TGS '07: Unreal Tournament III PS3 Pre-Show Update

TOKYO--Epic veep and all-around spokesman Mark Rein was on hand tonight at Sony's pre-Tokyo Game Show preview event at the company's headquarters to show off a recent build of Unreal Tournament III for the PlayStation 3, and also to talk about the future of the game's development on the platform. Production is indeed proceeding apace, and the game is still roughly on track to be released on the PS3 in November, in accordance with Epic's previous statements--although those guys can always fall back on their favored-developer status and play the "when it's done" card if they need more time.

However, the build we tried seemed quite solid, so we don't anticipate any major delays (in our own infinite game-development wisdom, naturally). Aside from a few texture-loading bugs and other prerelease quibbles, the game was running at a smooth frame rate and was quite playable in standard deathmatch against bots on a couple of the game's rather attractive maps. Rein reiterated the game's minor Sixaxis motion controls, which let you steer the default hoverboard vehicle by tilting the controller. The same controls also let you steer the redeemer supermissile after you launch it. Luckily, you won't be shoehorned into using the Sixaxis for anything you don't want to do.

In all truth, reams have already been written about Unreal Tournament III's enormous amount of gameplay modes, vehicles, weapons, and so on. You know that Epic likes to cram these games full, and Rein told us he's more interested in espousing how similar the PS3 game is to its PC big brother than spending time talking about unique PS3 features (of which there are few). But the most interesting thing to us was the confirmation that mod makers will be able to distribute the mods they make for the PC version to PS3 users as well. (You have to fill up that hard drive somehow.) There won't be any arbitrary limit on what modders can do on the PS3; as long as the mod or level or what-have-you can fit into the PS3's memory, it's pretty much fair game. How you'll actually access and play that sort of user-created content hasn't been announced yet, so look for details to surface soon on that, the release date, and anything else Epic has up its sleeve.