Unreal Tournament 3's most eye-catching new feature is a two-metre-square block of pink gelatinous wibble that Epic is currently calling the "slow bubble". Once deployed, it slows the pace of anything that passes through it to a crawl. You can fire a rocket into one end and then run round the side and watch it slowly carve through the centre, before resuming its breakneck pace as it exits. More usefully, you can also dump it in a corridor that chokes your enemy's progress and use it like a flytrap, snaring the opposition and then blasting them at will. And, brilliantly, anybody stuck inside also gets to watch your bullets seep towards them at the same gradual pace that prevents them getting out of the way.
"With Warfare, we're combining the best parts of Onslaught and Assault, and including a bunch of cool things we haven't seen before," says Morris. Warfare is a team-based mode that sees bands of players working together to capture nodes on the way to the enemy's power-core. Each Warfare map has a number of nodes, and taking each over can represent the same kind of asymmetric struggle as Assault, while preserving the vehicle-based combat and equipment elements of Onslaught. One of the benefits of this node-based concept is that a large map doesn't become stretched, as individual nodes become points of focus; a sort of "moving battlefront" as Morris puts it.
Individual nodes offer other benefits too. Some are paired with turret-guns, and those suddenly rolling their eyes would do well to centre the view again, because these - if you'll forgive the phrase - are no ordinary turrets. Well, they are, but they're attached to rails. In the example we're shown, a turret can be manoeuvred the whole way around a circular fountain in a town square, giving the defending team a greater range of strategic options.
Individuals can call upon a typically vast and diverse range of weapons too. UT favourites the Impact Hammer, Shock Rifle, Bio Rifle, Flak Cannon, Rocket Launcher, Sniper Rifle and Translocator are in, along with the Redeemer. The AVRiL rocket launcher is also back for smashing up vehicles, as is the Link Gun, which can be used to help speed up the takeover of nodes in Warfare at the obvious expense of peripheral vision and, you know, any form of personal defence.
On PlayStation 3, you'll also be able to use the Sixaxis pad's tilt control to manoeuvre the hoverboard. It's actually one of a few control tweaks aimed at the PS3, where you'll also be able to control the Redeemer's all-powerful secondary-fire mode with Sixaxis, directing the round through the sky and into your opponent's face by tilting. Given the game's close association with platform holder Sony - it's a PS3 and PC "exclusive" for 2007, as if you didn't know - Epic is paying a lot of attention to getting the PS3 version's dual-stick controls right too. "One of the big concerns is that controller is very different to the keyboard and mouse, so we want to make sure we have the best experience possible," Morris begins by explaining, "and one of the ways we've done that is to have the Gears of War team working day and night to get these controls up to what we would want."
However that does work out, one area of the PC-PS3 relationship they are happy to focus on is graphical. Epic has PC and PS3 builds sat a foot from one another at E3, and they're keen to draw the action to the exact same sections to emphasise the similarity. Building on Gears' terrific levels of detail, the Unreal Engine 3 purrs happily under the bonnet of its home-game, with levels full of crumbling bridges, smashed trains, branches gently swaying in the breeze, and a palette of deep purples, browns and greys bored together with the same textural seamlessness we were quick to praise in Halo 3.
Look out for more on Epic's ambitious FPS in the months to come. It's definitely worth keeping an eye on.
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I have only played one Unreal game, and that was the first one, Unreal Tournament. What can I say about it? Well, other than the fact that it is well dated now, it is cracking fun.
Playstation 3 owners have been looking for a long time now for a game close to Gears of War, and who better to make it than the creators of Gears itself. The reason though, that I have placed this in the PC Gaming section is that truly, deep down, Unreal Tournament has always been a hardcore PC shooter, whether or not that's about to change, who can know?
What can we expect from UT3? Arcadey, but enthralling single-player mode; sinfully beautiful High Definition visuals running on the incredible new DirectX10; and an unmatched online play mode.
PC and PS3 owners should get themselves excited for this, because there's going to be a tournament, an unreal one.
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