Team Deathmatch
Capture the flag
Duel – A one versus one game mode. It uses a queuing system: the winner stays, and the loser goes back to the end of the queue. A typical match lasts fifteen minutes with the winner being the player with most kills.
Warfare – A mix of Onslaught and Assault game modes. While basic game rules are equal to those of Onslaught, Warfare adds countdown nodes (which, after being captured and defended for a certain period of time, create a vehicle or trigger an event helpful to the capturing team) as well as the orb, which can be used to instantly capture and defend nodes.
Vehicle Capture the Flag – Capture the Flag, with vehicles as part of the map; this game mode is distinct from the standard Capture the Flag mode. Also, players are given a hoverboard rather than a translocator.
Betrayal – This game type places freelance players on teams, and when the members of each team kill enemies, the pot for that team grows. Anybody on a team with a pot can betray the rest of the team by shooting them, thus taking the pot, but they must defend themselves from the betrayed teammates for 30 seconds after that, or the teammates receive extra points.
Greed – Greed is a game that (like the UT2004 mod of the same name) focuses on collecting skulls dropped from dead players and capturing them in the opposing team's base. For Greed, the game uses all Capture the Flag and Vehicle Capture the Flag maps.
Modes not returning from the prior Unreal Tournament games include Invasion, Mutant (having been later on partially replaced by the Titan mutator in the UT3 Titan Pack), Onslaught (replaced by Warfare), Bombing Run, Last Man Standing, Domination, and Double Domination. Assault was removed from the game during production.
In this installment of Unreal Tournament, the vehicles are split into two factions, the Axon vehicles and Necris vehicles. The Axon vehicles are the same vehicles from Unreal Tournament 2004, but several have significant game play changes. In addition, on vehicle maps every player is equipped with a personal hover board, a skateboard-like device that allows players to quickly traverse large maps and grapple onto other teammates' vehicles. The hover board is very vulnerable to attack, and any hit will knock the player off the board and disable him or her for several seconds, leaving the player exposed and vulnerable. The player cannot use any weapons while on the board.
Plot
Unlike the prior Unreal Tournament games, the single-player campaign does not follow a plot based around the Tournament Grand Championship, and therefore several of the teams within Unreal Tournament 3 are not Tournament competitors. The five playable factions are: Iron Guard, a team of human mercenaries led by former Tournament champion Malcolm; the Ronin, a band of four survivors of a Skaarj attack on a human colony; Liandri, a series of advanced humanoid robots custom-built or retrofitted for combat; the Krall, a warlike race of aliens formerly under the leadership of the Skaarj, returning from their initial appearance in the original Unreal; and the Necris, warriors who have undergone the process of the same name, making them stronger at the expense of replacing their biological processes with "Nanoblack", effectively turning them into undead soldiers (hence the name, Necris). In the Campaign, players control members of the Ronin, and the Necris serve as the chief antagonists.
In the game's story a Necris attack occurs on a colony on unknown planet, releasing armed Krall on the humans. The colony is defenseless, but a group of Ronins arrives on the scene, defending the survivors. Reaper, the group's leader, advises his second-in-command warrior Othello and his sister Jester to destroy the orbital Necris blockade with a fighter, and orders team's sniper expert, Bishop, to provide cover as he swarms to save the colony. Suddenly, he is caught in the explosion of an incoming rocket missile and passes out, but not before seeing an unknown Necris woman shooting a soldier next to him. Reaper is rescued by Othello and Jester and wakes up in the base of the Izanagi, a guerrilla force that fights against Necris and Axon, and he meets with the leader, revealed to be Malcolm, who also leads the Iron Guard as the Izanagi's army. He explains that the Necris attack was masterminded by Liandri, who also turn some of the Krall, into Necris, controlled undead soldiers. The unknown woman who Reaper saw turns out to be Akasha, the Necris operative who destroyed the colony and also leads the Necris forces. Reaper wants to kill her, but Malcolm tells him that he needs to prove himself first.
