Unreal II: The Awakening

The Good
It goes without saying that, just as with the original, the graphics are the most standout component of this game. Weapon effects, monster animations, lush landscapes and creepy flora and fauna all come to vivid life with the latest incarnation of the Unreal engine.

The gameplay is enjoyably straightforward with virtually no learning curve. You play as the captain of patrol ship in a Star Trek-esque universe, answering distress calls and fetching artifacts while uncovering an intriguing if trite sci-fi plot.

The supporting cast, including a feisty buxom first mate; a cigar-chomping, jaded weapons expert; and a lovably inept amorphous alien pilot make add immensely to the sense of story and consistency. The away-mission-based structure makes the game feel more open-ended than it actually is, which is good given how linear it actually is.

The arsenal, while outrageous, is eclectic and entertaining, and the bad guys range from humanoid to tremendously scary. Helpfully expendable NPCs littered throughout each level provide hints on how to solve the level in just the nick of time, as well as occasional radio transmissions with your crew.

Movable turrets, portable forcefields, and commandable troops add a level of strategy and a lot of fun to certain portions of the game. I only wish there were more of these moments.

The Bad
The game is very limited in depth and scope. While levels are fully explorable and beautiful to look at, there is little interactivity or ability to stray from the main path.

The difficulty balance is perplexing. Most enemies are appallingly easy, compensated for with sheer quantity. Not since Serious Sam have I been so annoyed by an unwarranted polygonal invasion of my screen. Even optimal systems can get bogged down by the game's massive environments and reptilian hordes.

Although the player encounters a pretty varied arsenal of weapons (each with an alternate fire mode), including an awesome fire-and-forget weapon that unleashes a black hole on your opponents, I found that I ended up using my basic assault rifle for a good 80% of the game.

The story itself is a pretty weak premise, and the characters outside of your crew are pretty forgettable. Even your crew's personalities and back stories are under-developed, despite a valiant attempt in the game's relatively short span.

While certain missions show promise, there is virtually no deviation in gameplay. Almost every level consists of starting outside of a complex; blasting your way through the complex; grabbing a secured item; and backtracking your way back to your ship. The all-too-brief strategic moments are few and far between, and usually end the same regardless of how you approach them.

And, although it's a relatively minor gripe, I found it pretty disappointing that Unreal 2 had pretty much nothing to do with the original other than the title and an overlapping bad guy (the iconic Skaarj).

The Bottom Line
Just like it's forebear, Unreal 2 is a visual treat, worth a playthrough for the eye candy alone. Just don't expect too much depth and you'll be pleasantly surprised. The game had some great ideas, but if you're looking for a game that accomplishes its design goals more thoroughly, check out Elite Force or Red Faction.

The Good
Sure, looks count. When a game is as pretty as Unreal II, you forgive it a lot. I plodded on to the end merely to see one more beautiful alien planet. Occasionally, this visual splendor almost becomes compelling. When a planet infested by a huge spongy organism erupts in angry green spouts of acid, it's a money-shot moment, even if the effects are all decorative and irrelevant to gameplay. I also liked - gasp! - the story. If you persevere until the end, you're in for a satisfying conclusion. Rarely do game narratives rise above the level of idiocy; this one, after plenty of dross, finally does. Nice voice acting, too.

The Bad
Everything else is terrible.

Let's start with player movement. There are two speeds: creeping and crawling. Seriously cramping the range of available tactics, this hobbled mobility reduces fighting to a series of repetitive pot-shots. Mind, enemies aren't slow. Only you are.

Although level design is pretty, it's also painfully linear. The highly-skilled designers have created the illusion of broad, expansive landscapes. But it's all superficial, as they've squandered the graphics engine's power by making you stick to a narrow path no more divergent than, say, the one in ten-year old Quake. Frustratingly, you even come across features in the landscape that you can climb or jump in some areas, but not in others.

Enemy AI? Forget it. Enemy character design? Pfffft. The tiresome Skaarj are back doing their goofy somersaults, joined by (shock!) spiders, (amazing!) weird aliens, and (omigod!) humans in armor. This colorless, uninspired work is instantly forgettable. You never feel menaced - annoyed, maybe. Partly that's also the fault of the designers having no sense of rhythm, drama, or pacing; long stretches of the game are inexplicably unpopulated. And when they do bump into something successful - for instance, using friendly AI soldiers to protect you - they quickly drop the idea. You can lead a game designer to green alien acid pools, apparently, but you can't make him drink.

While I appreciated the finale, the story is filled with cliches borrowed from more successful games and movies. Expect no originality. Five minutes into the game you're given to understand that celebrated female military heroes in the future will dress like Hooters chicks, and it's mostly downhill (or downbra, you might say) from there.

The Bottom Line
With the commercial and critical failure of Unreal II, this great-looking game can be picked up for a song (I paid $10). Though highly polished, it's about as dull as it is beautiful. This is corporate design in all its safe, cliched, derivative, formulaic glory, with a heavy dosage of hack work substituting for creativity: step right up and be relieved of your imagination.

The Good
There is a great deal of disappointment surrounding this game. It looms over it with every opinion and review like a dark cloud. Maybe there was a lot of hype surrounding the game before it was released. Maybe people were promised more than the game gave. For me, I never even heard of the game until I picked it up, and I enjoyed just about every moment through it.

The game is nothing revolutionary. The graphics are top-notch, perhaps the best I've seen in a FPS so far, but aside from that the gameplay is reminiscent of old shoot-everything-and-then-pull-the-switch/push-the-button games like Doom. So if you were expecting more than that, you will be disappointed. But otherwise, the game is great. At least, I think so.

As I mentioned, the graphics are great. Really great. The colors in some of the landscapes - like the very first place you travel to - are very vibrant. Landscapes look almost completely devoid of jagged polygon edges, while indoor areas look appropriately outer-spacey.

Also, there are actual waves in this game, as well as reflections! Well, fake reflections, but they look real enough. As you swim through the water, you can see the waves react to your movement. Dive into a lake and watch the water ripple away as you crash into it.

Character models look great, and the voice acting is supurb. The writing might not be, but I think the voice acting is spot-on. A lot of people complained about the voice acting, but I feel it was the writing that was bad. For instance, at one part of the game you have to defend this scientist as he fixes a transmitter so you can escape, all the while you and him are tossing really dumb insults back at each other. "Did your mommy teach you how to fight?" "No, did yours teach you how to be an idiot?" Well, those aren't the exact things they said, but they were something dumb like that. Some of the writing is rather humerous, however. Like when the mechanic is trying to fix the ship and the blue pilot guy says, "I have read the manual; you have voided the warranty," or "Intercourse!" And there's ragdoll effects! Like when you blast a guy off the side of a hill, you can actually see him tumble and flip and fall down it. Or if you shotgun a guy over a desk, you can watch his body slump over it or slide off with a "clunk" as he hits the floor. Likewise, when you get killed, you get to watch your own corpse's death, which is usually quite entertaining - especially when you die on the side of a cliff and get to watch yourself tumble down it.

While there aren't many types of monsters, the few you fight are quite distinct, and you'll have to use a unique strategy for each type you fight. Some will run right toward you and start slashing at you - too fast to outrun, you'll have to find some way to either kill them before they reach you or set a trap or manage to fight them in close quarters. Others will fire at you from afar, and you'll have to take cover and try and get them before they get you. And some battles require you to actually set up a defense perimeter and set gun emplacements to help you defend against the enemy's onslaught. One of the very first missions requires you to travel through a swampy forest in the dark with several marines as a hundred monsters attempt to make you thier meal.

I also thought the story was good. It's nothing to make you go "whoa man, that's deep", but it's a lot better than "go out and save the world you gun-toting psycho!" like most FPS games are. Actually, the story in the game, right up until the end is pretty vague. You're not a hero out saving the world (or in this case, the universe). You're just doing missions for the army for your own personal reasons. I like that. Being the savior of the universe is fun and all, but I'm sick of doing it in every single game. This was a refreshing change.

Weapons are cool, but nothing spectacular. The flame thrower is a cool weapon, and particularly useful in the level you obtain it, where you fight hordes of spiders. Other interesting weapons include a spider-launcher thing, which covers your opponent in spiders and has an alterative fire that throws a green sack against the wall that explodes when anything gets near it. The sniper rifle is also pretty cool, due to its awesome range. You can zoom in so far as being able to count the hairs in your target's nose from a mile away!

Your character is also black. I don't know if this is necesarrily a good or bad thing, since I really don't care what color the character is, but I can't remember the last game I played in which the main character was black and didn't spend the entire game spouting off ebonics and pimp lingo. Finally, a step forward race-wise.

The characters in the game, I feel, were pretty deep. So many people are complaining about the lack of depth in the people, but...dammit, maybe I missed something, because this was one of those games where I didn't want anything bad to happen to my comrades. They each have a sort of history, and reasons as to why they're traveling with you, and the voice acting is great. I would have liked to have seen a sequel to this game, just to see more of the characters in it.

The Bad
While I liked the female's character, her outfit is annoying. I can just imagine the art department during one of their meetings: "This is the Aida model. We gave her a very sophisticated outfit as to-"
"Sophisti-wha? Pump her tits up a size or two and give her something skimpy."
"What? Why? She's not just some ditzy-"
"I said do it! I'm in charge here! Who gots the hot dogs? I gotta get me a hot dogs! DO IT I SAID!!! WE GOTTA GET THE G'S TO PLEASE!"

Erm. Sorry, I got carried away there. I just mean that, there's no reason for her to be dressing that way. It's obvious that she looks the way she does just to increase game sales, if nothing else, because not once in the game does she do or say anything that's the least bit seductive. She's deep and sophisticated, not some ditz.

Most of the game, the graphics are wonderful and the textures are very high-res...yet...in one part of the game, all the textures seem to have been imported from Wolfeinstein or something, because they were the worst looking textures I've ever seen! They could have been drawn in Paintbrush! I literally restarted the game the first time I saw it, thinking something had screwed up with my video card or something.

Some parts of the game were tough, but not the ones you'd really think. Some missions require you to defend a certain location, which you would think would be some of the hardest missions. Well, aside from one mission, I was able to breeze through these. One I remember, you had to defend some scientists, while these ninja-chicks attacked in waves. Right when the battle started, I took off the other way, trying to reach the top of the building so that I might be able to destroy the attackers from the roof. Unfortunately, I never found the roof, but the mission was a success anyway, because the marines traveling with me were able to defend it all by themselves! I never even fired a shot! Honestly, I think it's great that you have some buddies to help you fight in some missions, but it should at least require you to do SOME of the work to beat the missions. Another mission had this problem.

As I've said before, the gameplay is nothing revolutionary. It's all just running around, killing anything that attacks you, and then moving on to the next part. There's a lot of variety - like defending a base, or placing gun emplacements and such, but they're few, and between those is a lot of run-and-gun gameplay.

The Bottom Line
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***

Good:
+Great graphics.
+Story isn't too cliche'd.
+Ragdoll effects!.
+Good voice acting.
+Interesting and unique characters.
+Different types of missions.
Neutral:
oSystem requirements are a bit high, and as usual the "recommended" specs don't mean squat. Great graphics if you got it, though.
oTypical run-and-gun first person shooter. You've seen it before. Maybe didn't look this good, but you've seen it before. Evil:
-Aida's outfit is obviously targeted at thirteen year old sexually frustrated idiots.
-Linear levels.
-Not enough interaction with the other characters.
-Bad, bad textures in the alien place.
Score:
8.0/10 All these bad reviews don't seem right. If you're expecting something revolutionary, like I said, you will be disappointed. But if you're looking for a standard FPS with great graphics and interesting characters, with GOOD voice acting for a change, Unreal II is a great game.

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.

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.

The Good
First and foremost, the graphics. The quality of the artwork is superb, lovingly crafted and easily surpasses that of the original Unreal, which was more of a mixed bag bar the skyboxes and the lens flares. The static mesh detailing ranged from OK to excellent, and the architecture was one of the best for its day. A great deal of variety of different environments and worlds also means you'll never get bored of looking at this baby.

And the variety of weapons on offer is certainly worth writing home about. After all, you get a grenade launcher with several varieties of grenade to use as the situation requires, and the sniper rifle is one of the best you'll ever find in a first person shooter. The rocket launcher packs a punch, and the spider gun is worth checking out for curiosity's sake, but otherwise I wouldn't bother using it as a primary weapon.

The Bad
The extremely linear gameplay and the ever so short maps. Most of the map is dedicated to environmental detail, which is a waste, and means that multiple maps are required for the one 'level', requiring frequent map loading, which is a pain in the bum itself, as even on modern machines things take forever to load. As a result of these seemingly short maps, the player moves at a snail's pace. Grrrr!!! ADHD is not compatible with this game, sadly.

Also, the game is somewhat unreliable, even with the latest patch, and has crashed several times on me, much to my frustration. The programmers who worked at the now defunct Legend should be summoned and shot for their blatant negligence, because this is one of the least reliable games out there.

And don't get me started on those flippin' cut scenes. It's not so bad when you're playing the game for the first time, but if you want to play it again you have no choice but to sit through them. Very annoying. The people who made this game didn't think this one through. If they ever made a patch fixing this (fat chance now, I might add) as well as the bugs, I may just forgive them.

The Bottom Line
It is worth playing, but only just. Had they made the game more stable and included an option to skip those darned cut scenes, I could quite easily overlook the linear, multi-mapped levels and the loading times that seem to take decades.

The Good
No doubt, Unreal 2 is a cinematic experience then standard 08/15 game, this includes a:

1.) Breathtaking Scenery with beautiful textures and models. 2.) Very suitable music and soundeffects. 3.) Interesting characters, with an amazing voiceacting and witty dialogues (english version). 4.) Great variety of weapons. 5.) For non FPS-Freaks (like me) it has a moderate difficult which makes it less frustrating and more fun to play.

The Bad
It has it flaws, no doubt, I seen follows:

Major weaknesses:

1.) I think for FPS-Freaks this is way to easy, and when there is no challenge, there is bore. 2.) Mainstory is really thin, but even then they managed to put some cliches into it.

Minor weaknesses:

1.) Moving around in the spaceship was pretty useless, in that case cutscenes would have been more than sufficient. 2.) I would like to choose for myself which weapons I take to a mission. 3.) Took sometimes ages to load. 4.) It was short, but on the other hand not too short for me.

The Bottom Line
Unreal 2 is a very eyecandy Singleplayer FPS, for everyone who likes SF and a little action. For me, who usually plays RGP, Strategy or Adventures it was a neat alternation. For its cheap price today its no loss except you are a hardcore FPS Player, then be aware for an easy and short trip.

Footnote: I was surprised to see C64 Graphic Legend Hugh "Last Ninja" Riley worked on that title. Most of artist/musicians/coder of that time are gone or do something completely different the industry.

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.

The Good
This game is set in the Unreal universe, but has little to do with the original Unreal game. Legend Entertainment has always included a good story in their games. Unreal II is no exception. You meet interesting characters, competently acted by skilled performers. The storyline is original in the sense that it completely borrows from a plethora of movies and computer games. I saw elements from Aliens, Anachronox, Half-Life, Starship Troopers, and numerous others. It’s a B movie scripting, but its good B movie scripting. Any fan of Sci Fi would probably enjoy this game on that level. The ending was actually a surprise. The script and game play worked well together.

The environments are breathtakingly beautiful and a good way of showing off your DirectX 9 compliant video card. The sound is equally well done. No drops in audio, and a consistently clear sound even when there is chaos all over the place. The rat-tat-tat of the machine gun was satisfying and the missile launcher throom had a thrilling roar to it. The models were really well done and fascinating to watch. I admit that I found a single contradiction slightly disturbing. Aida is the mandatory scantily clad tomboy. She looks like a young woman but sounds like lunch lady Doris from the Simpsons.

The main character, Dalton, does more than shoot aliens. He talks with the crew and interacts with them on a personal level. Aida and the Engineer have a sorted past that they are hoping to rectify by serving with Dalton. Also on board is a pilot of distant origins named Ne'ban. One of the running gags of the game is Ne'ban's mis-use of the English language. In one scene, Ne'ban yells out "Intercourse!" in a fit of frustration.

Aida is the tactical officer and worried mother figure to Dalton. Shockingly enough, they aren't romantically involved. She and the engineer have an ongoing disenchantment with each other that Dalton helps to work out.

The game levels were very well designed and spooky. Instead of throwing enemies at you non-stop, they let you wander around and get ambushed. A few levels required you to wait and defend until a certain a certain goal was achieved. While not a new convention, they were well done and designed to maximize tension as you heard your fellow soldiers return fire and scream when injured. The enemies always have a signature sound indicating an impeding attack. This builds anticipation as you look around for it.

The diversity of weapons and their resulting effects were spectacular. Causing great death and destruction. Watching your enemies go down in a ball of flame has never been so gratifying in recent memory.

And there is at least one scene that is laugh out loud funny. Play it if you're curious.

The Bad
All the guns have similiar levels of destruction. It’s also pretty short. You can wander around and attack enemies without a response until the script triggers it.

This game is LINEAR. No options of game play. Very few opportunities for tactical game play. I found myself able to kill a few monsters by lobbing a missile while they walked to a set point in a script.

While the Skaarj are back and hard to kill, they are the only returning characters I could remember from the original. Nai aren't there. Very little mention of anything from the original.

With the exception of the ending theme, I thought the music was obnoxious and relied too heavily on worn out synth themes and rhythm patterns. If there ever was a game that I wish had a jukebox feature, this one is it.

The Bottom Line
A light fare FPS with gorgeous graphics, a good story and great sound. Its way under-rated for entertainment value.

The Good
I have to admit - graphics are mostly great. The scale and the variety of the levels is amazing, especially landscapes. Skies look extremely cool - being on a satellite of a gas giant with huge rings across the sky is a beautiful experience.

Sound is adequate. Nothing mindblowing, mind you, but decent.

The Bad
The game process. The story. The interactivity. Everything that constitutes a game. The levels are extremely linear. In fact they are so linear, you would remember Wolfenstein 3D (the original) with nostalgia. To add insult to this injury, the sriptwriters decided to constantly instruct you what to do next in the lamest possible way. Imagine constantly being assigned new objectives (such as "heal a survivor") before you realise the situation (in this case see this damn "survivor") or being instructed to find a way around a barricade before you see this stupid barricade.

Next. The story has every cliche from the last 8 years of FPS games. Imagine looking at an apparently "surviving" human being dragged under the door which breakes right after that on almost every level. Like we never saw this in Unreal 1, or AVP2, or anywhere else. Then you have voiceovers of your main character and other random people constantly telling you "it is safe"/"there are no more bad guys"/"that was easy" exactly 5 seconds before some more enemies are jumping at you. That is unbelievably lame and boring.

Now the story. There is none. You basically ran straight through the levels killing everyone (with pauses for level loading every minute or so). There are some random people/objects/objectives that you don't really care about. The only character that you might care about is your female friend. And the only reason you might care about here is that she is actually female and has boobs. BTW, she is not pretty. Not even for a 3d game character. She is actually quite ugly...

Next, interactivity. There is none. Forget cutting-edge stuff from Duke Nukem 3D. No more breaking glass. No more nothing. The levels are made in one single piece. There is basically nothing you can interact with, except meaningless buttons and switches. Imagine having 3 (THREE!) switches in an elevator... And to again insult our intelligence, all such buttons and switches are highlighted on the screen so that you do not spend any time actually thinking about where to click. On one level they have 3 or 4 "laboratories" that look exactly the same. And it's not that they look like laboratories either. Forget Half-Life level design. Think "Quake 2"-style laboratories, i.e. empty rooms with boxes. And the lamest thing is that there is a voice-over like "entering biological laboratory," "entering some other laboratory", etc. Like one can actually give a shit... Yeah, whatever.

A game is something that is both interesting and enjoyable, as opposed to things like masturbation (enjoyable but not interesting), reading a physics book (interesting, but not enjoyable) and work (neither interesting, nor enjoyable). Unreal 2 is neither. I must conclude that it feels very much like work, except you are not getting paid.

I was so frustrated and angry that I actually threw the game into trash can and I am a much happier person now. I would recommend everyone, who wants to play a good FPS, to get Quake 1, download an engine mod (like mhglqr6) that updates graphics to a really cool level and enjoy fun and excitement. [Sorry, I know it is agains MobyGames policy to compare old games with new ones] I did just that and I can say that graphics are good enough and the gameplay is lightyears ahead of Unreal 2.

The Bottom Line
1) Nike of PC games. Pay 50$ for a brandname 2) Gameplay from a lame 1980s arcade game (think Jungle Jill) in a brilliantly rendered 3D environments 3) A technology demo 4) Something that makes AOL CDs look useful in comparison

The Good
I liked the graphics and the huge in depth spaces.
Cool weapons
Mysterious environment

The Bad
I didn't like the story behind this game.
The game is too short.

The Bottom Line
Unreal 2 is a sci-fi first person shooter like most others. But, if you have a strong pc, something like 256MB memory with at least GeForce 4 you will enjoy a blasting eye graphics.

The main disappointment for me is the story behind this game. It wasn't an interesting adventure like Unreal 1 and the game is too short.

I don't know but Unreal 1 was a mystery shrouded game, but if you haven't played it you will like Unreal 2.

The Good
The graphics are nice.

The Bad
The gameplay is BORING. The actors are BORING. The music and sound are BORING.

The Bottom Line
Well, well, this is the successor to a game that wanted to revolutionize the genre from within and partially succeeded. The hype was high on this one, and it got pretty good ratings, but is it really a good game? Depends on what kind of gamer You are. The casual gamer will like the easy gameplay, linear level design and not-so-deep immersion. The games player will like the graphics and soon turn to something else. The hardcore gamer will probably turn to something else 6 hours later after he played through U2 once.

U2 is very light, it features some great graphics and environments, and it also offers a plot. That's all I can say neutrally.

The plot is boring, the characters are so superficial that the helpless try of giving them depth through conversation is in vain. The hero is quite strange, and hard to identify with. The story is very linear and the enemies You encounter a pretty faceless. The infamous Skarrj appear only rarely, the boss enemies are mostly huge, and the weapons are pretty unimaginative.

Conclusion: nice to see, but it has no identity.