OK, I was really looking forward to Unreal Tournament III after having gone through various versions of Unreal over the year. Mark Rein and the team at Epic Games have brought much gamin goodness into all of our lives with the Unreal Engine and games like Gears of War and the upcoming Gears of War 2 (Some get Roman numerals and some get Arabic numbers. Who determines this and why?) How could the combination of Midway, Epic and Unreal be anything less than perfect?

  = MORE GAMING GOODNESS??

Well, do not get me wrong. It is not a bad game. If you like the Unreal Tournament family of games, this should be in your wheelhouse. It is much of what you remember, but in high def. Bigger maps, better sound effects and some great weapons. Even some new modes made me happy, like taking over power nodes on hover boards or the great mechanized vehicles for attack and defense. AI is decent and puts up a fight, though it is somewhat unorganized. I have not played on-line, as I wanted to finish the story line for single player before writing this. Having just completed it, I will try on-line soon enough. The new graphics are beautiful. Even the lead character has a bit of a Gears of War gritty look to him. All should be well in gamer town.  Well, not quite. If you liked domination and double domination of yesteryear, those are gone from the line up. Also MIA is Assult and Bombing Run. 

Let me take you back to the story line. That is the part that really disappointed me. It is a tale of revenge so it should be a strong one. It lacks some serious character depth and story line. It takes some stretch of the imagination to understand how capturing flags helps extract vengeance. I get it, it is a game, but that is no reason not to have a great story. Halo has it, Resistance has it, Kane and Lynch has it and they all tell the tale well making one willing to suspend their disbelief to get caught up in the game. With this one, I never felt any identification with the lead. The story line is extremely thin. I guess I was hoping for more and may have set my expectations too high to begin with. 

Also, it seemed to temporarily freeze or halt at the end of each victory, just for a few tics while it loaded the end scene (reactor core blowing up, or making the final flag run back etc…) My thumbstick often pointed to the right for no apparent reason, and has not occurred on any other game I have played. Hopefully,  it may be a piece of grit in the stick as it did not happen all of the time. The last battle with Akasha was the toughest one on the singleplayer mode. 

Yes, I did have fun. And yes, I did play until the end, but I was hoping for a big plot twist that I did not see coming. (I will not spoil it for those that have not played it, but you can see the twist coming a mile away – it did not change the game one bit).  With games hitting $60.00 at retail these days for the PS3 and 360, should we expect more depth? Maybe my thoughts will change with online play. Anyone else out there have it? If so, what do you think?