If you’ve been waiting for some good UT3 footage to come out the wait is over. Epic Games has been showing the game off at Comic-Con. Players can jump on the computers and play multiplayer DeathMatch. Over at BeyondUnreal we were lucky enough to have Princess_Die send us over 4 very good quality shakeycam videos. We’re very lucky that Princess_Die sent us the footage and all the credit goes to him. I’m just lucky enough to be a staff member at BeyondUnreal so that I can see them early. Highres links are available here and here. Here’s my more detailed synopsis and opinions based on what I’ve seen in the videos.

Impact Hammer

You don’t see the player use UT3’s impact hammer at all in the videos to kill anybody, but he does pull it out. Check out 2:32 in video 2 of the footage. You can see the secondary fire that can supposedly disable vehicles.

Enforcer

One of the things that always irritated me in UT2k4 was how screwed you were when you spawned. It was just too hard to do anything with that crappy assault rifle. However if you view the first 20 seconds of video 3 you see that the 4 hit kill from the original UT appears to return. The secondary fire shoots 3 burst shots which can be deadly at close range. I believe this is what you see at 1:22 in video 3 of the footage when it shoots really fast for a short moment. Spawn rape won’t be nearly as big of a problem in UT3. The gun also works well as a finisher. But wait it gets better you can go akimbo style and wield two at a time. Sure the clip coming out of the side looks kinda weird, but let’s pick and chose our battles here.

BioRifle

The next really big change I’ve noticed is the BioRifle. The shots appear to be much larger and shoot straighter than it’s past iterations. You’ll notice in the videos that the player uses the gun quite a bit and gets a lot of kills with it. I foresee this becoming the gun everyone calls the noob cannon in UT3. Not only is it effective, but it’s easy to use. Novice players will certainly have fun with this one. However my favorite change comes with the secondary fire. Watch at 0:38 on the first video. The huge blob doesn’t kill you right away. It gives you the chance to fight back, and try to get close enough to take others with you!

LinkGun

There’s not a whole lot to say about the link gun. The model for the gun is really strange, and doesn’t look anything like what I would expect a link gun to look like. However, it seems that the primary fire is much more like the original UT, and that is something to celebrate. The range on the secondary fire seems just right. Note the effect at 3:39 in video 2 when the secondary fire starts. It sorta distorts the air around it.

Flak Cannon

The new secondary fire feels really strange compared to the previous iterations. The ball drops really fast due to the increased gravity, and you can’t lob it nearly as far as you used to. I think this was a needed change however. The flak cannon is really for short range combat, and it seemed to useful at times in UT2k4. I think I’ll have a hard time adjusting, but we’ll all deal with it. See around 1:14 in video 2 for some good examples of in action including the player getting owned by it at 1:34.

Minigun

The minigun has always been my least favorite weapon in the Unreal series. The thing has always been nothing but annoying. I’m sure I’ll still complain about the stinger, but it seems that a lot of the gayness of the gun has been taken out. Look at 1:25 in video 3 for some good examples that show how powerful it is. The gun certainly looks and feels way better than past iterations. We have yet to see any video of the secondary pinning people to the wall You do however se the secondary at around 4:18 in video 2.

Rockets

The rocket launcher was one of the best improvements between the original UT and UT2k4. This time they’ve appeared to merge both worlds. The rockets have a much heavier and powerful feel to them. However they’re still good for dogfights. It’s uses several times throughout the videos to good effect, often resulting in the player killing himself. There appears to be a bug in the version that was shown off at Comic-Con, but the developers have posted on our forum telling us it’s already fixed.

Shock Rifle

The combo has always been a pretty sight, and UT3 keeps with that tradition. The explosion appears to be bigger to me, but I could be wrong on that. The player has a hard time hitting the shock balls, which might indicate that it’s a bit harder to hit the balls. However, note that every time he misses he completely misses the ball altogether. Shock primary still bumps you around, but you can recover faster due to the gravity.

Sniper

The sniper rifle seems to fire a bit faster from the footage than the lightning gun from UT2k4. If you want to see it in action go to 6:00 in video 3. I always thought the reload in 2k4 was fine, but I think this will make the weapon more entertaining to kill with. I’m sure with the power increases on everything else this will balance just fine.

Redeemer

What can I say? Wow just wow. FThe animation on the weapon model when you pick it up was a great touch. It really has “this is powerful” written all over it. Check around 4:30 in video 4. He’s not even looking at the explosion and his screen is going crazy. In fact the explosion is so powerful it knocks the player to his feet. You see the view temporarily go to 3rd person as he gets back up. This is probably the same thing that happens when you fall off your hoverboard.

More Observations From Footage

Notice that there’s a lot more feedback for when you hit people and get hit. Players flash white when they get hit, and your screen goes red as you die. I’m also very pleased with the skyboxes. Unreal Engine 3 skyboxes work quite differently from past iterations of the engine, and you can see how it’s resulted in drastically better looking skyboxes. The player models all look nice including the krall. I thought he would look out of place, but I think the model was actually done quite well.

Hope you enjoyed the videos. There’s so much stuff in here. Watch them more than once. Don’t forget to leave a comment on your thoughts. I’d also check out all the forum threads at beyondunreal, as there’s lots of good observations there as well.

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