Unreal 2: The Awakening Review

First Person Shooters.

God, how I love them. I've loved them since day one. They are, without a doubt, my favorite genre, and as such they are held to a high standard by me, and by much of the gaming populace.

Dammit, if only I had the time for a quick dip.

I don't think I can jump the distance. Toss me!

The FPS had its roots in the single player adventure - where the player begins his travels with his popgun, a smattering of ammunition and is pointed at a horde of enemies, and told to go get 'em. Several levels, and a few days of gameplay later, the gamer emerges triumphant from his dungeon crawling adventures; a bit bloody, a bit sweaty, and very satisfied after a successful campaign. The original Unreal was such a campaign - it was gorgeous to look at, the weaponry was difficult to master, and the story was gripping, engaging, and took a good long time to play to completion.

Since those days, the FPS genre has become so popular, that the games must evolve in order to grab the attention of today's gamers - the story must be intense, the visuals must be perfect, the weapons must be imaginative, it must harness the latest and greatest technology flawlessly - the game must do everything it can to stay on a player's hard drive for longer than 3 days. Fail in any of these, and the game finds itself banished to the bargain software bin, never to return.

So, in an effort to bring back the heyday of the single-player FPS, Epic has partnered with Legend to bring us Unreal II - The Awakening, the sequel to Epic's wildly imaginative and popular single-player first-person adventure that set the bar for countless games that have followed it. The hype machine was in full effect going up to the game's release (part of which was supplied be me, thank you very much), and now we come to the Moment of Truth - was all the hype worth it? Does the game live up to the expectations we, the gaming community, demand it does?

Yes.

And No.

Allow me to explain.

The game takes place several hundred years in mankind's future, about the same time as the first Unreal game, with a new cast of characters. TCA Marshal John Dalton patrols the butt-crack of space in his ship, the Atlantis. Accompanying him in his travels are his first-mate, Aida (Mmm...Mate. - Ed); the ship's engineer and weapons master Isaac; and the ship's pilot Ne'Ban. Together, the crew are sent on what is best described as a galactic scavenger hunt to collect 7 artifacts from the far reaches of the galaxy that, once combined, are supposed to create some sort of super-duper weapon that everyone wants. So once you collect said weapon, the galaxy's biggest bulls-eye is painted on you. But hey - you've got weapons of mass destruction and an itchy trigger finger, right? Bring 'em on.

Unreal II utilizes the same graphics engine as Unreal Tournament 2003 (compliments of Epic), which, if you read our preview, has been toned for single-player gaming. The speed is slower, allowing the player more time to appreciate the game's excellent graphics capabilities. And make no mistake - they are absolutely gorgeous. Each of the levels in the game have been painstakingly rendered so that each one is extremely different from the preceding level, complete with excellent atmospheric effects that complete the picture. The player is treated to breathtaking views of picturesque landscapes, including a level inside a living planet, in a snowy wasteland, and a harsh, acid rain mottled landscape that is truly alien. Accompanying the atmospheric effects is a more realistic particle effect system than we've seen in some time. Fire a smoke grenade, then put a rocket through the smoke cloud, and you'll see what I mean. Lastly, the game takes advantage of the rag-doll physics model system introduced in Unreal Tournament, as your enemies can be buffeted from every angle with concussion grenades and rocket splashes, and react more realistically than before. The developers have spent an inordinate amount of time making this game look more astonishing than any FPS I have ever seen.

Accompanying those excellent graphics is a solid set of sounds. The game is supposed to take full advantage or EAX, which should've provided the auditory component necessary to complete the game's wonderful atmosphere (I say "should've" for a very good reason; read on). Toss into the mix a full cadre of futuristic weaponry, each with at least 2 modes of fire, a host of creepy-looking bad guys ready to tear you a new asshole, and you should have a GOTY winning FPS, right? Right?

Wrong.

Here's why the game doesn't work.

What the...?

You will pay the price for your lack of vision!

If you're going to have a single-player only FPS, while graphics, sounds, weapons and AI are important, the single most important piece you must have is the story. Why do I care about these artifacts to want to get them so badly? Just because Dalton wants to be a Marine again? If that's the case, the game never really gives why Dalton cares about the Marines so much. The same is true for the other characters. The motivation for why they do the things they do and feel the things they feel are explored in some detail, but not enough to make the storyline truly compelling. The characters are very well drawn, and the voice actors do their jobs admirably, but the story itself is nothing much to write home to Mom about. The characters are ultimately shallow and two-dimensional - what you see is (largely) what you get. The game's story reveals itself in the interludes between levels, much like that of a soap opera. Play a level, learn some story facts. Play the next level, learn more story facts. Wheee. Also, the player must seek out this story, if he so chooses. A good amount of the story content can be skipped entirely with no effect on the game whatsoever, robbing the player of a good portion of the reason to buy a single-player FPS in the first place.

Secondly, the gameplay is largely on rails. Each level has a set of objectives that must be completed in order for the game to proceed. There are no real decisions to be made, no clever puzzles to solve... Come to think of it, the gameplay is so straightforward and lacking any creative input from the team, it's basically missing any kind of depth whatsoever. Granted, there are a few notable exceptions to this; like the addition of defensive turrets and grids, which you can use to set up defensive parameters around important structures or key characters in the game. In a couple of very short missions you will coordinate base defense and issue orders to several of your teammates. This represents a nice strategic addition to the gameplay (especially because the team AI is very good), but it's hardly enough to keep you interested throughout the game.

The "defensive missions" are over in a flash, and then it's back to pulling levers and just running through a couple of corridors to get to the mini-boss. Besides including the concept of defensive parameters, the team at Legend Entertainment made one other attempt to give the gameplay a more lasting appeal by introducing an alternative way to finish several of the missions. In actuality, this comes down to a simple matter of whether or not something you did or did not do will result in more bad guys appearing out of nowhere and attacking you before the mission is done. There is only one outcome to each of the missions; it's just that in a couple of them there will be two different routes to getting there. The campaign itself is completely linear, so you can just forget about any sort of branching plot, or genuine nonlinear gameplay.

What all this means is that once the game is completed, there are no alternate paths to take the player down, no other story elements to discover, no bonuses for discovering all of the game's secrets, no extra levels, nothing to keep the game on a player's hard drive an hour after completing the game. Any hardcore gamer (and let's face facts here...how many of the people reading this review would not consider themselves hardcore?) can finish this game in under 10 hours. 10 Hours! I've spent more time pleasuring my (ex)wife in one sitting. Today's games, if they expect to sell well, need more playtime than 10 measly hours. Since there is no multiplayer to this game, that cuts the replayability of this game to nearly zero. Could multiplayer save this game? That, my friends, is a debate for another day.

Next, the technological marvel that is Unreal II is not without its flaws. Some people are claiming that they're getting awesome frame rates even in very high resolutions, and with all the details maxed out. We've tested Unreal 2 on three different systems (all of them have Sound Blaster cards and use EAX 3D sound support), and the game experienced noticable frame rate drops even on high-end rigs. We had numerous problems with EAX in the later levels, with all the environmental effects slowing the game to 10-15fps, which is never fun - and this is on a high-end (GeForce 4 Ti 4600, Athlon 2200 XP, 750 RAM, Audigy2) system.

Things would get especially bad once the screen was crowded with player models. One can only imagine how much must be toned down and turned off on a mid-grade or low end system to make the game playable - and how much of the eye and ear candy is lost. Toss into the mix a few desktop crash bugs and falling through the maps a few times forcing a re-load of the level shows how much polish the engine and level design is lacking. After fiddling with the in-game options for a while we've discovered that the sole source of most of the performance problems is the said EAX support. If turned off, the game's frame rate will go up by about 10fps and the crashes will disappear.

The saving grace (as far as the single-player goes) is that the full development tools accompany the game, so that the mod masters of the world can create full adventures and campaigns using the game's tools. While this sounds like a great idea, and would prolong the game's life on my hard drive, I don't buy a game so someone else can create the adventure for me - I bought it so I could play the game the way the developers intended me to play it. And if all they can give me is 10 hours, I'll take it, but don't expect the game to stick around for months on end.

So let's weigh the bad against the good, and talk turkey. Is this, or is this not a good game?

All of the game's flaws aside, this is a very good old-school shooter. Visually stunning, technologically advanced, and well balanced, any FPS gamer worth his salt deserves to take a look at this game. The biggest problem with the game is that if you blink, you may miss part of this game, and given the small amount of actual content, you can't afford to miss much.

Closing comments by Uros "2Lions" Jojic

Even though I was very excited about the eerie atmosphere generated in some of the levels, and fairly excited by some of the in-game action, as well as the gorgeous visuals, I never really felt like finishing just one more level before dinner. Bottom line, the stupid and uninspiring storyline, coupled with some EAX related problems never got me hooked on this one. Unreal 2 is still an entertaining game, but it's way too simplistic and "old school" to live up to today's single player FPS standards. For me, it's not the length; it's how you use it if you know what I mean.