Brief gaming update (UT3, Half Life 2 with Portal gun)

Unreal Tournament Beta Demo

I have promised to write about Unreal Tournament 3 Beta demo with greater detail. The problem is work is quite hectic right now with preparation for New Zealand ESRI User Group Conference.

I did manage to play for a few hours (all put together) and I have to say it is very good demo. First of all menu screens are much better than in UT 2004. Background is in neutral gray and scenes from the game are in monochrome red tones. Graphics is nothing short of stunning. There are plenty of sites offering graphics review and how to tune it so I won't talk about it here. If you want to check different settings without running the game have a look at article on GameSpot. It shows nicely different settings and provides brief description just in case you missed it.

Demo offers only 3 maps: DM-HeatRay, DM-ShangriLa and VCTF-Suspense and 3 game type options: Deathmatch, Duel and Vehicle Capture The Flag

Deathmatch
Deathmatch is the core of UT. Compared to UT 2004 it is faster. It doesn't take long to find a bot and next thing you know you are most likely to be on 10% health or dead. For me Deathmatch will be one of my favorites for long time to come.

Duel
Duel is simply 1 vs 1 game played on regular deathmatch maps. Unlike Last Man Standing in UT 2004 you have to find and collect weapons, ammo and everything else. This gives you more opportunities to get geared up for good fight.

Vehicle Capture The Flag
Instead finding mutators this is now part of the standard package. Suspense map is nice and small enough to give you fast paced action using a range of vehicles. In addition to vehicles from UT 2004 (more or less) one can use a hoverboard. It is fast and will be very handy on larger levels. To balance the speed while using it you can't use weapons at all.

For videos of gameplay check the usual sites: Beyond Unreal, Game Trailers, YouTube and others.

In particular I like a view of Redeemer while using alternate fire. It is a lot less crowded compared to UT 2004 and you can focus on the target a lot better. Another nice effect is when you dive into the water (VCTF-Suspense) - everything is blurred just like diving without a mask.


Tweaking
Already there are postings all over the net about getting the most out of demo. The one I like is on Planet Unreal. Of course if you are brave you can experiment by changing whole bunch of settings of number of INI files. This time around they are located in My Documents\My Games\Unreal Tournament 3 Demo.

If you have a look at these files you can find out what maps are planned for Warfare: WAR-Downtown, WAR-SinkHole, WAR-Dusk, WAR-Islander, WAR-Avalanche, WAR-MarketDistrict, WAR-OnyxCoast, WAR-Powersurge, WAR-Serenity, WAR-FloodGate and WAR-Torlan


Half Life 2 and Portal
It was a while since I've played HL2. It was fun playing it. Now you can play it all over again but with the twist - use portal gun. Of course, it was not designed or intended by Valve to be played like that but it is possible. Exact steps are available on PrimoTech's web site. If you don't know what to expect check it out, there are screen shots but no videos for now.