Unreal Tournament III

It's good, I wouldn't say great. It doesn't really follow the precedent that the previous games set. Rather than a story mode following your player being in a tournament setting, with matches and a ladder to climb from win to win, the story mode follows a security group from a mining planet which has just been attacked. Seeing most of his family and friends killed by the Necris, our main character Reaper vows to get his revenge. He joins his crew up with the military defense which is being manned by Tournament Champ Malcom. Despite Malcom being non-military, he was obviously the best choice. Various companies have replaces governments, the Liandri mining company, the Izinagi research company, and the Axon robotics company being the big three; and each has had a hand in the Tournaments, and a staple of those tournaments have been the development of re-spawners, making battlefield death a thing of the past. Re-spawners have changed the face of warfare, and no one knows 'spawners like a Tournament champ: Malcom.

The rest of the campaign about the military operations being undertaken by Ronin, the group put together by Reaper. Some are objective bases, such as warfare where you have to take out the enemies power core, or Capture the FLaG. While other ops are simple death match oriented. All of the operations take place on enclosed maps of various sizes, the biggest being equivalent to a square mile or so.

This brings me to my point: this game should've just continued on with the Unreal franchise rather than be placed with the Tournament franchise. In Unreal 2: The Awakening, it was much like UT3 minus the death match. You played a character with a military history who was now basically an intergalactic police officer who investigates little skirmishes and problems here and there. His story opens up into much more, with greater missions and objectives, and in that respect the two are very much the same. Rather than be Unreal Tournament 3, just be Unreal 3: The Invasion or something, and give the missions real objectives.

The end however does open up for the possibility of a decent sequel, that perhaps could be a stand alone Unreal game. Let's hope Epic Games sees this, and improves upon where they've already gone.