ATARI Unreal II: The Awakening

Rating:
Summary: When it doesn't crash, it's... decent.
Review: I owned Unreal and was summarily awed by its depth and storyline. Really blew me away, but I eventually got to the end and except for a brief foray into Unreal Tourney, left gaming behind for a few years.

I picked up Unreal 2 second-hand, and I'm glad I did. It's not worth full price, and it is suprisingly badly coded and uses an awful script for the storyline.

The bad code is unforgiveable in a game such as Unreal 2. It relies upon specialized graphics processing and a specific DirectX level. This is not uncommon for the high-end graphics of a first-person shooter. The General Protection Faults, on the other hand, are criminal. This game just won't run for more than thirty minutes without throwing a GPF and dumping me out.

A game that doesn't reliably play is hardly worth a star. Assuming it might just be my machine, I still have enough problems with the game itself to recommend avoidance.

The storyline is a total snooze. I love the increased detail and depth of control given to the environment (opening hatches, talking to people, etc), but players are locked into a scripted set of responses, and there's no skipping the interludes. Talk about buzzkill: you finish a mission then have to suffer through crummy dialogue. The voiceover accents are weird, maybe the only thing that keeps me entertained during these time wasters is trying to place the origin of the accent.

Are the weapons cooler? Sure. Are the monsters scarier? Yeah, they are an upgrade. But it's Unreal, still, without a good story and no advancement in character interaction tech or ideas.

I would say "pass" on this one, even if it's heavily discounted.

Fred