Awesome game, for both single/co-op/multi-players alike, easy to rack up over 100 hours with this game.
O.K., let's get to it here. The Black Edition includes for free off of Steam the Titan Pack expansion, it's a new mutator and is simply awesome, also includes a new vehicle (Stealthbender), new deployables, new weapons, new characters, new AI enhancements, UI improvements, network performance, MOD support, 57 Steam Achievements, server/browser enhancements, new maplist system and "plus mid-game mutator & gametype voting functionality to the PC". Those are nice additions -especially for Free. Also included in Steams free Titan Pack are 16 environments which are 4 Warfare, 3CTF, 6 DeathMatch, 3V-CTF, (new to both PC &ps3), 3 bonus pack maps Face (CTF), Searchlight (CTF), & Morbias (DeathMatch), of course also the Titan mutator but you can go one step further and be a Behemoth for a limited time, you can remain as a Titan for unlimited time but can't carry a flag if playing CTF/VCTF. There are also Greed & Betrayal gametypes, so on and so forth, there's more but I'd be here all day, take my word for it, it's awesome, but even more so because it's free.
Anyhow, UT3Black Edition is a treasured game for me, because as a Single Player, I and the people like me have not been left out, I can play Death Match, Team Death Match, Capture the Flag, Vehicle-CTF, Greed, Betrayal, -all the others too with the exception of online mp. Single Players simply choose Instant Action in the menu, select whichever mode they want to play, say, CTF for example, you can populate the game with the bots, either choosing specific ones or can be done randomly(*to be clear, the bots are automatic and in game, they DON'T have to be downloaded and other tinkering to use like Team Fortress2), start the game, and boom- you're playing CTF against the computer!- instead of obnoxious kids online, rage quitters, foul-mouthed, irritating people, the list goes on endlessly unfortunately but with a game like this, you don't have to put up with it! If you're like me with friends that many play other platforms or maybe the same but busy with kids/odd hour jobs, or simply just prefer playing against the computer, this game is for you. There is a traditional Single Player Campaign in it as well as these other modes. A game like Team Fortress2, you can play bots, but you have to screw around with files/commands/downloads, & that's o.k. for some people, but UT3/Black Edition is ready out of the box, no tinkering required, just select and play. You can ignore your team, or you can select some to defend or attack or to cover you or 'drop the flag' but you'd have to be a pansy to do that!, etc. It has depth but doesn't penalize you if you don't want to use it, it's not like Mass Effect where you have other characters to control, it's not forced on you. People play SP for a reason, anything additional should be an option in that mode (when I want to control others, I play a strategy game, I don't want to deal with that in a sp-rpg- referencing Mass Effect/PC, not to mention it's annoying, unnatural UI- but I digress). You can also populate a map with more players than it is intended for which is a big plus to me. On a map that says 4-10, I can put say, 15-20 if I want, that makes things more intense, on larger maps you can add up to 30. I like this feature a lot and is why I prefer this game over UT2004 which I installed for a short time then uninstalled, the graphics were lesser than 'this version of UT3' and the game felt so empty, I could capture the flag and only end up seeing maybe an enemy or two in some cases because there were so few preset amount of players in the map (and no option to change like UT3Black- that I noticed and I did hunt for it), felt very boring when I was used to the intensity of UT3Black where I'd grab the flag and a lot of people were after me and was more rewarding when I succeeded too. There are over 60 maps with interesting, even beautiful & ominous locations. (There are also editor tools too). The game has never crashed or locked up on me, runs smooth, it's an older game but the graphics are easy to tolerate, I run it on Vista32/24" flat panel/ QX9770 quad extreme o/c to 3.8GHz./2x nVidia GTX 280's. There are videos on Steam and gs for a peek at the graphics, though they look better on a better system.*I recently downloaded this game on my new PC as well, & it runs fine on {Alienware-Area 51} Win7/64bit, i7-930, 2x nVidia GTX460's, 6GB RAM, TB SATA2 Hard drive, realtekHD/CreativeSoundBlaster,24" flat panel monitor 1920x1080.
Bottomline, it's a great game, at a steal of a price, loaded with features and variety, something for everyone, whatever your playstyle. I wish there were more games like this that went out of their way to make everyone (sp/co-op/mp) happy. It's a 10 all the way, standing the test of time.