it out, you have to go onto servers which you both have to connect on to (or try) and there’s other people who are pwning you when really you just wanna pwn each other! TBH i only bought the game for UnrealEd, and the whole new swanky normal mapping and lovely graphics :3~
But the game itself…. yeah, nice to look at, nice to play, but when you’ve beaten the game i wanna play with my friends!!! But i’m seriously considering installing UT2k4 and see how easy it is to connect to my friends and play like the good old days!