Unreal II: The Awakening

Added May 1st, 2004 by Rishi

Introduction:
Unreal 2 continues from its predecessor’s storyline, it has been eight years after the Strider Wars ended and Earth has resumed its expansion into space. The central government has grown weak as power has been passed onto major corporations funding the search for new planets. Each of these corporations maintains their own private army to enforce their objective. As the game begins, you find you have taken control of a Marshal, John Dalton, in the Terran Colonial Authority. Dalton is ordered into action following a distress call from a nearby planet. John arrives at the planet, single handedly has to take on all sorts of aliens and the first person action roles on from there.

Gameplay:
At the start of each mission you are presented with a cut scene, a few of these are quite lengthy, you do get the option to skip them, but if you’re the kind of gamer that likes to know everything that’s happening, then you can watch it all, if you don’t you still will be able to play through the game with no problems.

Firstly, Unreal plays like a normal first person shooter, making use of its own Unreal brand engine, which is capable of creating the smooth, large environments and player models that will be seen during parts the game. Unlike other FPS, Unreal 2 provides a good mixture of indoor and outdoor sections. However, in every level you find yourself being told to run around and kill the enemies. Atari has attempted to included a story telling aspect in the game, but it is filled with clichés and most of all it plain and boring as grandmother’s leak soup. The gameplay consists of a number of destinations which you will visit, these will be sure to provide to with heaps of easy kills and satisfy your need for mindless blasting for years. The enemies which you will encounter vary from planet to planet. However will not provide any true challenge, so don’t expect a “Halo Legendary” difficultly in this game. John is almost invincible; Atari must have forgotten to tell us we are playing some sort of superhuman. Any average gamer will find that he/she will only die a few times during the whole game, regardless of how many enemies you encounter at one time, John somehow has the upper hand time and time again. Where is the challenge Atari?

Having said that, as the game progresses, you are introduced to a number of additional scenarios, one of which is ambushes. This is where you are given the ability to order the placement of troops and set up defensives such as turrets and laser fencing to prevent attack to your base. This turned out to be a nice tactical addition and potentially could be the best part of the game. Although there were just not enough of these moments, they provided the chance to use tactics and brought some tense gameplay at times which certainly stood out from the rest of the game.

Unreal 2 also includes online multiplayer, using a feature they call XMP. Currently, there is only one game mode available, no where near as much that can be play on Unreal Championship. XMP allows 12 player matches, these are defiantly great fun, and players are able to choose from 3 classes:

Gunner: You are strong and powerful, the fighting force for the team.

Tech: You are a master hacker and can deploy turrets and other machinery to defend areas.

Ranger: You excel in infiltration and make use of your speed and flexibility; also you have the ability to use a sniper rifle to take out enemies from a safe distance.

What I suggest is to play this game through the ‘Hard’ difficultly mode and it will be a much more enjoyable experience. If you have a friend or sibling, then I recommend you make use of the two player co-op mode, which allows you to tackle the story mode together.

Graphics:
Unreal 2 graphics are vibrant and colorful yet leaves room for improvement, being ported from the year old PC title, you wouldn’t expect amazing graphics. There are some nicely detailed environments, both indoor and outdoor. The character models could be more detailed, but I guess that’s the least thing you are worrying about when you have a rocket headed for your arse. Some of the animation is well done, although during gameplay I found the movements to be jumpy and lack the attention required, which leaves the overall presentation not polished. The textures seemed flat and unimaginative. The weapons effects are decent and pretty typical of an unreal game, yet nothing to impress you in this day and age.

Audio:
During the story mode, there is a lot of dialogue, the voice acting is actually quite good, there are a few bad-liners but what do you expect from a videogame. If you have surround sound, you will notice that one of the best features of Unreal 2 is its use of the Xbox’s Dolby Digital capabilities. You will be able to hear the movements of enemies and the explosive action during multiplayer games will give your system a good work out. However, you won’t really notice the soundtrack due to all the action going on, if you find a quite place, you will find it does compliment the gameplay in places of action and builds up tension when approaching important areas.

Controls:
Unreal 2 uses the standard FPS controls, no one should have any problems getting to grip with them:

• Left analog stick – move/strafe
• Right analog stick – look/aim and zoom (pressed)
• D-pad – press down to crouch
• Left trigger – secondary fire
• Right trigger – primary fire
• A button – jump
• B button – next weapon
• X button – use/reload
• Y button – previous weapon
• Black button – display objectives
• Start button – menu

The only thing lacking is a controls tutorial, which could have explained the more advance movements available.

Replay:
Unreal 2 can be finished in a relatively short time, it took me a few days to complete, of course this depends on your skill level. Playing with a friend is the best way to play the story mode, just be sure not to stray to far from each other as in some outdoor environments its possible to get lost.

If you enjoy the XMP mode, then this game will entertain you for months, hopefully Atari will release new maps and game modes in the near future to keep gamers coming back for more. The XMP is a team based game, whereby the more energy your team has the more equipment you can use; this includes a hand full of vehicles and other defence machinery. However, only being the one multiplayer mode it seems the online aspect was added last minute to make up for the short story mode.

Summary:
At the end of the day, Unreal 2 is a one year old port from the PC. The game looks and feels like a year old title. The story mode is short and pretty ordinary, providing little challenge since the AI isn’t the best you will come across. The XMP mode can be great fun as long as you have a 4 vs. 4 at least, below this and it can come across rather slow and boring. The graphics are decent, excluding character models during gameplay and the dull textures at times. I would say this game would be a rental, unless you really like the XMP feature, even then I would recommend waiting for Unreal Championship 2.