Unreal Tournament III

There’s an old saying, ‘familiarity breeds contempt’, and it’s never more obvious than when you’re looking at the latest model of your favourite consumer franchise. Whether it’s a new Mobile phone, an MP3 player, or just the latest model of the Ferrari there’s one question you always ask; what’s changed? Well, the second you start looking at Unreal Tournament 3, the fourth instalment of the UT series (no, we don’t understand it either - ed) you’ll be hard pressed to answer. It sounds and looks better than ever; running on the same engine as Gears of War, with exactly the same kind of roaring battles happening, dirt, blood and debris flying round in the explosions aplenty. But there’s an unnerving feeling that you aren’t actually playing a new game. Epic have succeeded in creating a perfect clone of their earlier games just with better graphics and a few new vehicles added into the fray. So it plays exactly like you’d expect, even as you’d hope it would, but is that enough? To confuse things even more, the single player mode has chucked out the Tournament concept in favour of a hackneyed ‘aliens killed my family’ type revenge story which never makes much sense. If you’re desperate to get some classic UT action then it’s a good enough game, and this later release on the 360 means that ALL of the extra add-ons are included here, but long-time fans might just find there isn’t enough new here to make it work forking out the cash. [Graeme Strachan]