Unreal II: The Awakening

Unreal II: The Awakening, is the sequel to the 1998 3d shooter called Unreal. Don't confuse this title with the multiplayer Unreal Tournament series. This game is designed for a single player. In the beginning of this story, you play a marine sent to investigate an outpost that appears to be deserted. Once you get on the ground, you will quickly realize that the place is swarming with aliens that want to kill you. There is a brief introduction sequence where you can interact with some characters and get a feel for the movement, then you go right into the action.

What makes Unreal I and II different from the Unreal Tournament games is that these have a great story that builds along the way. Sure, it is still one giant shooting gallery after another, but this game has plot and characters to keep you interested in finding out what is to develop, rather than just clearing out levels. This game has a little bit of interactivity with it that I found really cool considering all the other games before it were nothing but shooting. When not in combat, it reminded me of playing Knights of the Old Republic. Action junkies need not worry, there isn't too much talk in between the gunfights and explosions.

Since the first Unreal game came out, they have set the standard in how first person shooter games should look. To date, Unreal Tournament is still my all time favorite 3d shooter in terms of gameplay, graphics, fluidity, and plain old fun. With Unreal II, you will see more of the excellence in graphics and animation. The levels are all designed with a keen eye for detail and the layouts are done to maximize your playing ability. The buildings and surrounding environment are so well detailed that it helps you immerse into the game.

The technology of game sound is on par with the graphics these days, and this game offers some excellent sound effects are voice work. If you are in a small metal area, then it echoes like it should. Jumping in water makes a real splash sound. Metal grinds, bullets ricochet, things fall, and so on. I am only playing with a 2.1 speaker system and it sounds great, so I can only imagine how awesome this would be in surround sound.

You will have 15 weapons at your disposal in this game. They are the standard FPS weapons: Machine guns, rocket launchers, pistols, flame throwers, and some weird alien guns. The most powerful weapons have limited ammo so you have to pull out the heavy artillery only when needed.

During gameplay, there aren't too many puzzles. You mostly just open doors to go into the next area and start blasting. There are no complex places where you go pull a lever in one place, push a button in the next, and so on. The developers of Unreal II decided to keep that aspect fairly simple because the puzzles usually aren't all that fun and just make you have to backtrack a lot.

Unreal II doesn't offer much new stuff in terms of gameplay. It looks and sounds better than the older versions, but it is still basically the same game as before. The controls are still very responsive and the AI is still wicked smart. If you have never played an Unreal game before, be ready for something fast and frantic. There isn't much sneaking around in these games.

So the real question is whether or not this game is fun. To be honest, I liked it, but it doesn’t compare to the slew of other 3d shooters out there. The onslaught of enemy forces is a little too relentless and repetitive and what could have been fun ends up getting tedious. I could play Unreal Tournament for hours at a time, but I only give this game about 30 minutes and then I'm through until next time. Unreal II went bargain bin pretty quickly because it couldn’t hold up to all the other superior games on the market. If you can pick this up for around ten bucks, it's worth it.