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3 Day UT3 free play on Steam

DrinkLyeAndDie

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Steam is running a special deal where you can basically download and play UT3 for free for 3 days. A good deal, really.

Steam is also selling the Unreal Tournament 3 Black game for 11.99 USD. There is no tax and since it is delivered via download there is also no shipping costs. Compared to my finding the game elsewhere I basically got it for half the cost of physically buying a disc since nowhere locally has or can seem to get the game on DVD.

Apparently the studio has finally released a much awaited update to address many points that people had issues with in UT3. The Black edition apparently contains all the bonus packs including the Titan Pack.

Now, here is where we get to the negative points. You obviously don't own a physical disc or have a physical manual. That bothers me but for the price I can always buy the game later at a lower price in a bargain bin.

What I found more problematic was the download system from Steam and it is a reason I have a negative opinion of Steam and any similar type of game delivery platform. I purchased the game and it took 24 hours for me to actually download it. Granted the download was sizable but I have a 10+ Mbit/s connection and I, at times, was downloading at 10 Kb/s if I was downloading at all.

From looking at the Steam forums it appears many people have had download issues. It seems they don't differentiate between people who bought the game and those using the free 3 day promotion. Hey, I paid money and I want my game. I should be allocated bandwidth to get what I paid for and I should take priority off someone playing for free.

So, one method for resolving the problem for those who have a download issue like myself is to go into your Steam settings and change the region you are in for downloads. Amazingly enough it appears Steam is too stupid to have the client dynamically switch servers between regions when load on certain servers is high. Manually switching from one region to another made my inability to download turn into downloading at 1 Mbit/s. I still had problems and I had to switch between regions numerous times.

The free 3 day event is great but it's worthless if people cannot download UT3 to play it. The 11.99 USD price is also great but greatly annoying if you cannot download the game.

Anyway, if anyone is interested and doesn't already own UT3 then I'd say to check it out.
 
Steam has decided to extend the sale price of UT3 Black through Sunday, March 15th and they are again having a free gameplay just like they did last weekend. It is advised that people begin downloading via the Steam client now so that users get as much time to play for free as possible.

The reason for this extension and allowing free gameplay again is likely a result of some very vocal complaints as to how the promo went this past weekend. Many many people had issues like I did and some never even had a chance to play since they couldn't even download the game. A user conducted poll showed some very negative results toward how Steam handled things and due to how poorly it went this cost them sales, as well, which is not what Steam or Epic wanted to see happen. Considering how disappointing UT3 sales were in the last year and a half and how much work put into the recent update they need to pump life back into the game and they need to generate new sales.

The actual download via the Steam client is 3.9 GB and includes the game, the Version 2 Patch and the Titan Pack.
 
Well, I have the Collectors Edition in the Steelbox and got it on sale at GameStop for about 25 $. It was one of the best games, that I bought last year.

- Great Multiplayer
- Good Singleplayer (Best one from the UT series)
- No stupid Copy Protection
- Game starts immediately
- Great Graphics and Physics (Nvidia Physics Maps)

BurnerHEAD
 
I played the original UT when it came out and was addicted for years. I played it up until UT2003 came out. I then got totally screwed over by Epic when they released UT2004 only months later and didn't offer an upgrade path for the suckers like me who purchased UT2003. I quit playing and vowed to never spend another dime on anything related to Epic. To show just how bad UT2003 was try finding it for sale online. You'll only find it for sale as used from someone who bought it without realizing they were getting screwed back when it was first released. UT2003 was swept under the rug and something that they pretend never happened.

I completely quit playing UT until more recently when I got the Unreal Anthology so that I'd have a replacement disc for my beat up UT CD and it came with the Unreal music CD. I got UT2004 with it and tried it. It's nice looking but it's not UT99 and I wasn't in love with it. I bought UT3 from Steam for 11.99 and I have to say that UT3 v2 definitely has me loving UT all over again. In my opinion UT3 is really the true sequel to UT99 and while UT2004 is okay in its own right it is not what I prefer. Gameplay in UT3 is exactly what I remember from UT99 but you now have far better graphics and other improvements.

After not playing for years I will get back into playing again. Epic by releasing the v2 patch as a free update has sidestepped doing essentially what they did with the UT2003/UT2004 fiasco, IMHO.
 
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Great Post!

But I think you mean the Bonus Pack Number 2 right?
Because we are on Patch 4 right now, which is displayed in the Main Menu as version 2, so you're also right.

But how did they come to call that Version 2?

Just because of 4 Patches and 2 great bonus packs?

Best Regards,
BurnerHEAD
 
Great Post!

But I think you mean the Bonus Pack Number 2 right?
Because we are on Patch 4 right now, which is displayed in the Main Menu as version 2, so you're also right.

But how did they come to call that Version 2?

Just because of 4 Patches and 2 great bonus packs?

Best Regards,
BurnerHEAD

Apparently, it's the Titan Pack that makes the game now be version 2. In the game, itself, you will see that the version shows up as 2 in the menu. Unreal Tournament 3: Black is comprised of all the previous updates plus the recently released Titan Pack. The HUD has gotten a facelift and they have improved and increased Steam integration among many many things. They basically listened to all the complaints from the PC gaming community, it appears, and made the game a more PC-friendly game rather than purely aimed at consoles and then ported to the PC.

For the very lengthy Titan Pack changelog refer here: http://www.fileplanet.com/promotions/unreal-tournament-3/titan-pack/patchNotes.html.

Epic put a tremendous amount of work into this pack and it, obviously, hopes that the update can revive the game and give it new life since the sales when it originally was released were lackluster at best.
 
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