Epic Games has leveraged the power of its Unreal Engine 3 into some of the most popular games on the market today. Now that engine has been married with PLAYSTATION®3's cell processor to bring Unreal Tournament 3 to virtual life.

"We're proud of what we've been able to accomplish thus far on PLAYSTATION®3," said Mark Rein, Vice President, Epic Games. "At E3 we had a really expensive, top-of-the-line, PC sitting right beside the PLAYSTATION®3 with both running Unreal Tournament 3. Few people could spot any significant differences between them, which is amazing considering you could probably buy four or five PS3's for the price of that PC. To me, that's a great indication of how powerful the PLAYSTATION®3 is."

Rein said the most impressive thing about the team’s work on Unreal Tournament 3 for PLAYSTATION®3 is that the console has not significantly impacted the original vision for the game.

"We've been able to bring our grand vision for the third generation Unreal Tournament to PLAYSTATION®3 without having to make many sacrifices," said Rein. "That might sound odd but Unreal Tournament has a long history of being a cutting-edge title that pushes hard on technological boundaries on PCs, so being able to bring it to PLAYSTATION®3 and have it turn out so well is very exciting for us. We think that gamers are going to be extremely impressed that UT3 is a title that shows off the power of their PLAYSTATION®3."

"In the past we've shipped our Unreal Engine tools with the PC versions of Unreal Tournament and players have used these tools to create a huge number of modifications (mods) to the game that range from simple adjustments to weapons and gameplay all the way to whole new types of games," said Rein. "Those mods have been available for download freely over the Internet and have extended the life, and value, of the game. With Unreal Tournament 3 on PLAYSTATION®3, we brought that model to home consoles for the first time. If the past is any indication, we think UT3 players on PS3™ are going to be in for a treat."

The ability for PS3 gamers to have access to user-created mods goes beyond anything yet seen on any next generation console.

"Our mods aren't just rearranging the deck chairs on a ship," said Rein. "Our mods are about building your own stuff. Any content you see in the game--vehicles, weapons, new particle systems, new maps, new scripts--users can stream them together and do all kinds of cool things."

PLAYSTATION®3 gamers will also get the first full story in an Unreal Tournament game. According to Jeff Morris, Producer of Unreal Tournament 3, the single player experience has players stepping into the boots of a mercenary team leader who leads a diverse team of soldiers on an epic journey.

"The story focuses on a team of hardened mercenaries exacting revenge against those who obliterated your home colony," said Morris. "You start out on the Planet Taryd, but before your quest for vengeance is over you’ll have carved a path across the Unreal universe. Both the protagonist and his team have distinct personalities that come across in both non-interactive cinematics as well as during the gameplay, itself."

Morris said the events in this new game take place before the time period of Unreal Tournament 2004. While the story will offer a nice bonus, this first-person shooter franchise has always been about the good, old-fashioned action.

"Unreal Tournament 3 is the ultimate prescription to Tactical Shooter Fatigue (TSF)," said Morris. "Our targeting reticules don’t expand when you move. You're just as accurate with your weapon back flipping of a building as you are crouched in a corner. We don't have spawn queues, so when you die you're instantly back in the action. Our focus and goal has always been hyper-fast action and over-the-top carnage, something we think PLAYSTATION®3 owners will find as addicting as PC gamers have over the last decade."

Epic has been designing an arsenal of new weapons and vehicles for its latest Unreal adventure. Morris said something the team is very proud of is the new Necris vehicle set.

"These vehicles embody what we tried to do with our vehicle teams, namely equal but different," said Morris. "We wanted the Necris main battle tank to have all the tank like qualities you normally associate with tanks, namely heavily armed and armored, but slow. The Necris Darkwalker fulfills these roles, but is about as different as you can be. Being a walker vehicle, it can crouch for instance, and is an excellent climber. Things that the treaded Axon main battle tank, the Goliath, would struggle with."

These new toys of destruction will play a large role in the online multiplayer combat on PLAYSTATION®Network. Epic has created a brand new multiplayer mode for this game, which is called Warfare. It combines all of the fast vehicle action of Unreal Tournament 2004’s Onslaught mode with the narrative format that Assault used.

"The maps are large, open spaces that allow players to demonstrate their on-foot skills as well as their piloting prowess," said Morris. "We use a node system for focusing the combat and at any one time there will be only a few areas where you can complete objectives."

On the battlefield, every soldier carries a hoverboard that he can hop on to speed to another area—assuming he doesn’t have access to vehicles like the stealth Nightshade, the spider-like Scavenger or the Viper hovercraft. With all of these items at one’s disposal, Morris said gamers are in for a truly engaging shooter experience that should stand out from the crowd.