More on the Subject of Limited Editions

Abi Titmuss

Unreal Tournament arrived yesterday so I can now add that to the hall of LE fame. It's a step up from the Crysis debacle, with a proper tin box and at least the art book is hard back and not so easy to mistake for the manual. Actually the tin is odd, it's designed to open from both the front and back, and has built in disc spindles on both doors. Epic have decided to fly in the face of practicality and fill half the box with a cardboard spacer so that only the front lid is operational, and provide both discs in paper sleeves (which is arguably preferable to scratch-prone spindles).
Still, it's a little light on the goods for a special edition. A little figurine or some other bonus hardware wouldn't have gone amiss.
A special nod to the EB/Gamestop package that includes "Unreal Anthology", which is basically Unreal 1, Unreal 2, UT:GOTY & Unreal Tournament 2004, plus a soundtrack CD. Not a bad bonus really, even if I probably won't both bother playing any of them.
As for the game, it runs beautifully and much more smoothly than the beta/demo. As I've previously noted it's common to bash big name games these days and many people like to pretend they're some sort of uber-gamers who are too good for the likes of UT3, and that FPSes (or MMOs) were only worthy in the olden days. Well that's bollocks. UT3 is more great visceral UT action, with some nice graphical flourishes and all the high-speed, well-balanced, adrenaline-fueled goodness of the previous installments. So there.
Of course it's not a patch on Crysis visually, but then at least current PCs can actually run UT3 at high detail.