The same great Unreal Tournament gameplay is intact and the game has great potential, but all in all is pretty basic...
STORY - You play as a guy named Reaper (his parents have strange ideas about what a good name is), a cliche bada** soldier with no personality, who, together with a whole bunch cliche bada** soldiers with no personality, must stop a cliche alien invasion force. So, you get the point, it's all extremely forgettable.
GAMEPLAY - As always, Unreal Tournament 3 has singleplayer, and multiplayer modes. And as always, avoid the singleplayer at all costs.
Not only does the singleplayer have a horrible story mode that isn't interesting in any way, but it also drags on forever. But, for those of you who might be interested, you can jump into you regular Instant Action against some bots, or do the campaign mode, in which you go to different preset battles. But, the singleplayer aspect of the game should really only be used as a tutorial, or for some target practice, if you buy this game expecting a great singleplayer experience, you'd be horribly wrong.
But, thankfully, the multiplayer is great, if a bit basic. The same Unreal Tournament gameplay is back, but it seems that the action in this one is much more fast-paced and frantic. A few new great additions are the hoverboard, which you can access at any time, and the new Warfare mode, which mixes Assault and Onslaught together. But, what's unfortunate about this Warfare mode is that it completely replaces Assault and Onslaught, which were two of the best gametypes in the series' history. My other gripe is that the game only supports 16 players, exactly half of what Unreal Tournament 2004 supported. But, going back to the positives, this game has great maps, and are either perfectly symmetrical or just amazingly cool (for example, one map features 4 or 5 COMPLETELY different enviornments, with different texture pallets that you can warp in-between) and the new Necris vehicles are sweet.
As always, avoid the singleplayer, but the online is pretty great, though it has been dumbed down from Unreal Tournament 2004's multiplayer.
GRAPHICS - This game has amazing graphics, and for the first time proves that the Unreal 3 engine can feature environments beyond just gritty inner-cities, but lush jungles, countryside, snowy environments, etc. And the game maintains a great frame-rate (maybe 60 FPS) and never slows down. One thing that I didn't like (or just perhaps don't like about the Unreal 3 engine as a whole) is that bump-mapping, and normal-mapping is way overused, and you'll rarely see a texture or model that's not covered with them.
SOUND - The game's sound is pretty forgettable however. The music is pretty lame, the sound effects repeat a lot (though they are pretty good quality), and the voice-overs are bad (I even noticed that the announcer was much less dramatic here.) But, the sound quality is good enough to make this department fair overall.
VALUE - The multiplayer could last you a long time, and the game's value is increased even more thanks to Epic finding a way to bring user-created mods to the PS3, so expect lots of free maps, game modes, models and gameplay mutators coming your way in the near future.
TILT - Overall, Unreal Tournament 3 is good, but is pretty basic. The singleplayer is awful, but the multiplayer is awesome, but a couple great game modes have been taken out (though the new maps and vehicles are cool) and the sound department is pretty mediocre. But, the graphics are superb, and thanks to mods, you could, potentially, be playing this game for a long time. Overall, Unreal Tournament 3 is worth it if you are a fan of the series, or a fan of shooters looking for a game with a great online component.