Hit the deck. NOW! Unreal Tournament 3 is a 1st person action adventure shooter that’s just that good. Developed by Epic Games and published by Midway Games, Unreal Tournament 3 is actually the fourth game in the Unreal Tournament series and the eighth Unreal game, but it has been numbered due to the engine it runs on. Whatever the number, the game is a contention of good kills and a mess of vivid fun.

Unreal Tournament 3 is probably one of the best primary first person platform shooters out currently. This game is unleashes full both visually and audibly for every console it’s on (PS3, 360, and PC) and doesn’t hold back. The Unreal Engine 3 makes this game something to look at closely and to wonder “Wow” especially if you have a good T.V. to play on. Though mostly a Multiplayer experience, the game has a single player mode for those who don’t have access to the Internet. It’s not as expansive, but it works like a charm for what it does.

UT3 has six different modes for you to digest and rack up your kills in. The first four are standard fair in first person games. They are: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Duel and Capture the Flag. Those are mainly modes where you need to chalk up kills or capture your opponents flags to gain points which help you to win. These modes are immensely fun to just run around and explore the lands whilst blowing up the enemy’s with a weapon of your choice making sure not to get blown away your self at the same time.

The main menu is as fun and as good as the game runs and plays . and its so easy and user friendly and allows you to custom your own character to use in the online games to make you stand out from the crowd. The one side of this game that would have people worried is the controls seen as they have been bought from mouse and keyboard to console controller, they handle perfectly no glitches and you don’t have to have a uni degree to use them either.

The remaining two game modes are where this game really does stand out from the crowd. War, uh. What is good for!? Absolutely UT 3! Warfare formerly known as Conquest, straps the players to the gun. You feel connected to the mode of play, and it’s something that’s quite definitely exhilarating. While standard game rules are equal to those of Onslaught, Warfare adds unlinked nodes which can always be captured (supplying the capturing team with vehicles and a spawn point and countdown nodes which, After being captured and defended for a certain period of time, create a vehicle or trigger an event helpful to the capturing team as well as the orb, which can be used to instantly capture and defend nodes.

Like flags? Like vehicle slaughter? How about both? Vehicle capture the flag is a lot of fun for you apparently. You see the flag in the distance and think “I can’t be arsed to run no more.” So, just get out your hoverboard or dive in the tank or whichever vehicle is close by at the time and hit the pedal.

As you cruise, check out the vehicles. Better and badder than before, the vehicles in this iteration are awesome. The humans, or Axon, vehicles consist of huge tanks, vehicles with blades to chop down anyone unfortunate enough to be in the way at the time. The grand big of them all, the Leviathan, splurges the power of a massive tank with a huge cannon able to create an explosion about as devastating as a small nuke.

For the old schoolers in any game mode with vehicles included, every player gets a hoverboard to quickly travel around the map. This is the easiest way of getting orbs or flags around the map, since they can’t be taken into vehicles.

Okay, so the gameplay is great, the graphics and additions are great, but what’s just as important? Sound. You guessed it, without sound we would just be aimlessly shooting blanks, and the floors would randomly explode from no sound of a grenade to be heard. The explosions and the weapons firing sound fantastic and really drop you in to the strange and dark world of Unreal Tournament.

The only real problem for UT3 comes in the 360 version. The online is what makes the game, but the problem is when compared to the PS3 and PC versions, the mod support grudgingly claws at the player. There is currently no mod support whatsoever, and the forums are already ablaze with unanswered questions as to how these will cook on 360’s that don’t have HDD support, and much more. Whether or not there are mods on the 360 version isn’t an issue, but it does play a factor in the overall sell ability of the late arrival.

With these amount of modes and ways to play, playing online is franticly fun and the best part of the game by miles. If you want a game for a great single player or so you can plan your move through online, this is not for you. Unreal Tournament 3 is all about the action with real people who are ready to smash your head in. Feeling pumped to dominate? Get Unreal Tournament 3.