unreal-tournament-3 posts

Today marks the fourth birthday of GameTap, the popular PC game subscription-download site. To celebrate the site has added a new game to its premimum monthly subscription tier. It's Unreal Tournament III, the 2007 shooter from Epic Games. The game has full 64-bit support enabled for those of you running such an OS on your PC.

But that's not all. GameTap has also enabled 64-bit support for a number of their games that are already on their service. Even better news is that this weekend a good portion of those games can be played for free. Check out the entire list for yourself to see if there's something that interests you:

Project Snowblind (free this weekend)
Hitman: Contracts (free this weekend)
Tomb Raider: Anniversary (free this weekend)
D.N.A. (free this weekend)
Sacred Gold (free this weekend)
Magic Ball 3 (free this weekend)
Hitman: Blood Money (free this weekend)
Unreal Tournament 2004
Beach Life (free this weekend)
Turtix (free this weekend)
Infernal (free this weekend)
Overlord
Hospital Tycoon
Tomb Raider Legend (free this weekend)

Epic Games has decided to give folks yet another chance to sample their 2007 first person shooter Unreal Tournament 3 for free beginning tomorow on Steam. Folks can download and play the complete version of the game for free until the end of the weekend. In addition the game will also go on sale for 60 percent off its normal Steam price until September 27.

Epic Games will also put the Unreal Deal Pack on sale for 60 percent off during the same time period and the original Unreal Tournament game will be on sale for a mere $1.99 during the sales period. This Thursday marks the 10th anniversary of the release of the demo for Unreal Tournament.

The NVIDIA line of graphics processors are among the most popular (if not the most popular) brand of high-end gaming hardware available today. However, some would argue that these days, graphics cards are offering fewer significant returns with each successive generation. With this in mind, it becomes important for the company to start shifting focus from strictly speed and high resolution frame rates (which are still a very important aspects of PC gaming) to the addressing the gameplay experience itself. One step in this direction was through adopting PhysX technology into its repertoire and having the software run using GPU instead of through a separate card. With PhysX, PC games offer deeper immersion using effects that operate in a realistic non-scripted fashion, like with smoke, cloth and liquids moving in real-time.

NVIDIA's 3D Vision technology takes the game experience even further by bringing games into the third dimension by stereoscoping games in real-time and using special shutter glasses. Unfortunately, not a lot of gamers have $600 to spend on 3D graphics. The glasses alone cost over $100 and the required 3D ready monitors that have a 120Hz refresh rates are very expensive and hard to find, leaving 3D out of the hands of the average consumer. However, NVIDIA has found a way around the prohibitive costs and an easy way to deliver a 3D experience. Not counting the cost of the video card itself, gamers can use NVIDIA 3D Vision Discover for almost nothing... or in some cases, exactly nothing. That's right, by taking the PhysX approach and incorporating 3D technology into the software drivers, PC gamers can literally give their games more depth.

Download the Resident Evil 5 Benchmark

Epic Games continues to look for the best Unreal Tournament 3 mods with their ongoing Make Something Unreal Contest. Today the developer announced the winners of Phase 3 of the contest. The screenshot you see above is from the winning entry in the Best FPS Mod category. The The Ball: Teotl Mod is described as "an adventure that puts you in the boots of a geologist who gets stuck in a cavern and bumps onto an ancient and Mesoamerican complex holding a mysterious ball."

The Best Non-FPS Mod category winner went to The Haunted, a horror themed third person shooter which can be played in both single and multiplayer modes. The contest's official web site has a list of all the Phase 3 winners and their runners-up in all the categories. Phase 4 will begin soon and will be the last that mod teams can enter on their own. After Phase 4 is completed the top 12 mods will be chosen for the final phase of the contest. The Grand Prize winning mod will receive $50,000 and more importantly a full Unreal Engine 3 license.

While Epic Games seems to be taking a long break before making its next Unreal Tournament title, the latest game in the series, Unreal Tournament 3, is in the middle of its Make Something Unreal mod contest where amateurs can win money and prizes for the best mods made with the tools included in the first person shooter.

This week the contest got something of a companion as the International Game Developers Association announced a separate Unreal Tournament 3 level design contest. The contest is co-sponsored by Epic Games and is strictly for IGDA members only (although you can join the organization). Level designers can enter deathmatch, CTF, vCTV and Warfare maps in the contest. The Grand Prize winner gets $50,000 and the entries will also be submitted to the Make Something Unreal contest as well. The deadline for entries is October 5.

Epic Games hit a gold mine with the Xbox 360 action franchise Gears of War but their flagship Unreal Tournament series didn't get as big a reception with the release of Unreal Tournament 3 in 2007. Fans looking for a new UT game anytime soon may not care for what Epic Games co-founder Tim Sweeney said to G4TV in a new video interview.

Sweeney states, "Unreal Tournament is certainly a major long-term priority but we're planning not to release a major retail game in the series for several years. So we have that effort somewhat on hold while we work on a few other initiatives." He did add that Epic plans to continue to support the creation of third party mods for the game. In fact Sweeney says they will announce plans sometime in the future to " . . . open up the engine to more people to use freely and use cool stuff."

For their weekend sales dealie, the Steam PC gaming download service has put a ton of games on sale. Let's get to them:

• The racing games Trials 2 and Monster Trucks Nitro have been put in a bundle and are being sold this weekend for just $4.50, an 85 percent cut in their normal price.
• Also for this weekend only all 15 games from casual game developer MumboJumbo are on sale for 50 percent off. In fact you can download Luxor 2 and 7 Wonders II for just 99 cents.
• Flock, the recent Capcom downloadable game, is on sale for 50 percent off this weekend. A new update has also added 12 Steam achievements to the game.
• From now until June 5 you can get Assassins Creed and Splinter Cell: Double Agent for 50 percent off their normal Steam price.
• The classic super hero RPGs Freedom Force and Freedom Force Vs The Third Reich (developed by Irrational Games before they turned into 2K Boston) are now available on Steam. You can buy either game or both in a bundle for 10 percent off their normal price.
• And remember, Unreal Tournament III can be played for free this weekend and the price of the game and of the Unreal game collection are 50 percent off from now until June 7.

As promised earlier this week Epic Games has launched a new free weekend to play the full version of their 2007 FPS Unreal Tournament III via Steam with all of the recent free extra content included. The free play period will last until Sunday. As with previous free play weekends if you play and like UT3 you can also purchase the game via Steam for a discounted price.

From now until June 7 you can purchase Unreal Tournament III for just $9.99 on Steam. If you want to go all out you can also get the Unreal Pack which contains all of Epic's PC released Unreal games (Unreal Gold, Unreal Tournament, Unreal Tournament 2004, Unreal 2 and UT3) for just $19.99.

Epic Games re-launched Unreal Tournament III for the PC last March with the release of the new Titan Pack that added tons of new maps along with new weapons and gameplay modes to the first person shooter. Today Epic announced that they were making the full version of Unreal Tournament III available to play for free yet again.

The free play, via Valve's Steam service, will begin on Thursday, May 28 and you can go ahead and pre-load the full version now before the free play period begins. Again this version of the game (which Epic calls Unreal Tournament III Black) contains the original game and the contents of the new Titan Pack.

This patch for Unreal Tournament 3 addresses a number of game issues. Patch includes all fixes from previous updates. Continue reading after the jump for patch notes. Steam customers are encouraged to use the auto-updater to patch their game.

Download Unreal Tournament 3 Patch 5 (327 MB)
Check out all Unreal Tournament 3 downloads