Why no thread on the game itself yet?
Had a hard time choosing between this and Gears of War, but now I'm glad I made the right choice. This is the first UT game I've bought, so everything is completely new to me. First thing that amazed me was the graphics. I don't know what the hell the naysayers are thinking, because this is easily the most beautiful game I've ever played. I only have my graphics sliders set to 4 and I think the game stomps everything else visually. The indoors and smaller maps (most of the maps I've played so far) look awesome in particular and run better too. Nearly all the maps are visually dynamic, with stuff happening in the environment that even affect gameplay at times.
However, the larger maps look slightly less awesome. Because of the large size they'll have less detail, and also when you look at landscapes and structures from a distance they'll get noticeably blurred and "washed out". I'd say a good example is the Suspense VCTF map people saw in the demo, but keep in mind I've only seen a couple of maps like this and they still look damn good compared to other games.
I don't know which weapons and vehicles are new or which are old, so I'll just talk about what impressed me the most. The weapon models look very good with the self shadowing and other shader effects and texture work, and they also look complex too. Its fun to fire some weapons just to watch the animations and moving parts.
Vehicles look awesome too, but what caught my attention the most were the leg animations for the Necris vehicles. I've never seen vehicles (or anything really) walk like the Darkwalker and Scavenger. They can walk onto practically anything, and the legs believably step and grip onto surfaces at any angle.
My big disappointment though is the menu and interface system. Its really bugged and kinda difficult to navigate through. For instance, only being able to view servers for one gamemode at a time is bad enough without the stupid server browser ignoring your search parameters. Want to view servers that aren't empty, aren't full, and aren't locked? Well too bad, because the server browser gives you a list of all the servers it finds regardless. When I go back to make sure the search parameters are what I wanted, they automatically change back to defaults. Also, in the results menu after a match you can select player's names and click "view details" to invite them to your friends list or send a message and all that kinda stuff... supposedly. The game doesn't care what player you select before you hit "view details", it just gives you the details on a random player every time. There's a few other bugs I won't explain, but basically the menu system is practically broken.
Aside from that though, I haven't really seen any major bugs in-game. The only big problem I've had is that when I tried to start a campaign, the cinematics would freeze and crash. A quick visit to the Epic forums solved that though, all I had to do was edit the games .ini file and it was fixed.
Had a hard time choosing between this and Gears of War, but now I'm glad I made the right choice. This is the first UT game I've bought, so everything is completely new to me. First thing that amazed me was the graphics. I don't know what the hell the naysayers are thinking, because this is easily the most beautiful game I've ever played. I only have my graphics sliders set to 4 and I think the game stomps everything else visually. The indoors and smaller maps (most of the maps I've played so far) look awesome in particular and run better too. Nearly all the maps are visually dynamic, with stuff happening in the environment that even affect gameplay at times.
However, the larger maps look slightly less awesome. Because of the large size they'll have less detail, and also when you look at landscapes and structures from a distance they'll get noticeably blurred and "washed out". I'd say a good example is the Suspense VCTF map people saw in the demo, but keep in mind I've only seen a couple of maps like this and they still look damn good compared to other games.
I don't know which weapons and vehicles are new or which are old, so I'll just talk about what impressed me the most. The weapon models look very good with the self shadowing and other shader effects and texture work, and they also look complex too. Its fun to fire some weapons just to watch the animations and moving parts.
Vehicles look awesome too, but what caught my attention the most were the leg animations for the Necris vehicles. I've never seen vehicles (or anything really) walk like the Darkwalker and Scavenger. They can walk onto practically anything, and the legs believably step and grip onto surfaces at any angle.
My big disappointment though is the menu and interface system. Its really bugged and kinda difficult to navigate through. For instance, only being able to view servers for one gamemode at a time is bad enough without the stupid server browser ignoring your search parameters. Want to view servers that aren't empty, aren't full, and aren't locked? Well too bad, because the server browser gives you a list of all the servers it finds regardless. When I go back to make sure the search parameters are what I wanted, they automatically change back to defaults. Also, in the results menu after a match you can select player's names and click "view details" to invite them to your friends list or send a message and all that kinda stuff... supposedly. The game doesn't care what player you select before you hit "view details", it just gives you the details on a random player every time. There's a few other bugs I won't explain, but basically the menu system is practically broken.
Aside from that though, I haven't really seen any major bugs in-game. The only big problem I've had is that when I tried to start a campaign, the cinematics would freeze and crash. A quick visit to the Epic forums solved that though, all I had to do was edit the games .ini file and it was fixed.
