Playstation 3 devotees have reason to be excited. Nearly seven months after an Unreal Tournament 2007 mini-demo was debuted at E3, game developer Midway has confirmed that is game is being developed for the Sony next-generation console. PlayStation Magazine’s January 2006 edition has also eagerly announced that the popular first-person shooter series will be playable on the PS3.

Unreal Tournament 2007 is built on the innovative Unreal Engine 3 complete game development framework designed for next-generation consoles. The graphics for the game have been seriously upgraded since Unreal 2004, the last release in the Unreal Tournament game series. As part of the upgrade, the game will utilize the facial animation software FaceFX to develop nearly true-to-life characters and facial expressions.

Initial previews of the game have likened it to a more ‘old school’ style of shooter gameplay where players are more grounded. Recent UT releases have seen characters catapulting and tumbling through the air virtually nonstop, leaving players to wonder when their opponents would come back down to earth (and where they would land) so that they could direct a well-aimed shot or two in their direction. New and lesser skilled players were often forced to adopt a “point and pray� strategy: place yourself in a reasonably well-protected corner of the arena, point your character’s weapon outward, and just pray that some unsuspecting soul landed right in front of the barrel of your gun. Unreal Tournament 2007 does away with this and attempts to take some of the “floatiness� out of the game to make it more realistic. In this new release, gameplay will be slower and players will have much more of an opportunity to getting in close to opponents. Jumps won’t be nearly as high and haywire. Dodges will also be much more controlled.

Graphically, the game is anticipated to be everything a gamer could hope for in a next-generation software. Game designers have released a number of stunning screenshots, and have made it their goal to develop maps that are more like full environments than just levels. And some of the game concepts are truly amazing. For example, according to an interview with one of UT 2007’s Lead Designers, there is a level in development that involved two separate nodes that need to be connected by a single energy beam. Teams can interact extensively with the environment to achieve this goal, as well as block their opponents from solving the level. In the example given, one team can set off an avalanche of boulders to block the beam and buy them time, forcing the opposing team to use up their arsenal of grenades and rockets to smash through the imposing rocks. Sounds like fun!

From everything we have seen so far, Unreal Tournament 2007 promises to be a very welcome addition to the Playstation 3 game lineup. The game is currently slated for a Spring 2006 release date.

You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Add to Del.icio.us