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With the introduction of the Necris threat in the single player side of the game, we also see some new vehicles on the multiplayer front. The foremost of these is the DarkWalker a hulking great laser-firing tripod reminiscent of War of the Worlds, while other vehicles are pretty much just Necris equivalents of Human counterparts. Both Necris and Humans will find themselves with a new personal transport method, the Hoverboard. It makes for a great speedy transport across large areas but leaves you exposed as you can't fire a weapon and any hit will send you tumbling to the floor stunned for a short while - in other words an easy target. All in all, the vehicle-based game modes build on the great foundations laid by UT2K4 and as long as some possible balancing issues are rectified by launch, I think Quake Wars and Battlefield may have a new contender for their vehicular combat loving fanbase.

Unreal Tournament III isn't just coming to the PC though; the PlayStation 3 will also find its Blu-ray drive graced with copies of the game. Mark explained the reason an Xbox 360 version wouldn't be coming at the same time. "An important pat of UT is all the mods and extra content you can download to enhance the game. Sony came to us and said PlayStation 3 is an open system and so we thought great, lets challenge that claim. So with the PS3 you can browse the web, grab new maps and mods for UT and so on. Xbox, on the other hand, is a closed system, so you can't do all that. An Xbox 360 version is definitely coming but we're going to have to talk to Microsoft about how it works."

Mark also talked about six-axis on the PS3. "We kept the use of motion control to a minimum so you have it when you're steering the Redeemer and on the Hoverboard because, I don't know about you, but when I use those I'm ducking and weaving around on my chair, waving the controller about anyway. If I play for a while using six-axis it starts to feel natural, but if I leave it for a few days and come back it's like I'm learning all over again. By default it's turned off anyway, so you can have a play around and see if you like it and turn it of if not. We're not going to force people to use it if they don't want to."

The other burning question when it comes to the console version is whether or not there would be crossplay between PC and PS3 players. " The main reason we don't allow crossplay is because we don't want to compromise on either the console or PC version. We've made tweaks to get each game just right so the two are completely different. The PS3 game is a bit slower; the fire rates are a bit different. If you allow console and PC players to mix we have to then decide what do we change? Do we speed the game up for the console players or slow the game down for our very loyal, very vocal, PC audience? In the end we decided that we would just make the best game possible for each system."

" Of course we do still have a level of interaction between the two platforms, so for example if someone makes a kick-ass mod for the PC game then we can say, well lets recode that for the PS3. PlayStation Network is great for that, because we can flag up content and say, hey this is a great mod that lots of people liked so check it out. There is also the possibility of charging for some of this. A lot of mods are almost like full games themselves and if we can chuck them up on PSN for six bucks when it might cost you 60 in the shop then you're getting a pretty great deal right?"

Having managed to grab five minutes play on the PS3 version, I have to agree with Mark that it has been pretty well optimised for the console. The PS3 even offers keyboard and mouse support for the game so if you consider the kind of PC you'd need it play it at full graphics it's definitely a tempting proposition. Ultimately though, UT belongs on the PC and if what I saw was anything to go by you may find the number of articles we publish dropping off after the 23rd when the game hits the shops. I, for one, cannot wait.

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