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Built, as it is, on the same Unreal 3 Engine as Gears of War and Bioshock it's hardly surprising that the first thing to cross my mind upon jumping into a quick deathmatch is ‘Wow! That looks awesome' swiftly followed by a series of various profanities as I realised the cadaver cart-wheeling across my screen was mine. Even though this build of the game is only a couple of weeks older than the demo it feels a lot smoother and more polished. I was also able to glean from Mark that although the game doesn't itself support anti-aliasing, nVidia has managed to produce tweaked drivers which will enable it and ATI is expected to do the same.

Mark also explained that as much work has gone into getting the game to run on low-end computers as well as ensuring it looks awesome on high-end systems. "It's easy to make a game look great on a really powerful computer. Getting that same game to run on an older system is the challenge and with UT3 we've managed to get it working on PCs that were around when 2K3 came out. No, it isn't going to look fantastic but you can upgrade your hardware to get a better experience if that's what you want to do, or just enjoy the game."

One of the other (potentially) big additions to UT3 is PhysX support. Initially we were under the impression that the extra physics would make their way into the main game, but recently we've ascertained that PhysX support will be through a series of extra levels. We quizzed mark on this decision.

"We decided not to include PhysX in the main game quite simply because we're targeting a mainstream audience and they don't have physics cards. Don't get me wrong, what Ageia is doing is great, I mean have any of you seen the tornado level videos? Right well that is really fun and it really affects gameplay: you've got all these bits of crap flying around being ripped up and stuff; it's pretty cool. Okay, so it isn't the best looking UT3 level but it means that those people who have a PhysX card get a little something extra."

Of course there's more to Unreal Tournament than just great graphics and if we're going to be persuaded to replace Team Fortress 2 in our after-work frag-fests we need some decent gameplay as well. Fortunately, Epic Games and Midway haven't disappointed. Despite everything from weapons to the characters having taken a hefty dose of steroids and bulked up to crazy sizes, all-for-all deathmatches are still as fast-paced and adrenaline pumping as ever, while capture the flag is still just as hectic.

In fact, UT3 feels much closer to the original game than 2K3 and 2K4. Small changes such as disposing of the Shield Gun and Assault Rifle while bringing back the Impact Hammer and Enforcer (yes, you can dual wield them) bring combatants closer together while desperately hunting around for a bigger weapon. Adrenaline power ups have also been cut, meaning no more Invisibility or Health Regeneration gimmicks spoiling the play.

That isn't to say that there aren't any new additions to the UT universe, far from it. For a start, this version of UT has the vague semblance of a story line with cinematic cut-scenes a main character (bearing more than a passing resemblance to Gears of War's Marcus Fenix) and an alien race called the Necris - they're hell-bent on the destruction of the human race. What more could you want? Well, you're still basically playing one arena fight after another, but the movies are as slick as those in Gears and from the short time I had to play, the story seems compelling enough. I'll have to get my hands on the full game to be sure, but I think the single player campaign could be worth one run through, even though we all know multiplayer is where it's at.

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