"Unreal Tournament 3" is one of those games.

It's an amazingly fun first-person shooter. It looks good - but there's a nagging feeling that it could look better with "a few minor upgrades." It plays well - but the idea that you could spend "a few dollars" to improve your system's performance will claw at you until your bank account is dangerously low.

They (I hate "they") say that software drives the hardware industry. This is most evident in PC gaming, most obvious at this time of year.

And you'll want the best out of your "UT3" experience. It's a game that deserves to look good, play well.

You'll play traditional deathmatch and capture-the-flag games as you learn the ropes: which guns are the best, what the secondary firing modes do for each weapon, the layouts of each arena, the best strategies for capturing enemy flags while defending yours. There are so many ins and outs, you could spend weeks just practicing in single-player mode before ever taking your game online.

My favorite game type so far is Warfare. It involves a two-pronged attack against your enemies - and looking out for the same from them. The first part of a good strategy involves taking a power orb to a primary power node, usually in the center of the arena, or "map." Warfare is almost like football (or soccer, or basketball) in that you're trying to get the ball (orb) to the goal (node). Once you do so, your team owns the node and must keep the other team from getting their orb to it.

Here's the trick part. Once you control the primary power node, the other team's power core becomes exposed back at their base. Your base and the enemy base are usually on opposite sides of the map. To win a match, you have to make your way to the enemy base and blast the enemy power core until it explodes. You have to do this while maintaining control of the primary power node.

Throw in some cool variables such as hoverboards, teleport guns, tanks, movable turrets, single-person flying machines, boots that let you jump insanely high and helmets that keep you from getting one-shot by snipers and you've got ... well, you've got a lot to think about, a lot to deal with during online multiplayer mode.

We're just scratching the surface here. Computer-controlled enemies are smart, but not nearly as unpredictable as characters controlled by other players. If you don't believe me, try the vehicular capture-the-flag mode where you see some truly innovative strategies developed on the fly.

Be sure to check the system requirements to see if your machine can run the game. As I mentioned, "UT3" is one of those titles that seems to be made for driving the hardware market. Recommended specs call for a dual-core processor, but my old Pentium IV runs it well enough, although the cinematics did cause the game to crash until I found a quick and easy solution on the Epic Games forums.

Still, like a lot of PC games that seem to strategically debut during the holidays (and right before tax-return season), "UT3" is making me think that it could look and run better "if only." It's that "if only" part that gets me every time, and before I know it, I've spent several hundred bucks on upgrades I don't really need.

So go ahead and get the game. Install it, see if it runs. But be prepared for the temptation to tweak and spend, spend and tweak until your system is a monster gaming machine that runs the game just a little bit better. Or, you could completely avoid the hassle and just play the PlayStation version, which runs smoothly out of the box.