Unrealer

In the calm, comfy tournament arena that is the Midway behind-closed-doors meeting room, signature character Malcolm narrates some of the new features of Unreal Tournament 2007 with witty banter and side-by side comparisons of past Unreal goodies. Developer Epic Games is unleashing its new “Unreal 3” engine with less bang and more belt sander.
Integrating already-popular voice-chat into the game should make it easier for everyone to coordinate their carnage, and you may even be able to use a voice recognition system to give orders to ‘bots. Fine-tuning old favorites and modifying classics makes your old Unreal Tournament a bland shot of tonic in a martini bar, with trademark weapons tricked-out with massive polygon counts that you’ll be sure to notice. Malcolm will be happy to point this out for you.
A new mode of play will be added, one that Epic calls “A mix between Assault and Onslaught,” technically going by the Conquest moniker. It’s a vehicle-focused, map-controlling team challenge; as you gain more control (or lose it), your objectives and map are altered. The idea of Conquest mode is to direct players to new objectives, like securing resources or gaining closer spawn-in points, and integrate a more refined Onslaught feel. Boasting new integrated in-game matchmaking, it should be easier to find people in your skill range to frag properly.
But all of this newness does have its cost: all of those pretty polygons are going to require some serious hardware. It might be something to write to Malcolm about.

This article originally appeared in Computer Games Magazine #177