UT3 Thoughts, Plus Dumber Than Dirt Bots
So, I just finished the single player campaign of UT3. It was strange, having a story line taking such front stage in a game that’s little more than run, gun, and respawn. I found the whole “respawners” idea (the story’s way of explaining away the infinite lives that one has) to be a bit hokey. The rest of the story was interesting enough though, and the voice actors done a darn good job.
For all of its flash and popularity, UT3 is a very limited game that quickly becomes dull. At one point I found myself wondering why the game just didn’t end. There are only three game modes - CTF, DM, and “Warfare” - and that’s it. Through the entire single player campaign. These three modes simply are not enough to hold interest over a game that spans multiple levels on two different planet settings.
The real joy, however, comes from the bots. When I say “joy”, I mean this as sarcastically as possible. Here’s a quick little image:
Here we have a bot that is sitting inside of a vehicle. The bot is brainlessly ramming the vehicle in front of itself. The parked, friendly vehicle. It didn’t spawn in front of the bot. No, the bot simply tried to drive off and failed. It rammed the darn thing and, like an autistic ADD sufferer on too much caffeine, it totally ignored any all attempts that I made to stop it.
Finally, the bot jumps out…
…to save its object of obsession. Seriously. It only jumped out of its own vehicle to heal the vehicle that it had been ramming itself against, and then the damn thing hopped back into its vehicle and started the whole process over again!
It wasn’t limited to this one time, either. The bots routinely hopped inside of vehicles only to go all autistic on some part of the map or a bump in the road. It was extra special fun times when the entire team hopped into a “Leviathan” and proceeded to stick themselves against a tree, or a wall, or some other obstacle. Never mind the fact that there’s an entire level just waiting around them for them to.. oh, I don’t know, drive through…
Obviously this caused me to lose a few matches and was no small matter of frustration.
The bottisms don’t stop there. No, they’ll flat out ignore commands (particularly “attack” and “defend”), will randomly claim that they’re overwhelmed / need assistance when there’s not a single attacker on their side of the map, and - oh, and this one added so much more fun - will insist that THEY have the flag. Despite the fact that it’s laying on the ground. In front of you… and one or two other bots instantly chime in with the same report… when none of them are within visible range.
I could go on, oh yes I could, but bugger it. You get the point. The UT3 bots make my toe nail clippings look like intelligent life forms.
The game itself, though dull in its single player form, isn’t terrible. Playing online provides a challenging, though all too familiar experience. The burden is obviously on the mod community to put life into this game, but luckily that’s pretty much guaranteed to happen.
You can pick up the UT3 collector’s edition at Amazon for around $35, so if you don’t mind waiting for shipping then that’s the route that I recommend you take. That’s a fitting price, and if nothing else you will almost certainly enjoy the visuals.
Later folks.
Technorati Tags: ut3, unreal, unreal tournament, unreal tournament iii, unreal tournament 3
