🤔 How many games has Beethoven been credited on? (answer)

Unreal II: The Awakening

aka: Unreal 2
Moby ID: 8377
Windows Specs
Note: We may earn an affiliate commission on purchases made via eBay or Amazon links (prices updated 1/23 6:35 AM )

Description official descriptions

Some years after the Strider Wars, humanity has resumed its expansion into space. On the rough frontier, it falls to the Terran Colonial Authority to maintain peace and order among the outlying colonies and outposts. TCA Marshal John Dalton and the crew of his ship, the Atlantis, patrol this dangerous sector of space when several distress calls lead to the discovery of alien artifacts with unique properties. Soon, the hunt for these artifacts is on between several alien factions as well as human corporations and their mercenary forces, with the TCA and their allies caught in the middle.

The first-person shooter Unreal II, while a sequel to Unreal, has no direct connection to the first game except being set in the same universe (with the Skaarj from Unreal and the Liandri Corporation from Unreal Tournament being major enemy factions). The player controls John Dalton through a dozen missions, taking place in such locations as the dense jungle of a tropical planet, a research facility on a frozen moon, the insides of a planet-sized living organism, the home world of an insectoid machine civilization, as well as a huge starship.

The weapon arsenal consists of more than a dozen guns. Standard types include pistols, an assault rifle, shotgun, and sniper rifle. Some heavier ones are a flame thrower, as well as rocket and grenade launchers, with the grenade launcher being able to use six different ammunition types, including fragmentation, EMP and smoke grenades. Available in later missions are weapons adapted from alien technologies. These include various energy guns, a biological weapon that creates living spiders that attack enemies, and an autonomous floating orb that either seeks out and attacks enemies or circles around the player in point defense. As in other Unreal titles, each weapon has two different firing modes.

Missions are usually of the run-and-gun type, but there are exceptions. Several levels include defense assignments where either a position must be held for a certain time or a character be kept alive. These levels usually include additional tools such as energy barriers and automated turrets that can be placed by the player in any location. Sometimes, AI-controlled characters will be there to help out the player as well. In that case they can be given orders on which sector to defend or patrol, for example.

The story of the game is told through a variety of means: besides in-engine cutscenes, there is a lot of radio chatter during a mission; in fact, it's not unusual for mission objectives to completely change due to story developments. Between missions, Dalton can wander freely about the Atlantis and chat with his crew, going into their personal backstories as well as more details about the main plot.

Spellings

  • 虚幻II:觉醒 - Simplified Chinese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Videos

See any errors or missing info for this game?

You can submit a correction, contribute trivia, add to a game group, add a related site or alternate title.

Credits (Windows version)

227 People (207 developers, 20 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 79% (based on 43 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.3 out of 5 (based on 106 ratings with 12 reviews)

An impressive tech demo thinly disguised as a game.

The Good
After the impressive track record of the somewhat predictable but hugely entertaining Unreal series of games one can only assume that Unreal 2 is going to be utterly huge and while in a couple of ways it is, that assumption is largely a mistake. The latest version of the Unreal Warfare engine drives this game and it's looking better than ever with unprecedented detail on all counts. Grass waves, each little metal bolt and rivet actually sticks out rather than just being a texture and shadows bend convincingly over the surroundings. The best feature of Unreal 2 by far is the level editor. With a strong basis to create mods and scenarios, an ambitious team could do wonders with this and designers are given some real power to play around with. Best of all since the game is based on Unreal Technology if you've ever had any prior experince editing an Unreal game then you'll feel right at home here. Unfortunately the other good points of the game aren't really that great. There are some fun scenarios such as defending a base and leading a squad of marines as well as some nice, if a little generic weaponry but...

The Bad
sadly these things are not enough to take the game to the same level as the graphics engine. The sad attempt at a story is sloppily put together and as thin as water. Even the attempt at interactive conversation trees is unfounded because at no point can the conversation be taken in new directions. All the player can do is simply exhaust all possible options until the characters shut up. The gameplay is very generic and strangely unplayable largely due to ridiculous accuracy from some enemies coupled with slow sluggish movement. Your character also has the (dis)ability to jump-dodge with a double tap of a direction key which sounds good but more often than not it results in him performing an unnerving leap to certain death over a cliff because you were trying to strafe in bursts.

The Bottom Line
This game is a senseless waste of technology. What could have been a ground breaking and stunningly well realised game has turned out to be nothing more than a glorified tech demo covered in a thin shooter wrapping. Mod authours will no doubt take full advantage of the engine and create add-ons that far outstrip the original but until then we're left with a very meger offering indeed.

Windows · by Sycada (177) · 2003

Space Opera

The Good
Graphics - probably best for pre-shaders era game. Storyline - unusual, with personalities and epic drama(c). AI and AI Coop/Counter/Defense missions. Universe and planets - not much, but detailed. Music - one of rare games with dynamic music system using DirectSound patterns. Yes, Unreal has good tracker music, defining new level of demoscene integration, but that doesn't matters with only battle/non-battle stances of, in Unreal 2 there is from 3 to 5 "heat levels" for music intensity, scaling with action intensity. The music style mostly same, but technically rendered to patterns, from other hand, lower system resources required. Sound - yes, also one of rare games with EAX HD support. Universe - more explanation for player with protagonist stories(expaining to NeBan).

The Bad
Length - Unreal 2 was planned as real set of series(like: one planed=one game with own set of missions), but was cut down and merged to current form. Bugs - many crashes without patch, broken graphics and intro(stucks) on some of systems including most of modern. That was never fixed, same with EAX HD - often crashes on any hardware, even with software emulation, the solution is only to turn off EAX and surround sound at all. Closer to "reality" - you run slow, your heals is low, you aren't inhuman like in Unreal 1, also, that slows down gameplay.

The Bottom Line
Thats not Unreal game you can start with. Its only for those, who completed previous games and bored of being alone human in the da... At the planet. From this point - you will be entertained enough being marshal, acting in unreal worlds and meeting unreal creatures till unreal unhappy ending.

Windows · by Dr.Quake (2) · 2012

This game is exactly like Jell-O.

The Good
Requisite statement: whoo boy, these are some really nice graphics. All sarcasm aside, they are pretty good, although since the levels themselves are so plain the sharp visuals occasionally fail to impress. One level in particular, set in a laboratory, has this one room, see, that's like, all melted and stuff, and there's this laser, right, and it's like, reflecting off everywhere. And it looks good, and stuff.

The Bad
I think this may be the plainest game I've ever played. It's not outstanding in either direction - not great, not bad, not even really good - it's the digital equivalent of Jell-O. I rushed out and bought "Unreal 2" after having starved myself of FPSes since the mostly excellent "Aliens versus Predator 2." I didn't really know what to expect, since I had not played any incarnation of the "Unreal" franchise before, but I hoped that it would at least be fun in a cliched way.

It's definitely cliched, that's for sure. Normally, I don't slam games for this sin, since most don't aspire to impress with their plots. You know, save the universe, rescue the chick, ad infinitum. However, "Unreal 2" slathers the plot on thick. In between almost every mission, you have to wander in your ship, talking to their teammates and learning about their pasts and why they're so fucked up. They're actually not bad teammates - I especially liked the funky alien pilot. Nevertheless, the story is quite dull, and it's made even more so thanks to the monotonic delivery of the main character. His voice is as flat and boring as the game's weaponry.

Boring plots and linear levels are mostly venial sins for FPSes. Boring weaponry, however, is a truly cardinal crime. "Unreal 2" features some real snorers, starting with the standard issue popgun (lame), then moving on to the standard issue machine gun (oh, it shoots, like, radioactive splinters? Count me in!), complete with the standard issue rocket launcher, grenade launcher, and the now-standard issue flamethrower (which does sport some nifty graphics boy-howdy). We've all seen these weapons countless times before, and they've been done much better. Really, rushing a group of Imps in "Doom" and gutting them with the shotgun still gives me more thrills than coring the enemies in this game with any of its tired weapons. The programmers must have realized just how 1990s their arsenal was, so they attempted to spice it up with "innovations" like the spider gun. Yes, you heard me right, the spider gun. What does the spider gun do, you ask? It shoots a little spray of biomass that produces lots of little lifeforms that swarm onto whoever you aim your cannon at (yeah, it's a little like fucking). What do the little spiders do? They piss off the enemy. I was ecstatic as I watched the bad guy I just shot angrily swat away some spiders before he pulled out his shotgun and corpseified me.

The Bottom Line
A really disappointing don't-bother experience.

Windows · by Lucas Schippers (57) · 2003

[ View all 12 player reviews ]

Trivia

German version

In the German version, all blood and gore effects were removed. Also some corpses in the levels were replaced or removed. The later released Special Edition is not affected.

John Dalton

The main character's last name, Dalton, was based on Scott Dalton, one of Unreal II's game designers. The developers tried to avoid the name collision for a while, but in the end "Dalton" just seemed to work best for the game and was used in the final product.

Multiplayer

A patch to this game adds multiplayer, vehicles and new weapons. It is called Expanded Multiplayer or Unreal II XMP.

References

  • Coincidence...or not? The player you control in the game, sometimes appreviated as "U2," is named John Dalton. In the late 80's, the Irish rock group U2 would sometimes dress up as a country western band and open for their own shows. The name of the group?: The Dalton Brothers.
  • An NPC in the tutorial area muses about getting himself two flags and conducting a some kind of tournament. An obvious reference to the Unreal Tournament series of games.

Seagoat

The Seagoat, the alien, bunny-like pet that shows up on the player's ship during mid-game, was created very early on in development and originally thought to be a huge, bovine creature that could inhabit one of the alien worlds in the game. During development, the name "Seagoat" started to stick for the creature, and it was greatly reduced in size and given the role of cute, slightly weird pet.

Voice acting

Even though all other voices for the game were performed by professional actors, Ne'Ban, the ship's alien pilot, is voiced by one of the developers (Grant Roberts).

Awards

  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 04/2009 - One of the "10 Most Terrible Sequels" ( It is a good game in its own right but forgettable and far from being as groundbreaking as Unreal. The technical potential goes to waste because the player mostly walks through illogical and linear levels instead of being outdoors.)
  • PC Powerplay (Germany)
    • Issue 03/2005 - #6 Biggest Disappointment

Information also contributed by Matthias Worch, St. Martyne and STU2

Analytics

MobyPro

Upgrade to MobyPro to view popularity data for this game.

Related Games

Unreal
Released 1998 on Windows, 1999 on Macintosh
Unreal Championship
Released 2002 on Xbox
Unreal: Anthology
Released 2006 on Windows
Alwa's Awakening
Released 2017 on Linux, Windows, 2022 on NES...
Unreal Tournament
Released 2014 on Macintosh, Windows
Valhalla: Awakening of Valkyrie
Released 2022 on Windows
Unreal Tournament 2004
Released 2004 on Linux, Windows, Macintosh
Unreal Deal Pack
Released 2008 on Windows
Unreal Tournament III
Released 2007 on Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

Related Sites +

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 8377
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Riley Beckham.

Xbox added by Kartanym.

Additional contributors: KSlayer, Unicorn Lynx, Rebelteen, Sciere, Patrick Bregger.

Game added February 9th, 2003. Last modified January 18th, 2024.