As a fan of the series I absolutely ate every piece of information, screenshot and video up leading into the games release. The hype levels were through the roof.

Sadly the game itself didn't deliver on my lofty expectations.
I dunno how to put it but it just didn't really look right, even though some things looked really cool.
The Story was very meh, should have just sticked with the tournament setting.

Felt like it lost a lot of charm versus the older ones. But maybe I just needed to play it more.

Console sequel to the absolute classic PC online multiplayer shooter, UT3 had big boots to fill and of course it couldn't really manage to fill them, at least in it's present state. As with the nature of these reviews, playing it in 2024 with the multiplayer totally dead can be really detrimental to some of the more online focused games. Know I don't know if the chaos of capture the flag on Facing Worlds was recreated with this release, but even as a single player game it's not a complete disaster. For a start, they have kept consistent with the original games, which is probably for the best. Playing the campaign, albeit against bots, is a similar feel to the multiplayer of the original games. It's a super fast paced FPS with the same fun weapons, great controls and fun maps. The guns are all useful in different situations, with second functions adding to the tactical diversity. The bots are fine, obviously not as good as real players, but they do the job. I was quite surprised that the campaign is just a selection of multiplayer styles fights against bots. This decision for the campaign to be basically the multiplayer is a good and a bad one. While it highlights the best aspects of the game, it doesn't really feel like a campaign. The same effect could have been achieved with an offline mode for multiplayer games with bots, and then a separate real campaign with a story would have been appreciated. With that in mind, UT3 is fun to play, but it's not really something I would recommend picking up nowadays and in it's current form is a very average game at best.

Fun single player campaign, story is completely pointless but the missions themselves are pretty fun and challenging

The graphics haven't aged well, I'd argue it looks worse than the previous games in the series. Everything is some kind of brown and some maps are kinda unplayable because of it, the worst map being Coret. Weapons look cool as hell tho, just wish it didnt go for the gritty look that every FPS game did around the time this came out.

I dont know if the online is still played but this game was forgotten pretty fast, you're better off getting UT '99 or UT 2004 than this.