Rating: Summary: A game not advised for the weak hearted !!! Review: ...and I mean it. I dont have words to describe the graphics. It is excellent. Background music is great (although repetitive). The first half may be a little dragging, but the later half can make you sweat. Once I started the game, I could not think of anything else but Unreal. I also took some days off to play the game. I recommend it for any player who wants 'great stuff' in his game.
Rating: Summary: Pretty cool Review: A very fun game indeed, although the gamplay is a little boring. But overall a great game but defenetly costs WAY to much.
Rating: Summary: Definitely lacking atmosphere Review: Do you remember how DOOM had you sitting up all night just to see what was round the next corner ?? Also, that ghostly soundtrack and the eerie lighting ? Then we had Quake, with it's dirty brown palette and Nine inch nails soundtrack. Nearly lost my job over that one - EXCELLENT !!Then we all ran out and bought Unreal ?? Hmmmm, I found myself <ESC>aping out of this one after 20 minutes...... Just didn't have that addictiveness to it. From a gameplay standpoint though, the AI in the monsters is top notch (Try the Difficult setting). On a VOODOO board the graphics are just excellent. But, it just doesn't have atmosphere....... It's a nice try at a very "hit or miss" market but, this one missed more than it hit for me.
Rating: Summary: Doom will never look the same Review: Doom will never look the same, not after Unreal, the realest thing to hit the Mac. It's a first, it's fun like Marathon, It's cool like Quake, It's nice-lookin' like Quake II, and I cant beat it. And I can beat Quake in 6 hours using primary weapons on nightmare. The AI lashes out and pulls back faster than you can fire, no matter the weapons are all long range, but where'd that critter go? talking' to his big brothers? Where are they? Behind you.
Rating: Summary: Not the Breakthrough Epic Games Hoped It Would Be Review: First of, let's just say Unreal could've been one of the best games released in the 90's if it wasn't for a few flaws. First, the networking code for multiplayer gaming was disastrous. Eventhough it was somewhat fixed about 6 months later, it hurt the multiplayer community of Unreal enough that it could never really compete with the established community of iD's software's Quake and Quake II. Now, however, the network code of Unreal (thanks to recent patches) is rock solid, and the community, although small, still exists, which is more than you can say about some releases of 1998 (like SiN or Shogo). Second, it was too much game for the hardware of the time. The game code was a bit bogged down, Unreal was said to be a resource hog, and it brought even brand-new systems to its knees at the time. When it was originally released in early summer 1998, no Riva's TNT video cards or Pentium-III chipsets had been released. The most consumers could hope for (as far as power was concerned) were 3dfx's Voodoo2 cards in Scan-line Interleave (SLI) configuration so they could keep up with the graphical demands of Unreal, which ran choppy and slow on older systems. And this particular configuration ran at well over $400 at the time, a bit much for the casual gamer. Now, of course, new "gaming" computers ship with Voodoo3's, TNT2's, or GeForce256's standard alongside a Pentium-III or an Athlon, which is more than enough power to run this game. Now everyone, even those buying $1500 PC's can enjoy stunning graphics and captivating imagery without slowdown. Hardware is not a problem. If you bought a new computer since the summer of this year, you can run Unreal, and you can run it quite well. What about the game content itself? I will be perfectly honest when I say that Unreal, at it's time, had some of the most amazing graphics I had ever seen on a computer... ever. The first hour of the game I was mesmerized by what you encounter... Shiny floors that reflect your image, halos of light appear around spotlights, you creep through a system of vents that's completely clouded by a green fog. Then when you step outside you are in a natural utopia. You can hear the wind howl as you are in a canyon stepping out of a crashed spaceship. There's wildlife (both friendly and un-), and beautiful, rippling pools of water. Further in the game, there's more emotional encounters. In a deserted battle arena at nightime, you face down with the first boss, a creature the size of a house that you pulls up rocks from the earth and throws them at you. Throughout the game, you travel through occupied spaceships, medieval castles, ancient Aztec-themed pyramids, a village in the sky, a crater in the middle of a volcano where a demon lives, underground rivers that must be navigated by raft, and plenty of challenging, but not too-challenging puzzles to give you rest from the action. When you are done playing the single-player mode, you can play online against other opponents, or use Unreal's unique feature of 'bots', artificially intelligent opponents controlled by the computer that fight you on multiplayer levels and act many times as a real player would. Included with the game is the actual map editing package that Epic Games, makers of Unreal and Unreal Tournament, used to design the whole game! This means not only can you design your own deathmatch arena (complete with any props or effects you saw in the game), but that there's also hundreds of user-made maps that you can play once the game gets a bit stale. Overall, this game is an absolute STEAL for this price (at time of review about fifteen dollars). It's fun for both the beginning and experienced gamer, and there's an option to cut-out the amount of blood shown so it's also kid friendly. Highly recommended for gaming software under $20.00
Rating: Summary: Unreal is fun to play but its day is over. Review: For less than 10 dollars Unreal is fun and worth its cost but for hardcore gun-toting maniacs thrn Unreal Toyrnament is your calling. However if you just want to play a good shooter with nice graphics and to practice skills against an OK AI then Unreal is a good buy.
Rating: Summary: The best graphics, game play, and engine to date Review: Here is something I just don't understand. This game was released about 6 months after Quake II. A number of reviews I read were saying that Unreal was behind in the times and Quake II offered so much more. LIKE WHAT? Quake II uses OpenGL, but the graphics are NOWHERE NEAR Unreal. The sky for one is 100x better in Unreal. The sound is better, the AI, the weapons, and so much more. In fact, even though I see a 3dfx OpenGL option in Quake II, it just looks like Direct3D to me. I'm not saying Quake II sucks, but you can easily tell WAY more time was put into Unreal. As for the requirements, you really do need a fast system to play it. The first one I started playing it on was a Pentium 233 MMX without an accelerator. It was decent, but not great. You can play it, but there was some chop. Last summer I bought a Voodoo2 card, and as soon as I plugged it in, the graphics were much better, the framerate doubled, and the game moved faster. Later I went to a Pentium II 266, then 450, but still, the Voodoo made a difference. I DEFINITELY recommend an accelerator. The game is really good without one, but you will be amazed when you see the difference. Reflections, lighting, water, the sky, and countless other additions. When I stepped outside the ship and saw the sky with 3dfx Glide for the first time, I serious stared at it for 15 minutes. It is UNREAL. It is very hard to visualize the graphics without seeing them. Another thing that is difficult is to say the parts that are the best. If I said the trees, someone else might say the buildings, if I said the waterfalls, another might say the castles. This game is very cheap now. Even if you do not have an accelerator, get the game. There is no way to describe it, you just have to see it in action. In my mind, it is FAR better than all the Quake games, Half-Life, Sin, Blood II, and so many others. The graphics were the main selling point, but it does offer much more than that. Try and hit a Skaarj with a rocket! They constantly duck. You can't hit one from a distance, you have to get close to it, and they are FAST! Some highlights: - Waterfalls and water fountains - Underwater passages with great detail - Stand still and watch the screen; it moves a little - your breathing! - Trees and plants with amazing detail - There are twigs and such on the ground - An AMAZING multi-colored sky with 2 suns - Transparent water with plants - Detailed rocks - Very detailed indoor architecture - Candles and torches lighting rooms - Walk into a multi-colored room and look at your weapon, then turn to the sides -- the shading of the light reflects on your weapon! - In the ship, the same room where you get the armor has a mirrored floor, look down! This game will probably take you a long time to solve. Some levels are small, some are HUGE. Just kick back and check out the scenery and listen to the sounds of the birds, water, and wind! The name says it all: UNREAL.
Rating: Summary: Pretty good, has more story than most, tries new things Review: i didn't like this game when i first saw it at E3, but when i went back and played it, it turned out to be pretty good. Not too many boss monsters (i hate those things), some of the monsters are rather agile, the weapons are new, the graphics are extremely pretty (nice colors, great water), you can configure all sorts of things, there are some good guys to help you out (they show you hidden goodies) and the game makes a lot of effort to be stable. Hey, they even have a story and little logs you can read to get a feel for the story. It's not as story-scripted as Half-Life (but then, it doesn't have the awful Xen world either), and many people prefer the realistic weapons of Quake to the unusual ones of Unreal. i like the built-in bots in multiplayer (i think this was the first game to ship with them), but i'm told the net play is really slow
Rating: Summary: Pretty good, has more story than most, tries new things Review: i didn't like this game when i first saw it at E3, but when i went back and played it, it turned out to be pretty good. Not too many boss monsters (i hate those things), some of the monsters are rather agile, the weapons are new, the graphics are extremely pretty (nice colors, great water), you can configure all sorts of things, there are some good guys to help you out (they show you hidden goodies) and the game makes a lot of effort to be stable. Hey, they even have a story and little logs you can read to get a feel for the story. It's not as story-scripted as Half-Life (but then, it doesn't have the awful Xen world either), and many people prefer the realistic weapons of Quake to the unusual ones of Unreal. i like the built-in bots in multiplayer (i think this was the first game to ship with them), but i'm told the net play is really slow
Rating: Summary: Very fun Multiplayer Review: I first saw this game in action at a dusty little apple store, and i was intrigued by the graphics. I decided to buy it for my PC. Now i've never touched any computer game before this, so i can't compare it to quake or any of those other games. I love the multiplayer cooperative mode, and the final patch ... fixes all the network and hardware problems with the initial release, and finally added much needed support for my Nvidia graphics card. (Software-rendering mode is super-ugly). Definatly a classic!
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