The Scoreboard #14

Unreal Tournament III

After long delay, Unreal Tournament III’s Achievements have finally arrived. Unfortunately, as long as you’ve been aching for Epic’s latest (hyper-gorgeous) FPS, it’s going to take about as long to earn the Gamerscore. With outrageous online requirements and a campaign so full of repetitious objectives that it becomes physically draining, it’s a miracle that we dig the game’s unlockables so much.

Best Achievement: Hat trick (20 pts.) Achieve a Hat Trick in 10 CTF or VCTF matches. – Getting a hat trick – that’s 3 goals in a row, for all you non hockey buffs – is gratifying stuff. Wrapping up a single player match having scored all three of your team’s flag captures feels great, so pulling it off online against other humans is immensely fulfilling. Rocking it ten times is, uh, ten times as immensely fulfilling.

Worst Achievement: Get a life… (50 pts.) Get 200 kills in multiplayer on 50 different days. – The solution to this Achievement is easy; it’s the concept that we hate. It isn’t clear, but the reality is this: on 50 different days, you need to get 200 kills. That’s 200 kills per day for 50 days. For those keeping score, this is one more for the worst Achievement ever column: Score 10,000 kills. We loathe the idea of this, as we’ve made evident in just about every edition of The Scoreboard to date, but we’ll humor you with the “quick” and dirty way to hit this goal: Avoid playing close to midnight, since that’ll change the day before you may hit 200 kills for your day; each day you play Unreal, roll multiplayer matches with the bots set to baby-mode, and load up a smaller map with ‘em; pick out your favorite weapon and lay waste to the suckers. In exchange for this tip, you hereafter agree to put up with our whiny-cry-baby attitude toward 10,000-kill Achievements. Forever.

Runner Up: Don’t taze me bro (10 pts.) Get the "Combo King" award in 10 matches. – Awarded for its poor choice of Internet meme. Shame on whoever named this for not changing “Get a life...” to “Over 9000!”

Easiest Achievement: Lock and Load (10 pts.) Completed Chapter 1. – There’s nothing easier than playing a Deathmatch, and since all you’ve got to do is beat one of those to unlock this sucker, wrapping up Chapter 1 is cake. It’s also simple as pie, and a hefty amount of other savory food metaphors explaining its ease. Bring a friend in for some co-op if you aren’t comfortable taking on the AI on alone, since if either of you win the first free-for-all, it’s an Achievement in both your pockets.

Hardest Achievement: Fear the Reaper (60 pts.) Defeat Akasha and complete the campaign in Insane. – Unreal Tournament III consists of 41 absolutely gruelling missions. Some are simpler than others, but when you take in to consideration that the standard bots are smart and challenging, swapping rockets with the Insane AI is an exercise in futility for anyone who isn’t Zeus. We stopped playing Insane after the first mission, and enjoyed the rest of the game’s challenge on Normal.

Time Investment vs. Payoff: 2 (out of 10) – Having to win 500 ranked matches, rack up a set amount of kills for each weapon, complete incredibly specific objectives ten or more times, and, you guessed it, offing 10,000 dudes, is pure insanity. The “Get a life...” Achievement is just a portion of the time you’ll need to dedicate to UTIII to garner a healthy amount of Gamerscore. Even if you flip the campaign on co-op (on insane) you’re bound to be disappointed with the payoff.

Overall: 8 (out of ten) – Being an online-centric game, it’s only appropriate that you spend so much time in multiplayer. While the time required to dip in to the points is substantial, the Achievements are still fun to earn. It’s satisfying when you wrap a chapter, and it’s such a fast paced shooter that each kill feels like an accomplishment. Wasting the online masses with green goop and dismembering them with the flak cannon is rad in itself... And with points earned slowly over time, it’s a good romp.

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