Unreal Tournament 3 review

If only the bots understood it. They were never strategic masters at Onslaught in UT2004, but they were passable. Here they have a shakier grasp of those basics, and almost no understanding of what to do with the Orb. Time and time again they cart it off to some irrelevant, unlinked control point in Uzbekistan while you die holding off overwhelming forces at the important one, or watch with idle curiosity as an enemy bot waltzes into your most critical point and captures it without hindrance.

If the bots just left the Orb alone, we’d be happy to perform all the heroics. But they always snatch it, sometimes even spawn-camping it to prevent you from getting it first, and then squander the most important piece of the strategic game. There’s no way to command them to drop it or give it to you or not take it in the first place.

It’s not a huge problem in custom matches against the AI - what UT calls Instant Action mode. But in the Campaign, when you’re always outnumbered, your few allies are exasperatingly incapable of doing anything right.