Which brings me to the most awkward facet of this map; vehicles. And not just any vehicles, like a jeep or a tank; A GIANT, WALKING, SPIDER-LOOKING, DEATH MACHINE, that came straight out of "War of the Worlds". Dubbed the "DarkWalker" this massive mech towers over opponents and completely obliterates them with a weapon I can only describe as a "deathray". Though it is limited by it's lack of speed and mobility, this beast manages to make its way through the map pretty well, wiping out other players along the way. Not only that, after a player destroys the walking beast, it drops a Berserk AND a Damage Amp. So after messing around with the new-found toy a little bit, I ask myself; WHAT THE HELL MADE DEVELOPERS THINK THIS WAS A GREAT IDEA? I mean it's pretty fun and all and it hasn't really been done that much, but maybe there's a reason it wasn't. Making its first appearance in a beta, you can be sure to expect more odd kinds of vehicles in more maps when the game releases later.

Overall though, the gameplay over LAN was extremely smooth and the bots were very intelligent, sometimes even managing to catch me off guard with a rocket to the back or landing a Shock Rifle beam from across the map square in the forehead.

Online Play
Now for the part you all have been waiting ever-so-patiently for; how the game faired online. And now is the part where I have to let you all down. As of right now, there really aren't any legitimate servers out there. Most of the servers are people running listen servers on their own machines. At the moment, most people are very concerned with the netcode of the game, claiming that it's "worse than Quake 4." I haven't been able to verify this statement for myself, but this may also be the product of people only playing on non-dedicated servers. Hopefully, if Epic has learned anything from Quake 4, it's to PERFECT the netcode. Not every player has a fiber line, and can ping 30 across the country (like icel0re <3). If the game isn't playable online with decent latency, three-fourths of the possible players will be lost right off the bat.

The Movement
Being a Quake fan, I was worried that UT3 would be slow and clunky. Moving around the map though, the exact opposite is true. The game plays faster than I expected it to, with even the slightest hint of air control. It's not CPM or QuakeWorld, but it's a fair amount faster than UT2K4. The gravity seems to be a good mix; not too "heavy" and not too much like you're in space. Though many of the players are worried that it is too slow, overall, I was very happy with the movement. I also know that, if anything, it will only get faster as the game nears release.

I almost forgot to mention the oh-so important "dodge". The dodge is back for all you die-hard "dodge" fans. It was the same as it was in 2K4; nothing really to report here. It's "dodge"; what more is there to say? In this game, I think the weapons are too fast and too powerful for players to rely on this simple tactic. For instance, it's going to be hard for anyone trying to defend themselves by simply dodging against a STRONGER and
FASTER Shock Rifle combo.

I did find one thing interesting when I was jumping around; there really is no gimmicks to movement. There's no trick or bunnyhop that allows you to gain speed than plain running. Maybe I'm just used to having some kind of skilled movement technique that lets me out-maneuver an opponent, but it's still odd to me that in a competitive shooter, there'd only be walk and run. I've dabbled in some of the other Unreal games, and know that there aren't any in those. I guess I just find it odd that Epic chose to leave out this option in the era of CPM, where precision bunnyhopping is a must and just coming off Quake 4, where for the most part, players only movement was done in crouch sliding.