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IGN recently posted a preview of Epic Games' eagerly awaited Unreal Tournament 3. The preview features comments from Epic's Mark Rein and a handful of screenshots. The latest entry in the Unreal Tournament first person shooter series, the game will feature the fast paced multiplayer action fans of the series have come to expect in addition to a campaign mode for fans of single player games.

The other major introduction in Unreal Tournament III is a single-player storyline, complete with cut-scenes that are worthy of the silver screen, and all sorts of self-aware and amusing retconned justifications of some of the game's foibles (such as characters having conversations about respawn technology, for example). Essentially, though, Rein sees the single-player campaign as a glorified tutorial for the game. "It teaches you all the different modes, introduces all the different weapons, all the different styles of gameplay, and has the bots tell you a little bit about what's going on," he says. "And we give you a fun, cool little fiction that hopefully people will buy into."

It also gives you new vehicles, including the alien Necris models (such as the Super Monkey Ball-style Scavenger). "We've also got the best set of weapons we've ever had," continues Rein. "We've improved the AI even more, and we've added this new Warfare game type, that kind of combines Assault and Onslaught."

To judge from the launch event, however, the game's strongest suit remains the sense of balance, which Rein attributes to the strength of the game engine. "This game was up and running from day one," he says. "That's the beautiful thing about having an engine like Unreal Engine 3. So that's really your job: while you're building new content to also balance the gameplay, through the placement of weapons and ammo, and AI and through the game types and rules and things of that nature. Somebody was complaining that they could bring down vehicles with a Stinger, but the amount of ammo it takes to bring down one vehicle will pretty much deplete your Stinger. So there's your balancing. I think our level designers and game designers have done an exceptional job this time round - every map, and there's over 40 in the game, has been loved and it shows."

IGN: Unreal Tournament 3 Preview

Epic Games (add to watch list)

Unreal Tournament 3 (add to watch list)

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