I have been following the coverage and I am ridiculously stoked for this.

Can't wait! I'll be going PC on this.

I think I might for 360 for this, unless Gumbie sends me that damned video card.

Cool, thanks for the heads up!

I am downloading the demo as we speak, I can't wait for it

looks like such a great game

Wait. This is coming out in November? Oh sweet mother of god I've never been so overwhelmed of games in my life.

EDIT: It comes out the same week as Mass Effect, Rock Band and Kane & Lynch. Damnit! I'm sure I'll be finished with Crysis, Assassin's Creed, SimCity Societies, Blacksite: Area 51, and Super Mario Galaxy from the previous week by then.

Jesus. Nobody gets to complain about the summer drought next year. In my best case scenario, I'll have over two dozen titles to get around to.

I can't help but be disappointed. My UT has been consolized (well at least somewhat). It doesn't look any better than gears of war. Not that gears looks bad at all, but I would think a game coming out this much later and on the PC would look quite a bit better than gears. The options menu is straight off the ps3. You have to login using a crappy gamespyID. The server browser is a horrible gamespy creation. Hell it even lets you know which servers allow keyboard and mouse(this on the pc version). I know this is the future of gaming with crossplatform development, but i can't help but hold on to the past.

Wow. They killed everything that made UT an excellent user experience on the PC. This went from a rental to a don't even bother for me.

*The server browser can not edit filters on the fly anymore. It uses the Gears of War one where you pick what gametype and then finds the servers. No longer can you look at all game types.
*Looks like servers can't do multiple game types in the map rotation. Just like Gears of War.
*There is no longer a full view of all keyboard commands but instead a scrolling list.
*The UI is huge. Just like Oblivion, it looks like they didn't even bother to make a PC interface.
*You must login with gamespy to play the game. Just like BF2, and BF2142.
*The Hellbender is a useless vehicle.
*Pew pew. The weapons sound and look like a bad SNL skit on Laser Cats.
*Voice acting; I don't remember it being this bad.
*It's pretty
*It runs silky smooth at a rock solid 60 FPS in window mode.
*No more changing advanced graphic settings. The only 4 options are screen percentage, texture detail, world detail, and v-sync. That's it.
*No dedicated server software! Everyone and their mother is running a server with one person on it and a ping of over 109. This isn't xbox live for gods sake.
*The same game types that have already been done to death. DM, Team DM, Duel (1 vs 1 DM), and Vehicle CTF.
*Everyone glows their team colors. Blue players look like smurfs, Red players look like used tampons.
*Ping are no longer shown on the score board.

The game does not include a uninstaller. I have to sit in line another half hour and download the whole demo again in the hopes that running the demo setup will allow me to uninstall it.

I'm really digging it, but I just played a few bot matches so I can't comment on the online experience.

A few impressions:

*Looks absolutely gorgeous and runs smoothly.
*Bot AI is dramatically improved in VCTF mode. Average skill bots are actually worthy opponents. Even at that level they coordinate well, flank and generally keep the pressure on. Allies call out enemy positions and actually make themselves useful. It's a startling contrast to UT2k4.
*Hoverboards are much cooler than I expected them to be.
*I really like the way they tweaked the vehicles, particularly the Hellbender. In UT2k4 the driver couldn't fire a weapon. The shock turret isn't anything to write home about but it's better than nothing. And that Darkwalker--holy f*ck it's awesome.
*I hate Gamespy.

In regards to some of Edwin's complaints:

Voice acting and sound design are pretty good compared to UT2k4 in my opinion. I don't think they're bad, exactly, they just suffer in comparison to, say, TF2 which obviously has stellar production values and doesn't take itself quite so seriously.

I think there is also an option somewhere in the main menu for a reduced UI. Edit: just checked, and it allows you to removed some elements of the HUD but it's not as customizable as it could be.

The glowing models are weird, but it's apparently to address complaints about visibility in earlier builds of the game. Maybe there will be a way to tweak it in the full game.

This is a 'must buy' for me, but I'm a UT fanboy so take that with a grain of salt.

I'm pretty lukewarm on the graphical style they've used - very Gears-y. I've always been partial to UT's vibrant, colorful scale, but now the players are all the same color and everything else looks like, well, Gears.

I definitely want to see some finished product and spend some time experimenting with the visual filters. It's the "Gears glow" and general muted color palette that I'm meh-ing about, so hopefully the end product has some jazzed up levels and the ability to shut off the filters.

The gameplay itself is pretty true to form, with all the speed and general movement style I'm looking for in a traditional PC shooter.

I actually like how the game looks in the screenshots. I expected it to have the same "queer eye for level designer guy" look as the previous UT games, or possibly push it even further, but it looks like they're going in the much-needed opposite direction.

I think that might be indicative of one of the bigger issues (maybe? I guess it's subjective) with UT3. They've created a level of complexity and washed it out with post processing to the point that they're basically required to do this, otherwise I'd imagine that players would simply disappear into the environments. I think this is an issue a lot of "next gen" titles are struggling with, and while their solution is interesting, it's pretty odd looking.

I just tried it and the graphics look like they are stuck on a 800*600 resolution. I have it set to 1024*720 but it looks like I am playing Quake 2. Any thoughts on this?

To Podunk: Where did you find the Dark Walker? I have not played too much yet, but I don't seem to be able to find a map where you can pilot one of those bad boys.