e recently shipped off to Midway’s annual Spring gamers day at the House of Blues in Hollywood, and anticipated a number of game offerings including the latest from NBA Ballers, Mortal Kombat, Spy Hunter, and Rampage.  The game that was most on our minds, however, was Unreal Tournament 2007.  We knew it would be shown in some sort of fashion, and while we liked what we saw at E3 last year, our little taste that awaited us made us froth at the mouth even more.

Epic Vice President Mark Rein and Unreal Tournament 2007 Producer Jeff Morris took the stage to give the crowd a glimpse of what will await eager first person killers when UT 2007 will be released.  Powering the technical demo was another star – a Dell XPS Renegade.  If you thought your rig has some cojones – get ready for this.  The Renegade comes packed with a dual core Pentium 4 Extreme Edition overclocked to 2.26GHz, two 150GB 10,000 RPM Raptor Drives, and most importantly Quad NVidia SLI technology.  Yes, that’s right – Quad SLI.  We’re talking four GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB Cards slammed into this puppy.  We almost forgot about the game for a moment, and wanted to release sleeping gas into the air and swipe this dream PC.  Because God knows there’s no way in hell we’d be able to afford this sucker when it’s released later this Spring.

Call me ugly...I dare you.

Now the duo only said this would be a taste of what we could expect when UT 2007 is released, and while we didn’t see any actual gameplay, there is enough here to make any fan of the series sweat a little bit.  Everything shown was extremely early, and nothing shown was in its final state.

The first level shown was DM Carbon Fire – a deathmatch oriented level.  Rein explained that what they’re trying to achieve with UT 2007 is a science fiction feel grounded in real environments.  Instead of sterile clean environments most of the levels will have gone through what Rein called “Grungification.”  While this may seem like some hippy-crap term for higher textures, basically worlds will feature walls and floors that have scuffs and cracks.  Unlike most futuristic landscapes that are seen in the garden variety futuristic FPSs with so-clean-you-can-eat-off-them surfaces, the worlds in UT 2007 will look like they’ve not only been lived in, but they’re constantly going through battles.

Excuse me, do you have any Grey Pupon?

DM Carbon Fire is set in a Liandri World, a futuristic robot factory.  Peering through glass walls you can see robots being assembled, and overhead robots are being transported via conveyer belts.  Unfortunately, there weren’t any enemies on screen for us to gawk at.  The level was simply chosen to show how detailed environments would be.   The Liandri world had a rotating spinning shield generator going around the planet that left an impressive hazy static effect. 

One of the fan favorite modes in UT 2004 was Onslaught, and we were privy to seeing how two levels were coming along including ONS – Torlan 2 and ONS Down Under.  Onslaught will work much like it did in UT2004 – capture bases that lead up to the power core.  Instead of the Power Core being a tower type object, Epic’s current redesign features an energy beam that’s surrounded by a sphere made up of tiles.  This will make taking down the power core much more of a challenge since you’ll have to destroy enough of the tiles rotating around the sphere to actually shoot the core.  Epic maintains that the power core design is still in concept phase, but I like the change personally, and you’ll actually see visually how much you’ve taken down the power core.  How players on defense will be able to “heal” or “rebuild” the power core is unknown with this design, however.  Rein said they were kicking around an idea that tiles shot out of the sphere would turn around and attack the player.  Cool.

But the most impressive thing, however, is the new design of weaponry in UT 2007.  Epic didn’t unveil the entire arsenal that will be at your disposal, but did say that the company is going for a more realistic approach with armaments.  Instead of a gun just recoiling after a blast, you’ll get to see much of the inner workings of each of the weapons.  You’ll see rockets loaded into chambers in the rocket launcher, or plasma rays coming out of the side of the link gun filling the blaster until it fires.  Alternate fire of the link gun is more of a plasma beam, and the gun actually opens up, making it look like the weapon is making room for this large blast.  The effect is cool and noticeable when focused on, but when you’re facing 15-20 adversaries, it’s doubtful you’ll be looking at this much.

Kick back is a bitch

One aspect of the Rocket Launcher that was revealed was that you’ll now be able to fire one to three rockets in either a spiral configuration or spread mode.  Arrow indicators around your aiming reticule will light up as each chamber of your rocket launcher is filled, so you’ll know when you can launch a barrage of love at your enemies.  The variations on firing should be helpful to throw off your opponents. 

Also, while Morris was scrolling through the different weapons, the Spider Mine Launcher came on screen for just a brief moment.  We’re not exactly sure what this will do but we’re guessing it’s some sort of proximity mine that will stick to walls.  We’re guessing we’ll know more about this weapon come E3 time.

Vehicles were another one of the fun elements added to UT 2004, and we got to see a few of the vehicles that will be part of UT 2007.  If you’re looking for information on new vehicles, we hate to disappoint, but all three of the vehicles shown came from the UT 2004 Bonus Packs including the SPMA, Cicada, and Paladin.  While vehicles have been updated, most of their initial uses seem to be the same.  In the case of the SPMA where you could target elements from a long range, now you’ll be able to control your reticule with the mouse instead of using the keyboard.  All in all, the Cicada – a two person ground assault vehicle that resembles a flying hovercraft - will be the most fun, and should be one of the vehicles of choice in aiding to take apart a power core.  With this new sphere like power core setup it should be interesting to see how a vehicle towering in the sky will have an effect on the battle below, playing back up on offense seems like a major possibility.

The Hellbender, coming soon from Dodge

We were also introduced to a number of the characters that UT 2007 will introduce.  First show was the Twin Souls which Rein hinted that this ratty group in red armor would most likely make up the team in the single player element.  Also introduced was the yellow armored Iron Guard lead by the saucy Lauren.  Polygon counts on each of the characters are 15 times what was possible with UT 2004, and each of these warriors will clock in at a whopping 5-6 million polygons.  It’ll be such a shame to destroy each of these works of art one by one, won’t it?  Nah….

Unfortunately, as we said before, we couldn’t play it.  Everything we were shown was very early – even the HUD was just ported over from UT 2004 for testing sake.  The rig running the game was also running some benchmark program much like Fraps which kept a running framerate meter.  Framerate fluctuated between 25fps and 60fps, and really seemed to struggle with the character models.  You’d think with a ballsy computer like the Dell XPS Renegade it would be able to handle everything, but the code at this point was still pre-alpha and completely a work in progress.  Fortunately, even gamers who have PCs that are able to handle games like Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 shouldn’t be concerned if their computers will have the power to handle it.  Epic has always made the Unreal franchise rather scalable to lesser setups.  Regardless, considering that UT 2007 won’t see a release until early 2007 on PC (the PS3 version will fall much later rumor has it), Epic has plenty of time to make things happen.  While we still don’t know if UT 2007 will be playable at the “big show”, we’re keeping our fingers crossed.