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After reading all the positive comments in the Epic forums about UT3 on the PS3 from PC owners, I decided to dive head first into UT3. I could ramble on about how gorgeous it is because yes, it is. I also could ramble on how excellent it is to play UT with surround sound because yes, it is. You can read that on Gamespot, that’s not why you’re here.

The initial install process is immediate and quick, it seems there are 251 individual files that can be installed directly onto your PS3′s hard drive. The install that occurs the first time you boot it up drops 50 of these files on your hard drive. It takes about 15 seconds.

The Beginning:

That isn’t the final option for install, however. You can also option to have the game, “fully installed” on your PS3 hard drive. The option to fully install the game is hidden at the bottom of the immensely customizable options menu. Once selected, after about three and a half minutes, approximately 3.5gig of your drive will be filled with UT3. Rest assured, you’re still required to have the disc in the drive to play the game (I didn’t check, I’ll give Epic the benefit of the doubt).

I should also note that with this installation, the load times are spectacular. Normally around 5 or 6 seconds to fire up a level. My experience with UT2004 on PC couldn’t hold a candle to a five second level load.

Control settings can be completely re-mapped for both the controller and keyboard/mouse. This might be necessary for the SIXAXIS controls, because I have found that Epic’s button layout doesn’t feel the best for me. Certain abilities, like Jump, are mapped to the “X” button as well as “L3″. I’d much rather have voice chat bound to “L3″ instead of it’s native, “D-Pad Right”. Thankfully, full customization is available in the main menu but not mid-game.

Unfortunately, the token controller “templates” aren’t available in UT3. I expected an “expert” setting or possibly something defaulted for lefty players, but no such luck. This seems like something that could be added in a future patch and while experienced gamers probably won’t care, I could see this being a struggle for a newbie.

The Middle:

UT3′s offline campaign is exactly what other reviews state it is; maps strewn together against bots with some meaningless dialog between each map. The voice acting isn’t necessarily bad but the content still feels meaningless right from the beginning. The campaign isn’t worthless though, it’s an incredibly successful tutorial, guiding you through all the game types at the beginning of a new level with full verbal explanations of what’s expected of you as well as bots acting things out.

About 6 or so levels in, I had seen enough and jumped into the online multiplayer. Thankfully, the horrid Quick Match isn’t mandatory here. You can easily see a list of all the servers available and use basic filters to to find what you desire. If you’re concerned about a keyboard/mouse advantage, a Keyboard and Mouse filter is also available which can be set to YES, NO or ANY. I found there to be very few keyboard and mouse-only servers available, which is to be expected.

With all the necessary PSN ports forwarded (as all gamers should do), connecting to servers online was a flawless activity for me yesterday. Connections were quick and any server I joined below 100 ping ran without a speck of lag. As far as the engine is considered, I can’t recall one moment where there was even a hint of slowdown whatsoever, even with massive amounts of action on screen. Now that I think of it, I can’t even remember any pop-in at all on these levels either.

There are reports on the Epic forums regarding struggles with voice chat, although I can’t confirm or deny them. I have heard players speaking online but never thought to ask them if they could hear me. I didn’t have much to say yesterday, aside of the occasional, “woo” and, “yeah!”. Mark Rein confirmed these fears on the official forums, explaining that he had experienced it himself:

I had similar problems with voice chat today as well. I heard someone talking in one game but a friend and I tried to chat and we couldn’t hear each other. I’ve passed it along to the dev team to look into. Sorry for the inconvenience.

The Conclusion:

So far, it looks like Epic has done a wonderful job with UT3. While I’m still unsure if I will someday desire 16 on 16 matches online, (currently only 16, just like the PC version when it first launched) it’s incredibly hard to not recommend this to fans of the franchise or anyone looking for an awesome multiplayer experience on their PS3. Knowing that anything we’re seeing now is just the beginning before the mod community sinks their teeth in is comforting but if it all ended here, I have to give it two bloody thumbs up.