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UT3 beta demo out now News

PC News by Robert Purchese

15 October, 2007

Epic Games and Midway have popped an open beta demo for Unreal Tournament 3 on the Internet.

Mark Rein revealed that it was on the way last week, although it arrives slightly ahead of his "two weeks" prediction.

The place to get your hands on it is over on FilePlanet - as redirected from the official website - where you will have to register for a free account and then sit in a queue about 30 minutes long before you can begin your download.

It is likely numerous other download locations will spring up soon, though, so feel free to offer a friendly link in our comments section below.

Currently the open beta demo is only available to Windows users, and will give you all a chance to test out a couple of maps and then leave your feedback for Epic Games so it can make a more polished end product - like a shoe.

Head over to the Unreal Tournament 3 official forums to see what everyone is saying, and for solutions to some teething errors and optimisation queries.

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Comments: 1-29 of 29 in total

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RickHard
15/10/07 @ 10:27
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Correct. I have been playing it last night :)

I got it from Gamespot (though it was a very s.l.o.w. download !)

Otherwise, it plays nicely in singleplayer but it was impossible for me to get the multiplayer (online) play running.

I think this was because you need to register on fileplanet first (which was not required on Gamespot).

btw : it looks awesome and plays even better :)
miiiguel
15/10/07 @ 10:27
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Who cares about UT, when you have Halo ?
DDevil
15/10/07 @ 10:28
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I got it from a German site that UncleLou linked to in the forums. It's a very pretty game. Runs with a nice solid framerate on my PC as well which I'm very pleased with.
Dizzy
15/10/07 @ 10:31
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Been playing it last few days... a bit meh sadly. I expected something great and they gave me a remake of a 1990s game.

With Halo 3, TF2 and CoD4 competing with UT is a bit shit really. IMHO ofc.
Edited 2 times, most recently on 15/10/07 @ 11:34
UncleLou
15/10/07 @ 10:35
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Plays very slick, but I don't like the graphical look. Less the kitsch heavy metal style, than technically. Washed out and grey.
Commodore75
15/10/07 @ 10:44
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Just a friendly sugestion,

If you have a Nvidia card, and are having problems running the demo (I would Crash to Desktop before beeing able to start a game), go download the latest drivers from nvidia.com
I did, and it solved my problems. No CtD since then.
spiny
15/10/07 @ 10:46
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@UncleLou : Turn your effects level up from "default" to "insane" (iirc) the difference is marked.

I think it'll be a great game for LANs but dosen't seem to have the fun factor of ETQW or TF2.
jack_klugman
15/10/07 @ 11:09
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I've been spoilt by Team Fortress. Unreal Tournament 3 looks painfully ugly. A weekend of deathmatch spent in beefy space marine neon gloom hell has left me, curiously, cold. Runs nicely on my two year old PC though, surprisingly.
JediMasterMalik
15/10/07 @ 11:09
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Doesn't look as good graphically as I was hoping, still, if it runs this well on my machine, I may not need that upgrade I was pondering.
dsmx
15/10/07 @ 11:17
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Or instead of doing all that you could go to the pirate bay and download it....
FooAtari
15/10/07 @ 11:28
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I think its looks pretty good and runs very smoothly on my machine.

Surely we don't want all games looking and playing the same? I think the dark, gloomy style suits Unreal Tournament.

And for me, UT, like Quake is about fast paced, action packed deathmatch, and in that no other game is as good. Never understood the appeal of Halo mutiplayer and CS/TF2 are team based games. Unreal Tournament does what it sets out to do pretty well IMO and I think ill be picking it up.
Bertie [staff]
15/10/07 @ 11:33
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I've just had a bash and it is still as fun as ever. Doesn't look great in 800x600, mind you. Appeal for a new computer from supportive readers?

/runs
mcwildcard
15/10/07 @ 11:38
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It's worth noting that the textures only go up to Medium in the demo, no matter how far you put the slider up, so the retail will look even better.
Plus the demo is only DX9, so theoretically DX10 should make it look better still!
jack_klugman
15/10/07 @ 11:54
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Egster - The art style is cluttered and busy. Its a dark and unattractive game. But, obviously, it serves its purpose of demonstrating the core technology. But where Valve have pushed an art style which attempts to aid the player and maximise visual communication, Epic have clearly gone for pushing polys and the like.
projectmayhem
15/10/07 @ 11:57
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@miiiguel: Quite the opposite I'd say. Halo was a stop-gap for me until UT3 arrived. Even the demo has given me more enjoyment then Halo. No annoying 12 year olds, more fun guns... looks nicer!

Vivid
15/10/07 @ 12:05
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I'm with Projectmayhem on this one. I really enjoyed the single-player game in Halo 3 and I've enjoyed playing co-op even more but matchmaking is teh suck. Far too high an arsehole:decent human being ratio and weapons that lack any physical presence.

UT3 runs beautifully on my year old PC at 1920x1200 so I shall be buying this bad boy at launch. I'll also be trading in Halo 3 to pay for it. Judging from the Beta, the next game I'm going to be playing obsessively on Xbox LIVE will be Call of Duty 4.
Kon
15/10/07 @ 12:42
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login_name
15/10/07 @ 13:21
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"Been playing it last few days... a bit meh sadly. I expected something great and they gave me a remake of a 1990s game."

Didn't stop you enjoying Halo 3 ;)

TF2 is my current online fps of choice but I do like the UT games. Sometimes you just can't beat good ol' fashioned fast paced action.
UncleLou
15/10/07 @ 13:21
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@UncleLou : Turn your effects level up from "default" to "insane" (iirc) the difference is marked.

I did that, I've got a pretty up to date PC- I think I have a general problem with the UE3 engine, I just don't particularly like the way it looks most of the time.
Dizzy
15/10/07 @ 13:41
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>Didn't stop you enjoying Halo 3 ;)

Hehe.. nice try.

Halo 3 multiplayer is way beyond what UT offers *if* you don't like Deathmatch style games. My remark was that deathmatch is definitely 1990s style and I do understand that a lot of people still enjoy it. I am more of a fan of the realistic one shot kills (CoD), the class team play (TF2) and the perfectly balanced objective / vehicle game (Halo 3). As you can see on my H2/H3 service record, I never play the DM type lists ;)
login_name
15/10/07 @ 14:41
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Admittedly they've removed a lot of the different game types in the new one, something I'm not happy about, but they still have the good ol' CTF (now with new and improved vehicles) and the new Onslaught style game Warfare. So it's not just deathmatch, it never has been.

I do wish they would have left Assault, Domination and Bombing Run alone but I'll save my gripes until after I've played Warfare.
Edited 1 times, most recently on 16/10/07 @ 10:22
foamy
15/10/07 @ 14:51
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I'm playing this in 1280x1024 with a X800GTO. Congratulations to the game engineers for making such a good game engine.
miiiguel
15/10/07 @ 15:03
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projectmayhem: I either play "Team Slayer" with friends (avoiding the high-pitch noisy crew) or "Lone Wolf" without the headseat. Anyways, what I really, really like in Halo is the campaign and its derivatives (I'm finding "Meta-Games" very challenging).
sharpfish
15/10/07 @ 15:32
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Plays great and runs great.

Remember kids the 'beta' demo only has medium res textures in - full game will look better! (Epic Dev said this on their forums).

Also, yes on a decent rig it looks very nice.

Turn of bloom in a .ini file, set post pro to 'vivid' and enable AA by renaming to 'bioshock.exe' and setting in drivers (GF8 only AFAIK) (there's a post about this on their forums)

Do all that at it's one of the nicest looking games around though by no means revolutionary but still very nice. And it plays great as I said.
Cheapshot
15/10/07 @ 15:32
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Why is this running so well on my meagre hardware? 0_0 The Unreal 3 engine is bloody fantastic!
stonedben
15/10/07 @ 18:18
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olllllllld!
Vandrius
16/10/07 @ 03:40
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TF2 FTW.

Don't think I'll be moving on anytime soon.
TedMoseby
16/10/07 @ 09:32
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Very surprised at how fast this ran on my old laptop (Radeon X700 graphics) - yes it wasn't at great detail etc., and was only at 1200x800 resolution, but for a fast paced game like this, it was fine.

Unfortunately, I didn't feel as if it brought anything new to the table from UT2004, and in fact, to me, it looks worse, stylistically. Gone are the clinical, nice arenas, replaced by the oh so fashionable half destroyed, run-down areas similar to Gears of Over-rated Wars. Admittedly, this was only from the 2 maps I tried, but I get the impression that that's the tone of this new version anyway - especially with the menus trying to be all gritty and bloody as well.

If anything, it'll make me reinstall UT2004 - I certainly don't feel the need to go out and buy this version...
Barkotron
16/10/07 @ 11:41
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Re: variety/art direction: Come on - there's what, 3, 4 maps in the beta demo? How many maps shipped with 2k3/2k4? There was a fairly wide variety of location then, I can't imagine that there's not going to be with this one as well.

It plays just right - graphical update of the earlier ones is pretty much all that was needed, and it seems to be pretty much all we've got. The hoverboard is a nice addition though. Not completely convinced about using vehicles in CTF, but I'm looking forward to seeing the warfare mode.

Hurrah, my near 2-year-old pre-order stays on pre-order...

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