IT Bytes

I spent some (un)productive holiday time completing UT3 campaign mode and it was good fun. It’s more story based than previous versions and does give you an opportunity to choose different paths through the campaign although I’ve not spotted how I can replay it ensuring I don’t retake the same path. It’s certainly more hectic than 2004 and judging by the levels of my hair pulling it was certainly harder to beat some levels, especially one particular warfare game where my team was outnumbered. I guess I was supposed to use the ‘play card’ feature and there also seemed to be some hints about a team roster but I didn’t use either. One negative critism I’d level was that the AI was pretty dumb. Without wishing to spoil it there is a very important 1 vs 1 duel in which the CPU player is highly skilled, however the computer cannot resist going for the power ups. In this map the "double-damage" is situated in a difficult to reach spot that involves ducking to reach, which in turn means you’re moving really slowly. I.e. you go in there and it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Having realised that, I would wait for the power up to apear but make no attempt to get it. I’d simply wait for the computer to attempt to get it when I could then easily mark up another kill. Now I would have expected a human opponent to realise that this strategy was costing them dearly and to give it up but the computer AI was just dumb. In the same duel in 2004 it took me a good few goes to see off the computer but I did this first attempt. Bit of an anti-climax really. But overall UT3 is great fun and getting in a ‘dark walker’ and unleashing War of the Worlds style death rays is good fun. Unlike many other games I’ll still be playing this for some time to come.