Unreal II Review - PC Game Reviews

Unreal II Review

Developed by Legend Entertainment Unreal II is solid graphically and technically but uses the same age old first-person formula instead of breaking new ground.

You play Marshal John Dalton, an ex-space marine working for a cosmic police force called the Terran Colonial Authority, who is on a routine patrol. The ship gets a distress signal from a remote mining base and decides to investigate, at which point Dalton finds a mysterious alien artifact. From here, you go on a series of missions gathering the rest of the alien artifacts from colonies, research stations, and military bases on a variety of planets, featuring appearances by your favourite climates. There's a desert, a frozen planet, a jungle/swamp planet, another frozen planet, and finally a kind of alien world that looked a whole lot more alien back when in the movie Alien.

Aboard the ship, you have three crewmates who you can interact with between missions. Aida who has a chest bigger than Lara Croft, and can't pronounce her own name (maybe in the future Aida is pronounced as Ida!). Maybe in the future tough military women wear their hair in sorority girl ponytails on top of their heads. Maybe in the future they also go on long mixed-gender interstellar voyages with their breasts all but hanging out. For comic relief there's a little blue guy named Ne'Ban who speaks poor English and is recently assigned as the pilot of your ship. Completing the awesome trio is Tsaak the technician and the weapons expert. This guy's back-story is that he's an alcoholic, which isn't really surprising since he chain smokes like a fiend.

Unreal II's graphics are just plain awesome - from the huge outdoor environments to the narrow corridors, it's obvious that Legend took their time to make sure every environment looked clean and awe-inspiring. The enemies you fight aren't so consistently great, though; generally, the more bug-like the enemies are, the uglier they are.

The big mutated spiders in this game were not only extremely annoying, but they looked terrible in my opinion. I kind of wish FPS developers would stop trying to shove spiders into almost every game - at least in Unreal 2, you get a gun to throw spiders at the enemies later on. Unreal 2 includes the rag-doll physics code that also is in Unreal Tournament 2003 - this is the system that makes enemy bodies slump to the ground in a somewhat realistic fashion. Also the game features some of the best fire effects ever seen in any game.

Unreal II's twelve large missions are standard shooter fare -- you walk around and kill things. Enemies vary from grunting aliens to human mercenaries to bio-engineered mutant spiders, with varying levels of intelligence. The human enemies are far more interesting to fight compared to the brainless monsters like the spiders that slowly creep toward you and require a heavy dose of ammo. Unreal II also throws some pretty usual sort of boss levels and a few missions in which you set up a defensive perimeter using special laser fences and automated turrets, briefly placing you in the role of engineer. Like many shooters we've seen lately, Unreal II saves the best for the last.

The final two missions are easily two of the best Unreal II has to offer and should provide gamers some satisfaction for sticking it out until the very end.

This game offers some 15 odd weapons to you ranging from your standard assault rifle, shotgun and rocket launcher to more exotic alien weapons like the Drakk laser rifle. A grenade launcher can hold up to six types of bombs, including concussion, incendiary, and an EMP grenade that shuts down anything electrical within range.

Since your body armor has a number of computer systems in it, you'll be more than aware when someone hits you with one. All of the weapons have a secondary fire mode. Overall the weapons are pretty serviceable to keep you alive during a battle but doesn't quite pack the same visceral punch of SoF2 or Halo, but some good sound effects help draw you into the action, especially the shotgun, which lets out a satisfying "BOOM" with each shot. Bullets dink off of metal surfaces, and aside from the weak hissing of the assault rifle, sound effects are pretty well done.
The most unfortunate thing with Unreal 2 is that there's no multiplayer mode available. Your only options are to go back and play through the game again, or build your own adventures using the built-in Unreal editor which is undoubtedly the best map editor currently available. Also there isn't any replay value so playing through the whole game again sucks hard. Unreal 2 looks pretty but looks aside the game is nothing but well...10 hours of mindless entertainment.
Finally, Unreal 2 promises a wild ride for hardcore Unreal fans and a so-so time to others. If you had to absolute pick up a copy of Unreal 2 wait for it to go on sale.

RATINGS

Gameplay - 6/10
Graphics - 9/10
Sound - 9/10
Technical - 8/10
OVERALL - 7.5/10

Note- The Overall rating is not an average but reflects the reviewer's thoughts on the game as a whole.

Pros - Amazing graphics and sound, potentially bug-free.
Cons - Level designing could use some work, lousy AI, very little replay value, no multiplayer support.

The final word.
The long awaited sequel to the original Unreal looks pretty and polished but offers nothing ground breaking.