Unreal Tournament 3

[Neeyik]

The Unreal Tournament monster crashes and smashes onwards: sporting Epic's latest Unreal Engine 3.0 for the coding work, and a bundle of new and old features, the twitching frag fest is back with a bang. However, the competition in this area is now mightily fierce, so is the old dog really packing new tricks or is the emperor just wearing a new set of trainers?

http://www.yougamers.com/reviews/148..._tournament_3/

[Babinnes]

Looks like most of the screens are taken with post processing set to Intense instead of default. It gives overexposed explosions , skies etc. Makes it look worse than it actually is.

[Shock_Hunter]

Gameplay and Audio comments are fair but graphics should be higher, you gave gears of war 96% for graphics and UT3 looks as good or better at least and only gets 88%.

[Neeyik]

The graphics score for UT3 is invariably capped by the excessive use of bloom, repetition from Gears of War and the overall art direction (which just isn't as good as in GoW). Scores and ratings are, of course, subjective, and even after editing, two reviewers will always have different views on a point.

[Shock_Hunter]

Originally Posted by Neeyik

The graphics score for UT3 is invariably capped by the excessive use of bloom, repetition from Gears of War and the overall art direction (which just isn't as good as in GoW). Scores and ratings are, of course, subjective, and even after editing, two reviewers will always have different views on a point.

Don't think it's fair to mark one game down but not the other for the same issue, neither do I think the art direction in GoW is better but as you said it depends on the reviewers personnal preference I guess.

Probably because I played the 360 version but I found the level design/art direction in GoW repeated quite allot and looks samey throughout.

[Jarnis]

This is mostly a case of reviewer taste, but not entirely.

In my opinion UT3 didn't quite deserve 90+ graphics score, because it was too "gears of war"-y, and the overall art direction had some issues.

So what about art direction? Sometimes the whole game looks so uniformly polished that you could be fooled to think that the whole art for the game was done by a single person (Something that is impossible these days - it's always a team of artists, sometimes hundreds of artists).

When you have a team of artists working to create a game that looks consistent, art director (or "art team lead") is the guy whose job is to ensure that everyone puts out art that matches all the other art done for the game - both in style and quality.

In the case of UT3, the overall art and level design varies from level to level - the art director / art team lead approved the stuff his team put out - or he had no choice but to approve it because the schedule didn't allow re-dos. In any case, while individual levels, characters and effects are very good - some as good as Gears of War, overall Gears "stayed together" better than UT3.

And that translates "sub-90 for graphics" in my books. UT3 is still a good game that looks very fine - but it has it's (small) flaws. We don't hand out 95+ scores like candy here at YouGamers.

[Shock_Hunter]

But your still marking it down because it's "was too "gears of war-y", they should be treated as individual games, that would be like marking a game based on the source engine down purely because it's to "source" engine-y"

Anyway both games look very similar, I prefer UT3 as the models I think are better and I prefer having different design themes across the maps then just one solid visual theme, I just think it's inconsistent for the scores of two games using the same engine and visual style to not get similar scores

[Link316]

Originally Posted by Shock_Hunter

But your still marking it down because it's "was too "gears of war-y", they should be treated as individual games, that would be like marking a game based on the source engine down purely because it's to "source" engine-y"

Anyway both games look very similar, I prefer UT3 as the models I think are better and I prefer having different design themes across the maps then just one solid visual theme, I just think it's inconsistent for the scores of two games using the same engine and visual style to not get similar scores

I gotta agree with this

and how about performance on certain machines? I've heard that UT3 runs pretty well on many setups including mine which is 3500+ 1GB ram, X1950pro 512mb. My Machine is far from a super machine, and the game runs well at max details without AA or AF

at least the demo did but that has lower res textures. Even with the low res textures id say its on par with GOW.

GOW being a console port id suspect it not playing as well on lower end setups isn't this calculated in the score?

[Neeyik]

Originally Posted by Shock_Hunter

But your still marking it down because it's "was too "gears of war-y", they should be treated as individual games, that would be like marking a game based on the source engine down purely because it's to "source" engine-y"

Anyway both games look very similar, I prefer UT3 as the models I think are better and I prefer having different design themes across the maps then just one solid visual theme, I just think it's inconsistent for the scores of two games using the same engine and visual style to not get similar scores

It's not the same thing - had Gears of War and UT3 been created by different developers, then your point would have merit. However, Epic had over a year to work on UT3 after releasing GoW, so they cannot achieve the same value for graphics.

Also note your choice of terms "I think... I found... looks as good as" - in essence, if you had reviewed both titles, then you would have given them the same score in the graphics department, which is, of course, perfectly acceptable; everyone is free to have their own opinions on such a matter. However, when it comes to YG reviews, at the end of the day, the scores are ultimately my decision - I ratify, and sometimes adjust, what the reviewers think and in the of UT3, it's my professional opinion that the overall graphics rating is just not as good as Gears of War for Windows. Lots of other people will disagree with such a choice, as do you, but that's the nature of subjective reviewing.

Originally Posted by Link316

GOW being a console port id suspect it not playing as well on lower end setups isn't this calculated in the score?

Such matters are accounted for in the Technology score.

[Shock_Hunter]

Originally Posted by Neeyik

It's not the same thing - had Gears of War and UT3 been created by different developers, then your point would have merit. However, Epic had over a year to work on UT3 after releasing GoW, so they cannot achieve the same value for graphics.

I don't really see why they should make the games look radically different or why they get marked down because GoW was released first, both games look equally impressive at least and that isn’t being represented in the scores.