Techtite's PC Game Reviews!

"...does outstanding graphics outweigh a so-so storyline? In a way, yes. To be fair, the original, 1998 Unreal was best known for its outstanding graphics, and in that light, Unreal 2 delivers."

---from the review

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Sidebar :

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Toggle Those Graphics Defaults! It deserves mentioning that even with a top-notch PC, some mild tweaking of the default graphics settings was required. To be fair, once tweaked, a Pentium 4, 2.52 GHz, 512 MB RAM, and a Geforce 4 card, could play this game in 1024x768 mode, with 32 bit textures and high quality graphics, with no choppiness to the frame rate worth mentioning. BUT, you may want to go into the Options menu, and change those default graphics options! In particular is a "Misc" options menu which has some shadow textures defaults that need to be turned OFF (at least, for the time being). There's  a toggle for regular shadows, Light Source Shadows, "Blob" Shadows, and "Blur" Shadows, and let's just say some or all the above just confused the daylights out of my graphics card no matter how high-end it truly is. In the end,  didn't think shadows were that big of a whoop, and shut them all off. Suit yourself if you want to experiment with what shadows work on your card, though if you're experiencing off "flickering" to textures it's probably because of shadows that aren't being applied right. Shut them off, and you'll be fine.

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Feel free to contribute. As always, review submissions are accepted!

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It's been five years since the original Unreal was released in 1998. Since then, countless "Unreal clones" have met and exceeded the original. Deus Ex had alternate story arcs and an evolving story; Thief and Thief 2 had stealth tactics that proved to be far more challenging than the typical "shoot everything that shoots back" cliché. The bar has been raised. As a result, while Unreal 2 is a magnificent achievement in graphics, action and thrills, it does not raise the bar any further.

The truth is, there's little need to waste time telling the "story" here. You're a cop from the future (what happened to the original game's hero is a mystery) who is Captain of a rag-tag ship of disgraced ex-soldiers, now working freelance for a trading company. Your travels come across an artifact --one of seven-- which the military is suddenly very psyched about. if you find all seven, you'll get all your old ranks back...or so they say. Each mission begins and ands on this ship, with First Officer Aida showing you a mission briefing via her holographic meeting room, and weapons officer Isaak showing you the latest cool weaponry that'll help you survive.

Shooter game fans will wonder about the "cool weaponry." This includes a standard laser pistol that never needs ammo (for when you have none), and other futuristic versions of the shotgun, rocket launcher, and so on. When returning from missions against alien races, Isaak will make the enemies' weapons user-friendly, so you can use them in later missions. These alien gadgets include a lightning lance, a sort of high-tech "rail gun," and a bio-weapon that shoots --I kid you not-- alien baby spiders that swarm your enemy. Each weapon has an alt-fire that either delays charges or enhances firepower, each of which takes longer to reload.

Such weapons are used for enemies and levels that, on the most part, are quite inspired. Cyborg enemies emit a "glow" when defeated; alien enemies seem florescent here and there. As for levels, while some are quite short, others place you in command of a vulnerable civilian zone, with added inventory like automatic gun turrets, force field fences, and soldiers, which can be placed wherever you please to make the mission easier. Such levels may not be as large and imaginative as those in the original game (remember the 1999 mission pack, where one level had you constantly slipping across solid ice?), though the high-level graphics are a good consolation. These graphics are so exceptional, that with all the bells and whistles turned on, my high-end Pentium 4, 2.52 GHz, 512 MB RAM, and Geforce 4 MX 440, seems to just barely qualify! What's more, the default settings were not the best settings, even for a high end system such as the one used for this review (See the grey sidebar, for more on this). Gamers, no matter how high end their system, may want to tweak the default graphic settings a little.

However, does outstanding graphics outweigh a so-so storyline? In a way, yes. To be fair, the original, 1998 Unreal was best known for its outstanding graphics, and in that light, Unreal 2 delivers. Even something as subtle as a cigarette leads to a "trail" of smoke that slowly disappears as they walk around. When characters do their job, they do not simply "bump" into you like automatons of other games; they look at you as they walk by, and, quite frankly, seem to wonder why you're in their way at all. When talking with NPCs, characters will turn their head to look at you, if turning completely around is not necessary. I thought I could trick the realism of this game by moving around while a character was talking, but I couldn't. They will even look down at you if you crouch.

However, realistic visuals aside, there isn't much environmental interaction here. This is very disappointing, particularly after playing 2002 games like Freedom Force and Arx Fatalis, where just about every single object could be interacted with in some way. Consider how amusing it is to be the "captain" of your ship, with the freedom to explore it at will, only to have not one single area actually do anything! You can talk to your weapons officer about new weapons, your first officer Aida about mission briefings, and maybe start a chat with your alien pilot  for no other reason than he looks totally cool. Aside from that; this ship is merely a barely-interactive "safe zone" between missions; nothing more.

Such limitations in interactivity is not surprising after 5 years. Ever since the Unreal engine was over-simplified for multiplayer "frag-fests" like Unreal Tournament and UT2003, little has been done to make the game engine useful for storytelling and puzzle solving. In the "tournaments," this is no big deal, though in this single-player story, it hinders the story. Consider the core story of a race of beings that took a powerful device and split it into seven parts, for safe keeping. You'd think such a race would create puzzles, locks and barricades that were more elaborate than could be "unlocked" with a simple explosive device. Clicking "use" on a trio of explosives was about the only major adventure-game puzzle of the entire game. Sure, you're busy shooting the bad guys and trying not to get shot yourself, but still...

I think one of the little details that set the original Unreal apart from the typical 1998 shooter was, it was not a "shoot everything, enter next level, repeat" type of game. For one thing, there were these kindly four-armed aliens called the Na Poli, which if you saved from the evil Skaarj soldiers, would reward you with secret areas which included a power-up of some sort. Not bothering to save these kindly aliens, in harder difficulty settings, effectively meant losing the game, since winning without such power-ups was unlikely. The resulting game was far more evolved than a cliché "bug hunt" with a rocket launcher.

Which brings us to my biggest beef with Unreal 2; while there is the occasional mission to keep an NPC alive while they do this or that, there are few "friendlies" to save here, and very little reward if you bother. In the first mission, a young technician is barricaded in his office, who tells you via the cameras and intercom how to find him. Talk about bummers: you cannot save this poor kid (!), making this whole first mission a big fat can of nothing. If you ask me, there should've been innocent bystanders for each level, which if saved lead to secrets, short-cuts and power-ups.

Of course, I was hardly this analytical for "shoot everything moving" shooters like Serious Sam 2 last year, so I am hardly saying this is a bad game. After half a decade since its predecessor, however, you'd expect something as groundbreaking as the original. If this was Serious Sam 3, I'd be wetting my pants. Unfortunately, it's Unreal 2...and it's hard to not be a bit disappointed.

---Techtite