My first real taste of an intense online FPS was Unreal Championship (Xbox). The fast-paced, gory, double-jump, instagib CTF goodness kept me on the edge of my chair (err, bed) for countless nights of pure pwnage. As mentioned on my FD profile, I stayed up for 72 hours straight when it released. I later transferred my passion for this game over to Unreal Tournament 2004, where most of my previous clan mates (FUA) nested for the last few months of our journey. For the past two years, I’ve wanted to rewind time and replay all the clan matches and scrims from back in the day. The memories of Unreal are in fact unreal now.

But there was a glimpse of hope when, one day, my email flashed a new message! FilePlanet announces that UT3 (Unreal Tournament 3) beta for PC is available for download? Why the heck don’t I have an account with FilePlanet? So I pulled out my newly activated credit card (*ph43r*), bought a one-year subscription, and started my download. Pretty soon, or so I thought, I would be playing amongst the ranks of other UT addicts like myself.

Well, in case some of you don’t know - my internet AND my wireless network cause me many headaches. Whenever I try to download excessive amounts of information, the whole thing just takes a dump and I have to start all over. This happened at least 4 times during the download process until I launched it in the FilePlanet Download Manager. Finally, after 4 hours, the game is downloaded, installed and ready to play.

I have high expectations for UT3. Being that this series created one of my favorite games of all time (aside from my true love Return to Castle Wolfenstein), I expect nothing less than COMPLETE BEAUTY and total face-slapping pwnage. With only 2 game-types available, and 3 maps, there wasn’t much to judge. Everyone has been giving me random feedback about the game: Some say it’s absolutely amazing and some say it’s just average. A few have stretched to extreme lengths to declare how this game is garbage (they will go nameless for their own safety).

Before I state my opinion, I leave you with this disclosure: This beta is but a speck of a view of what’s to come. This is not the final game, and the beta was put out there to GET more feedback out of us to better the game for the masses. Yes, there are kinks, but speaking solely on the game-play and feel of the engine, THIS GAME ROCKS! It’s using the Unreal Engine 3, the same that’s used in Gears of War and Bioshock. However, I am really looking forward to what they’re doing with the map editor. They’ve made it easier for n00bs like me to create my own realm, test it, script it and play it. We shall see what is to come of this game, but so far so good.