An ironic title for a sleep inducing game!

INTRO:

This review is a bit late, very late in fact but its because its taken me THIS long to get over the fact that this title was such a disapointment. for those who dont know, Unreal 2 is the sequel to the 1998 blockbuster Unreal. Whilst lacking is some areas Unreal had a solid foundation and this is why Unreal 2:The Awakening had so much hype, this is also why it saddens me to say that this game is an old tyre away from being a trash heap.

STORYLINE:

Unreal 2 is sci fi based, as all the games in the unreal series have been, its set in outer space where you play the character 'Dalton' as he and some comrades go on various missions(12 in all) on alien planets and settings.

The game is overwhelmingly focused on story, and in between all of the 12 missions You'll have a sequence where you get to talk to all the crew members and comrades, this is supposed to help you understand the personalities of the characters, but because the dialogue is so cliche and terrible it instead just ghets in the way of the action, with phrases like 'Heya toots' when talking to the female assistant, its cringe inducing and simply not needed here. You will pray for these scenes to end and the gunfights to restart.

GAMEPLAY:

The gamplay in Unreal 2 is pretty much bog standard First person shooter action and simply fails to impress whatsoever, there are guns and enemies and health and armour and thats it. Apart from the being able to walk around the ship and interact with the crew members(which as I stated was awfully tedious) in between missions there is nothing here new for you, especially since the actual gameplay is about 10 hours, pretty short for a fps and a right mess-up considering there is NO multiplayer to speak of.

GRAPHICS AND SOUND:

This is where Unreal 2 gets its few credits from, it had stunning graphics for its time, and even now a year and a bit on it still looks good, flame and explosion effects are done excellent, and in fact all thr weapons look good when they're firing as do player and enemy models. The enviroments themselves, whilst they look good and are textured well arent that inspired, they are pretty much typical sci-fi settings and they are very linear and you cannot terraform or change them at all.

Sound in this game is fine by FPS standards, weapons make a satisfying ring and thoom and enemies will have their own unique sounds, It will get some more use out of your 5.1 surround sound at least.

But neither of these factors are enough to bring the game up from the lacklustre gameplay.

WEAPONS AND ENEMIES:

Enemy design never was a strong point in Unreal and it isnt in Unreal 2 either, unlike Doom-3 or Quake the enemies are totally forgettable and uninspired, with little alien monkey things or basic alien guard designs with really little thought put into their design at all. So they may be graphically sound but for what they actually are its nothing interesting.
The AI is also nothing special, enemies will either run at you in a straight line, or sometimes they will move from side to side, but rarely do they show signs of much intelligence in fact most of the time you will be thinking that the I stands for 'ignorance'.
This makes a short game even shorter when the enemies just dont seem that dangerous or threatening.

The weapons in the game are mostly classic FPS fare, with rifles, rocket launchers and flame throwers( although they have been an underused weapon of late). Yet again the game fails to match up favourably to some of the other games out there, the weapons dont provide that 'OOMPH' that some FPS shooters have at the current time and they are totally unremarkable.

SINGLEPLAYER AND MUTLIPLAYER:

Or really that should just be singleplayer since there is no Multiplayer to speak of apart from the new Mulitplayer option which has slightly improved the games shelf life.

But attached to the core game there is only a singleplayer mode and this singplayer mode is around 10 hours long, short , boring and unimaginative, thats what I got for my 32 pounds(50 dollars). It simply isnt enough to justify the price, even now when it is cheaper.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:

If you do end up weith this game you will want a half decent pc to make the most of the good graphics, something above 1.5 ghz with 256+ mb of Ram and a geforce 4 ti 4200 or radeon equivilent will run iot with everything turned up and on so it looks as best as it can.

CONCLUSION:

Unreal 2 is a huge let down, even now when you can pick it up much, much cheaper I would not reccommend this game, it fails in almost every respect to do what a modern shooter should, poor AI, poor level and enemy design, poor dialogue, good graphics and sound, poor gameplay.

The sad thing is this isnt unreal its dead real, this game is a huige disapointment and a let down, but if you still want to give it a chance, Buy at your peril!

-45%: Poor