Customer Reviews

Unreal 2: The Awakening

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(31)
3 star:		(35)
2 star:		(34)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

Okay, first of all, I've got to say that I love the graphics in the game, but that is probably its only redeeming quality as far as I'm concerned. I have listed my multiple beefs with Unreal II as follows...
1.) Storyline has nothing to do with the end of the first Unreal.

2.) John Dalton (your character) moves waayyyy too slow. It's almost like he tiptoes his way into battle.

3.) There are only about 8 or 9 levels altogether. The first Unreal had 39 levels (not including the intro and ending sequences).

4.) What happened to the rest of the enemies of Unreal 1? Most of the enemies in Unreal II are human (boring). I want my Krall, my Titan, my SkaarjGunner, my Brute, my Gasbag, my Devilfish, my SkaarjGunner, My SkaarjBerserker, my SkaarjWarrior, my Skaarj....

5.) TOO MUCH BABYSITTING - I hate waiting for other characters in a game while they sit around doing their thing.

6.) There was no "Boss" which took about 70 or 80 rockets to kill, like in the first Unreal. Where's the sense of accomplishment?

7.) Where are my powerups? Why is that such a bad thing?

8.) Why did they even use the name, "Unreal" with this game? So there were a couple of Skaarj from the first game and the dispersion pistol (which cannot be upgraded - bummer) was available. Big deal. There is little resemblance to the original game. I know that the makers of the game wanted Unreal to "evolve" and to give it a different storyline, but they didn't have to ruin the game like this.

9.) You cannot skip the cinematics. Why can't you just hit the mouse button if you don't want to wait for people to finish talking? And why do you have to wait for Aida to take her sweet time to waltz from one computer to another? Why can't you just skip the debriefings altogether? Boy, what action this game has!

Bottom line: If it weren't for the excellent graphics, I wouldn't even give this game 1 star. Here's to all the newest games with all your polygons and polident and whatever else it is that makes great graphics. I think I'll stick to the original Unreal which has been out for almost 6 years now, thank you very much.

as expected, Unreal 2 has some pretty nice graphics and environs. each world is nicely done and filled with ambient wildlife, great lighting, colors, textures, all that stuff.

unfortunately, Unreal 2 is anything but. gameplay is very uninspired and trite. it's more of the same: move linearly from point to point, blow up a few baddies, press a switch, go to another point, get blocked from main route, find some alternate route, kick more butt, ad infinitum. occasionally, you'll need to protect a scientist or fight with a couple of marines, but those moments are rare. the only refreshing feature is the use of turrets and laser shields. a few times, you will need to strategically place them to defend your position from overwhelming enemies. unfortunately, their usefulness is limited and you will find yourself out on the field doing much of the work.

one of the things i enjoyed about this game is weapon selection. sound effects are nicely done and you can feel a noticeable punch when you fire. there's no useless weapons--each weapon is ideal for a given situation and there are two firing modes. you've got a gun that shoots spiders(?); sniper gun with a scope that really zooms up close; grenade launcher with several different types of grenades; powerful shotgun that has an alternate firing mode that blasts your enemies on fire; and finally, my favorite, the ultimate weapon that fires mini-blackholes and sucks in your opponents.

you are taken from mission to mission on different planets in your small space cruiser. this could have been a nice touch, but it's poorly implemented. the ship is merely used as a device for useless briefings and conversations with your three crewpeople that move the story along. like the story, the conversations are linear as well and frequently consist of 1) yes 2) no. there are no conversation chains; just a number for each 'tell me about' subject. much more could have been done with the ship. for instance, it seems as if the whole galaxy is after these relics that you are collecting and (anyone notice?) for some reason the ship is never in any danger while you freely roam the galaxy. some space battles or anything other than the usual FPS faire would have been nice.

watch a few cheesy science fiction movies or games and you'll see where Unreal 2 gets its plot. as suggested earlier, you need to recover all 7 pieces of some ancient powerful artifact. regarding your mission, there's hints of a conspiracy and things are not what they seem. come on! don't insult our intelligence here. hasn't this sci-fi theme been played out enough already?

AI is about the same as in Unreal. player movement is very slow (must be the power armor) and it's hard to dodge the highly accurate fire from your enemies. you spend lots of time running behind cover instead of jumping around and running circles around your opponents.

no multiplayer. these days, this is inexcusable. of course, in the future, they'll probably sell a multi-player add-on for 30 bucks. sigh.

game looks beautiful and runs smoothly at a nice framerate on my mid-high end system (P4 2000, Geforce 4600). though, i've heard some people have had problems with it crashing.

music is not bad, but not memorable either.

finally, the worst thing about this game is that an average player can complete this in 1-2 days. with no multiplayer, there's no replay value other than the next difficulty setting, but what fun is that when the missions are all the same? if you really want this game, you should rent it, wait until it hits the bargain bin or get it through other means.

overall, a true FPS fan will enjoy Unreal 2 for a few days. players who enjoy this genre but are looking for something new or something unreal will be very disappointed; this is just by-the-book FPS.

I will make this fairly short. I liked the first Unreal alot. It was revolutionary for it's time with graphics not seen before... If you had the best hardware to turn everything up. Unreal had great lighting, creepy atmosphere, great view distance, and a multi-layer sky that moved very nicely. Many cool games have come out since with some great ones like 'Return To Castle Wolfenstein.' Now we have Unreal 2 and with the improvements in graphics these days, along with much faster Pc's and Video cards I was hoping for U2 to have the character of the first game. I just didn't see the same character in U2. The graphics are good but, compared to recent games like RTCW or even the latest Unreal Tournament, I didn't like how generic the game looked. Like I said, U1 was quite a step forward when it came out. U2 just seems plain in comparison. Gameplay is pretty good but, there are many other FPS games I enjoyed more. So U2 was OK but, I was a little disappointed

Okay, I had high hopes for this one, but must confess they weren't fulfilled at all.

First off, one should note that Unreal 2 exhausts one's system *MUCH* more so than usual. A current graphics card and proper processor is *really* necessary. Even with a very respectable system and all game options set to "low" or "off", I still had very notable problems with graphics smoothness, etc. Please check system requirements as advertised. Even the "recommended" settings push being insufficient, let alone the "minimal" ones.

Graphics are relatively nice (and the most significant aspect of the game), but really require a cutting-edge system to appreciate them, especially when any fast lighting effects occur (e.g., lasers). Otherwise, a system can be markedly bogged down and the game becomes very frustrating as things become repeatedly choppy.

Overall plot is decently done, but the game is short, things can seem stale and unoriginal, and I repeatedly found myself wishing I'd simply played Serious Sam 2 or No One Lives Forever 2 (or even Jedi Knight) over again rather than dealing with the relative blandness of Unreal 2.

Ultimately, Unreal 2 isn't outright atrocious, but I'd easily recommend buyers look at the above games or things like Warcraft 3 before bothering with this. Unreal 2 might be worth a looksie someday when it's in the bargain bin ...(and when systems are a bit more advanced to handle its unusually heavy requirements for what it actually does), but in the meantime, the simplicity and shallowness of Unreal 2 doesn't merit a purchase. One can even get much more enjoyble gameplay from the recent Unreal Tournament than from this.

Too bad they weren't able to really build off of what was done during the tournament version--if anything, this appears to have come significantly before. Come back some other day once prices drop if you're bored.

This game looks amazing, the weapons, the environments, everything in this game looks hands down better then anything else I've seen to date, but after you look past that you see that there isn't much else to it. The levels where you "command" marines are the only levels that are memorable in my opinion and after you spend 10 hours or so playing you realize that it's over and that's never a good sign when a game doesn't include any multiplayer or vs. the CPU modes. The story isn't enthralling and between each mission you have to waste time running around your ship prompting your shipmates for their predetermined dialog, cut scenes should have been used here considering it takes about 20 seconds or so to load up your ship and then another minute or 2 to get thru with your shipmates scripted dialog and then another 20 seconds to load up the next mission, unnecessary. The weapons aren't particularly good or bad with the exception of the pathetic assault rifle which, of course, is your main weapon. I hate not to recommend this game but I can't, it's simply too short with very little replayability and no multiplayer, if UT2k3 and this were combined into one game I'd give it 5 stars, but with the absence of multiplayer support and only 10 hours of gameplay, I can't recommend it no matter how pretty it is.

I've heard a lot about this game, and the screenshots looked great, so I grabbed it as soon as it came out.

After watching a cool introduction sequence, when I started the actual game, three things suprised me:

a) Unreal 2 ran as slow as molasses.
b) When the game's view zoomed in on a person, the textures on his body were all warped and distorted.
c) After playing for a few seconds, I got a General Protection Fault error.

Eventually, I found out that the GPF error was because I enabled the "EAX" sound feature (despite the fact that I have a SoundBlaster Audigy card that EAX SHOULD work with), so I disabled that. I upgraded all of my drivers and DirectX, so now the textures looked normal. But the game still ran as slow as molasses.

Unfortunately, lowering the details seriously blurs the textures, but you've gotta go what you gotta do, right? Well, after lowering some details, I got the game running decently, but that all changed when I got into a firefight. The game turned into a slideshow, and I would often end up losing almost all of my armor because I couldn't aim my weapons properly. I got up to a mission where the player walks around in snowy conditions outside of a base, and while the effect was very nice looking, it also made the game virtually unplayable. At this point I gave up on Unreal 2 because all the enemy had to do was run towards me and the game would slow to even LESS than a crawl, making my character completely helpless. What's most annoying is that my PC is brand new and top-of-the-line (well, it WAS three months ago), so performance like this is inexcusable, even with all the details turned down!

Last, but not least, a level editor comes with Unreal 2 where you can create your own levels, but when I loaded it up, I got another General Protection Fault. From what I have read in the game's official forums, the editor is an early version and many of the options are "not implemented yet" anyway.

Apparently, there is something wrong with the game itself, and many other people that I have talked with seem to have the same problems that I do. Sure, some people CAN run this game smoothly and with no problems, but from what I have seen, the majority have had serious technical issues with Unreal 2.

Overall, I'm giving this game three stars because I KNOW that this game has potential to be a winner; it has great graphics, sound, and a feasible storyline. However, it was released a bit too early, and is loaded with performance bugs and issues.

If you want to purchase this game, I recommend that you wait until the game's developers release a patch for the game that resolves its current problems. In the meantime, pick up a copy of Unreal Tournament 2003; it has graphics that are just as good as Unreal 2, and it runs better, too.

Unreal was a great game if only for its groundbreaking technology and massive sp experience. Unreal 2 has great technology as well, but....first off, the game takes maybe 10 hours to beat (and that's a generous estimate) and is shorter than most expansion packs. Second, it has nothing to do with the original Unreal (which is frustrating, 'cause the final cutscene of Unreal hinted at some kind of sequel). The game plays like a dumbed-down version of the Mechwarrior or Heavy Gear series, where you go on short, pointless missions that are completely disjointed and have absolutely no oppurtunity for exploration (which was a strong point of the original Unreal). The worst part is, it took 5 years for this game to reach the market and yet lasts as long as if it had been in development for only a few months. Seriously, the old shareware versions of Doom and Heretic (which included a single episode and were FREE) practically offered more gameplay time than this over-hyped joke of a game. This is almost definitely a situation where the developers were so overwhelmed by the capabilities of the new Unreal engine that they completely forgot about making a good game and instead created a mish-mash of poorly designed levels with way too much pointless and unneccessary eye-candy. The only selling point of this game are the spectacular graphics (if you have a brand new, stacked computer); but everything else about Unreal 2 is a complete wash. One final note: in a blatant attempt to force people to buy 2 games, Unreal 2 completely lacks any multi-player support, so if mp is your thing, you have to get UT 2003. This also almost completely guarantees that Unreal 2 will have no community support and that once you beat the game, keeping Unreal 2 on your hard-drive will be pointless.

Reviews]

Unreal II: the awakening

Spiders! It's full of spiders!

There's a rule about spiders in games: They are the designer's way of saying: "I give up. I have run out of ideas." Strangely, that feeling permeates all of Unreal II: The Awakening, a game so eagerly anticipated that even the editors at Maximum PC were quivering like hummingbirds as they waited to lay their mitts on a copy. Sadly, now, after having actually played the game, their hummingbird wings have slowed to a dead stop. "We waited for this?" is the question on everyone's lips.

Unreal II has an amazing degree of polish. It's slick, it's gorgeous, and it has one or two breakout moments. But our sustained impression over the course of a meager 12-odd hours of gameplay is one of profound familiarity and undeniable disappointment. Unreal II is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a bad game. It is, however, a crushingly dissatisfying one.

So how can a "not bad game" warrant a mere 6 verdict? The problem lies in a burden of expectations, and while Epic/Legend may cry foul, this burden is the inevitable byproduct of five-odd years of unrelenting hype. The first Unreal was a watershed title. When gamers emerged into that open space, with the waterfall in the distance and the critters hopping about, they entered a new era in gaming. That the rest of Unreal never quite lived up to the first scene's promise-that it resorted to standard run-n-gun clichés-was never that big a problem. It was good, old-school action gaming. It pulled the plow.

Unreal II is sort of like the first game, but without the shock value of the waterfall. We already know how good games can look. But we also expect more from our action games in the wake of many clever, well-scripted titles (quite a few of which were made using the original Unreal engine). The really odd thing about Unreal II is that its meager narrative was created by a team of people with proven track records. The script is by Bob Bates, president of Legend and standard-bearer for the puzzle adventure game. The co-designers are Glen Dahlgren and Mike Verdu, whose Wheel of Time is one of the neglected masterpieces of late-1990s action gaming. It's got more interesting events, people, locations, and content in a single level than you'll find in all of Unreal II.

All of this makes Unreal II dreadfully difficult to evaluate. Nothing in it immediately reeks. Everything looks good. There are plenty of enemies. The pacing is decent. The levels are mostly good, but none stand out as classics. The weapons are almost pathologically generic: pistol, assault rifle, shotgun, rocket launcher, grenade launcher, flame-thrower, big gun, sniper rifle, and shock lance. Seriously: a shock lance? Please. That's just so... 1993. All of these weapons are perfectly functional and effectively animated, but they bring nothing to the table but old memories. Probably the weakest element of the game is the flaccid monster design, which ranges from seen-it (the skarrj) to what-is-it? Plus, there are those spiders. Grrrr.

But perhaps the most catastrophic failing of Unreal II is its almost nonexistent shelf life. Not only is it short, but it has no multiplayer component whatsoever, guaranteeing it a quick trip through Add/Remove Programs once the final curtain falls on the main mission. There are no skirmish levels, no nuthin'. Fracturing the franchise into Unreal and Unreal Tournament may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but removing all multiplay from Unreal II was a fatal error. A game lives on between versions because of multiplayer. Take that away, and a game is DOA. It also leaves you feeling pretty ripped off, since for [item price] you get very little.

For all its beauty and accomplishment, Unreal II is ultimately an empty game, coasting on its reputation rather than expanding the genre. It's enjoyable enough, but it will never be mistaken for a great game.

+ ORIGINALS: Stunning 3D engine. Solid, familiar run-n-gun action.

- SEQUELS: Short play time. Little in it is fresh or interesting. Levels, weapons, and creatures are average-which is unacceptable for a game of this magnitude.

MaximumPC verdict:

6

-BY THOMAS L. MCDONALD

This game has been taking a lot of heat lately, and it's understandable. It has a few major problems that keep it from being a great, even revolutionary game. First the cons, then the pros:

Cons: The story is terrible, in my opinion. Very generic, tired character concepts, disapointing ending. Personally, I don't care about the plot of a shooter, I just want to kill things. But some people care. The game is way too short. It'll take you 12 hours tops to beat, tops. And the game is mediocre in certain areas where I expected it to excel. They really hyped the AI, which turned out only slightly better than average, they hyped the "roleplaying" elements and speech system, which are very minimal and leave an extremely linear plot and equally linear levels. Oh well.

Pros: Along with UT2003, the best graphics of any FPS out, hands down. It'll stay that way until Doom 3 comes out, judging by the previews I'm seeing for other games. Beautiful weapon effects, cool enemies, diverse scenery across several different planets. Colorful without going overboard. Exceptional graphics. The weapons are good. A couple of them are worthless, like the spidergun (which replaced the leech gun, which never made it into the final game) and the takkra, which are those floating ball attack drones that you get in only two levels and do almost no damage. But most are cool. Everything has a double trigger. At least a dozen different weapons, plus you can set up drone guns in certain levels. Great sniper rifle, very cool grenade launcher that fires 6 different grenade types. Best flamethrower I've ever seen. Good control except that your character runs a bit slowly because of his power armor. Decent sound. While the game lasts, since it is short, I think it's a blast almost the whole way through. Except this one level where you just kill hordes of giant neon spiders over and over and over again.

I don't have much free time so I don't care that it's short, and the plot doesn't bother me because I expect video game plots to be bad unless they're RPGs, so I loved this game.

Bottom line: I think it's a good buy, but not the revolutionary must-have game that I was expecting.

Unreal II is much like the stereotype of a California Blonde. It is absolutely beautiful, but not much going on upstairs. The game undoubtably contains some of the finest graphics available, and it appears this is where the developers invested most of their time and money. The game is plagued by poor AI, and out-of-place voice acting. All this is tied together with a poorly written script. Still despite these major annoyances, the game is still fun in its own mindless rights. If your looking for a new First Person Shooter that requires minimal thought, and your only interest is running and gunning, then this game is for you.