Unreal II: The Awakening

The Good
No doubt, Unreal 2 is a cinematic experience then standard 08/15 game, this includes a:

1.) Breathtaking Scenery with beautiful textures and models. 2.) Very suitable music and soundeffects. 3.) Interesting characters, with an amazing voiceacting and witty dialogues (english version). 4.) Great variety of weapons. 5.) For non FPS-Freaks (like me) it has a moderate difficult which makes it less frustrating and more fun to play.

The Bad
It has it flaws, no doubt, I seen follows:

Major weaknesses:

1.) I think for FPS-Freaks this is way to easy, and when there is no challenge, there is bore. 2.) Mainstory is really thin, but even then they managed to put some cliches into it.

Minor weaknesses:

1.) Moving around in the spaceship was pretty useless, in that case cutscenes would have been more than sufficient. 2.) I would like to choose for myself which weapons I take to a mission. 3.) Took sometimes ages to load. 4.) It was short, but on the other hand not too short for me.

The Bottom Line
Unreal 2 is a very eyecandy Singleplayer FPS, for everyone who likes SF and a little action. For me, who usually plays RGP, Strategy or Adventures it was a neat alternation. For its cheap price today its no loss except you are a hardcore FPS Player, then be aware for an easy and short trip.

Footnote: I was surprised to see C64 Graphic Legend Hugh "Last Ninja" Riley worked on that title. Most of artist/musicians/coder of that time are gone or do something completely different the industry.

The Good
Sure, looks count. When a game is as pretty as Unreal II, you forgive it a lot. I plodded on to the end merely to see one more beautiful alien planet. Occasionally, this visual splendor almost becomes compelling. When a planet infested by a huge spongy organism erupts in angry green spouts of acid, it's a money-shot moment, even if the effects are all decorative and irrelevant to gameplay. I also liked - gasp! - the story. If you persevere until the end, you're in for a satisfying conclusion. Rarely do game narratives rise above the level of idiocy; this one, after plenty of dross, finally does. Nice voice acting, too.

The Bad
Everything else is terrible.

Let's start with player movement. There are two speeds: creeping and crawling. Seriously cramping the range of available tactics, this hobbled mobility reduces fighting to a series of repetitive pot-shots. Mind, enemies aren't slow. Only you are.

Although level design is pretty, it's also painfully linear. The highly-skilled designers have created the illusion of broad, expansive landscapes. But it's all superficial, as they've squandered the graphics engine's power by making you stick to a narrow path no more divergent than, say, the one in ten-year old Quake. Frustratingly, you even come across features in the landscape that you can climb or jump in some areas, but not in others.

Enemy AI? Forget it. Enemy character design? Pfffft. The tiresome Skaarj are back doing their goofy somersaults, joined by (shock!) spiders, (amazing!) weird aliens, and (omigod!) humans in armor. This colorless, uninspired work is instantly forgettable. You never feel menaced - annoyed, maybe. Partly that's also the fault of the designers having no sense of rhythm, drama, or pacing; long stretches of the game are inexplicably unpopulated. And when they do bump into something successful - for instance, using friendly AI soldiers to protect you - they quickly drop the idea. You can lead a game designer to green alien acid pools, apparently, but you can't make him drink.

While I appreciated the finale, the story is filled with cliches borrowed from more successful games and movies. Expect no originality. Five minutes into the game you're given to understand that celebrated female military heroes in the future will dress like Hooters chicks, and it's mostly downhill (or downbra, you might say) from there.

The Bottom Line
With the commercial and critical failure of Unreal II, this great-looking game can be picked up for a song (I paid $10). Though highly polished, it's about as dull as it is beautiful. This is corporate design in all its safe, cliched, derivative, formulaic glory, with a heavy dosage of hack work substituting for creativity: step right up and be relieved of your imagination.

The Good
The graphics are nice.

The Bad
The gameplay is BORING. The actors are BORING. The music and sound are BORING.

The Bottom Line
Well, well, this is the successor to a game that wanted to revolutionize the genre from within and partially succeeded. The hype was high on this one, and it got pretty good ratings, but is it really a good game? Depends on what kind of gamer You are. The casual gamer will like the easy gameplay, linear level design and not-so-deep immersion. The games player will like the graphics and soon turn to something else. The hardcore gamer will probably turn to something else 6 hours later after he played through U2 once.

U2 is very light, it features some great graphics and environments, and it also offers a plot. That's all I can say neutrally.

The plot is boring, the characters are so superficial that the helpless try of giving them depth through conversation is in vain. The hero is quite strange, and hard to identify with. The story is very linear and the enemies You encounter a pretty faceless. The infamous Skarrj appear only rarely, the boss enemies are mostly huge, and the weapons are pretty unimaginative.

Conclusion: nice to see, but it has no identity.