Rating: 
Summary: pretty, yet mediocre game.
Review: as expected, Unreal 2 has some pretty nice graphics and environs. each world is nicely done and filled with ambient wildlife, great lighting, colors, textures, all that stuff.unfortunately, Unreal 2 is anything but. gameplay is very uninspired and trite. it's more of the same: move linearly from point to point, blow up a few baddies, press a switch, go to another point, get blocked from main route, find some alternate route, kick more butt, ad infinitum. occasionally, you'll need to protect a scientist or fight with a couple of marines, but those moments are rare. the only refreshing feature is the use of turrets and laser shields. a few times, you will need to strategically place them to defend your position from overwhelming enemies. unfortunately, their usefulness is limited and you will find yourself out on the field doing much of the work. one of the things i enjoyed about this game is weapon selection. sound effects are nicely done and you can feel a noticeable punch when you fire. there's no useless weapons--each weapon is ideal for a given situation and there are two firing modes. you've got a gun that shoots spiders(?); sniper gun with a scope that really zooms up close; grenade launcher with several different types of grenades; powerful shotgun that has an alternate firing mode that blasts your enemies on fire; and finally, my favorite, the ultimate weapon that fires mini-blackholes and sucks in your opponents. you are taken from mission to mission on different planets in your small space cruiser. this could have been a nice touch, but it's poorly implemented. the ship is merely used as a device for useless briefings and conversations with your three crewpeople that move the story along. like the story, the conversations are linear as well and frequently consist of 1) yes 2) no. there are no conversation chains; just a number for each 'tell me about' subject. much more could have been done with the ship. for instance, it seems as if the whole galaxy is after these relics that you are collecting and (anyone notice?) for some reason the ship is never in any danger while you freely roam the galaxy. some space battles or anything other than the usual FPS faire would have been nice. watch a few cheesy science fiction movies or games and you'll see where Unreal 2 gets its plot. as suggested earlier, you need to recover all 7 pieces of some ancient powerful artifact. regarding your mission, there's hints of a conspiracy and things are not what they seem. come on! don't insult our intelligence here. hasn't this sci-fi theme been played out enough already? AI is about the same as in Unreal. player movement is very slow (must be the power armor) and it's hard to dodge the highly accurate fire from your enemies. you spend lots of time running behind cover instead of jumping around and running circles around your opponents. no multiplayer. these days, this is inexcusable. of course, in the future, they'll probably sell a multi-player add-on for 30 bucks. sigh. game looks beautiful and runs smoothly at a nice framerate on my mid-high end system (P4 2000, Geforce 4600). though, i've heard some people have had problems with it crashing. music is not bad, but not memorable either. finally, the worst thing about this game is that an average player can complete this in 1-2 days. with no multiplayer, there's no replay value other than the next difficulty setting, but what fun is that when the missions are all the same? if you really want this game, you should rent it, wait until it hits the bargain bin or get it through other means. overall, a true FPS fan will enjoy Unreal 2 for a few days. players who enjoy this genre but are looking for something new or something unreal will be very disappointed; this is just by-the-book FPS.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't be fooled by the name! This is a great game!
Review: I read some of what other people said about this game. But I think the problem comes with trying to live up to the high expectations of Unreal 1. That is really the only problem I found in this game is that it had nothing to do with the first Unreal. Maybe some of the names of people and planets, some of the "Monsters" had a little of the same look. But for the most part everything else is different. And really I think if this game came out with a different name, nobody would be the wiser. I think this game is probably closer to Halo then it is to Unreal. (I mean running around in some suit, with some lady voice help guiding you.)
But with this all said, I thought this game was super! The graphics is what I was surprised at! This was probably the first "new" game I had gotten in over a year. I couldn't believe how great they looked, the "earth views" and other planets was just spectacular! The Guns were very creative! The "bad guys" were also creative.
It did bother me that the game had to "load" ever little while, but it shows how big the game is. The game was also a little short.
But I think for the price it was well worth it! I also think with the new Multiplayer add on you can download would make the game even better!
Bottom line, if you are expecting an Unreal 2. Don't, it has nothing to do with it. But if you want a good first person Shooting game, with creative guns, and "bad guys" go a head and buy it!
I have also heard this is coming out on XBOX, and is suppose to be really good with multiplayer action! I think that would be worth while too.!
Rating:
Summary: What ever happened to Unreal?
Review: I cannot say i have ever felt so dissapointed with a game before. This game does not resemble the original unreal at all. It is appaling. The only reason it got 2 stars is cos against other games its OK. See for urself but i warn anyone who has played any other unreal game - JUST BECAUSE IT CONTAINS THE WORD "UNREAL" DOES NOT MEAN THAT IT IS GOOD. You have been warned.
Rating: 
Summary: the beauty is only surface-deep
Review: don't believe the hype. no game could ever be made that would live up to the expectations set for unreal 2, and this is no exception. once you get over the stunning graphics, the fact that this is a very flat, very shallow game hits you. with one path to the end of every mission (which are usually *very* short), and almost non-existant opportunities for strategy, desire to replay this game usually comes solely from wanting to see the excellent graphics again. characters and the environment are finely detailed with high-resolution skins and particles that are actually particles instead of sprites. the lighting engine is one of the best i've seen, and it creates some very enjoyable atmospheres when combined with the high-quality meshes and texture-work. but this all comes at a price. at all but the lowest settings, the framerate is horrible. i have an athlon xp 2000+, 1gb ddr ram, gf3 ti500, and i could only pull off a measly 20-30 fps average at best (800x600 medium settings), with the framerate dropping to 15 with enemies on-screen, and below 10 in some of the larger areas. it runs more like a late-beta instead of an optimized final product. and, just as a random nitpick, only *one* type of particle is interactive in the entire game. the only time you'll get to see smoke scatter as you shoot a rocket through it is when you throw a smoke grenade, which produces ugly clouds of pale urine-colored puffs. when you consider that there are about 9000000 uses of particles in the game, it's pretty disappointing and again makes it seem unpolished. and finally, there's nothing about this game that ties it to the first unreal. i guess the developer forgot about the whole fuel-less spaceship ending of unreal 1 and decided to plunge off into a whole new, undeveloped direction and slap the unreal name on it as a marketing thing. this is *not* a continuation, or even a parallel, therefore it shouldn't be titled as the sequel. if this game had more levels, more ways to complete a level, longer game-time (took me one evening), a more optimized engine, and a *lot* less bugs (be prepared to welcome General Protection Fault into your home), it might be worth the current cost, but as it stands, it's barely worth half, which could be better spent on Serious Sam 1 or 2. if you're going to buy this game, buy it for the graphics and the hope that the community will make some killer mission packs. otherwise, don't bother.
Rating:
Summary: High hopes, but doesn't fulfill
Review: Okay, I had high hopes for this one, but must confess they weren't fulfilled at all. First off, one should note that Unreal 2 exhausts one's system *MUCH* more so than usual. A current graphics card and proper processor is *really* necessary. Even with a very respectable system and all game options set to "low" or "off", I still had very notable problems with graphics smoothness, etc. Please check system requirements as advertised. Even the "recommended" settings push being insufficient, let alone the "minimal" ones. Graphics are relatively nice (and the most significant aspect of the game), but really require a cutting-edge system to appreciate them, especially when any fast lighting effects occur (e.g., lasers). Otherwise, a system can be markedly bogged down and the game becomes very frustrating as things become repeatedly choppy. Overall plot is decently done, but the game is short, things can seem stale and unoriginal, and I repeatedly found myself wishing I'd simply played Serious Sam 2 or No One Lives Forever 2 (or even Jedi Knight) over again rather than dealing with the relative blandness of Unreal 2. Ultimately, Unreal 2 isn't outright atrocious, but I'd easily recommend buyers look at the above games or things like Warcraft 3 before bothering with this. Unreal 2 might be worth a looksie someday when it's in the bargain bin ...(and when systems are a bit more advanced to handle its unusually heavy requirements for what it actually does), but in the meantime, the simplicity and shallowness of Unreal 2 doesn't merit a purchase. One can even get much more enjoyble gameplay from the recent Unreal Tournament than from this. Too bad they weren't able to really build off of what was done during the tournament version--if anything, this appears to have come significantly before. Come back some other day once prices drop if you're bored.
Rating:
Summary: Another Graphically and Sound outstanding sequel....
Review: ...to a legendary fps. In a sentence, I would be delighted to elaborate unreal 2 as: "A FPS featuring gorgeous graphics but average single-player only game-play." Really, the original Unreal showed that some stock could deciminate the all time ultra 3-D action gaming company called-'ID'. There's two most significant elements I look for in a game, and the two most important elements are Game-Play and Storyline. Sense of depth, adventure, innovative developement of base interactive environment system, and a brilliant well thought out storyline already creates 75% of a amazing game. Why I enjoyed playing the original unreal 50 times more than playing the new Unreal 2 is because it's true revolutionary technological improvements over Quake 2(for the time was beyond unreal to me) binded with a extremely deep depth sense of true game-play adventure and a superb way of representing a brilliant storyline, with a splendid multiplayer mode(mp game-types include cooperative, deathmatch, team-deathmatch, king of the hill, and dark knight op mode or something like that) and a very splendid long amazing single-player mode packing heart-beating 39 levels of a true game tension more than filling up my super-hyped expectations. Now, Unreal 2 without a doubt is a work of art in the graphics catagory, but isn't nearly as revolutionary as Unreal was in that catagory. The only thing that keeps Unreal 2's sound effects catagory in line is it's support for Dolby Digital In-game sound and EAX 3.0. It has alright techno music, other than that, Unreal 2 is a ordinary game. Or worse. It has kind of neat weapons, OK levels, and no multiplayer. I had high hopes for Unreal 2, as well. It's really too bad, because they thought Unreal 2 would offer the best single player experience ever, when, well, it doesn't. Unreal 2 has a very thin storyline, that only grows thinner as you progress. Many of the contents it uses are very used, alas, are old crap. The good part is that it's heading for XBOX this november, but will still, unfortunately, remain as a single-player experience only. I think. And Unreal 2's system requirements/recommendations are too high for a game that has came out a few months ago, and it takes a ludicriously long time to load levels, even on state-of-the-art computers.
Graphically, unreal(2) features full support For DX8 special features, such as second generation of hardware t & l, environment bump mapping, pixel shading, stenciling, improved dynamic lightning, detailed light-sourced realistically blurred character-shadows, and more. And has a lot of high resolution textures, some are even 3-D volumetric! And the sky is well done, animations are a little bit over decent. I had unreal 2 installed on a new computer I built specifically for unreal 2, the system specifications basically are: AMD ATHLON XP 2800+
Two sticks of 384MB PC 2100 DDR-SDRAM memory.
Graphics card-PNY NVIDIA GeForce FX 5800 Ultra/128MB DDR2. Performance was actually very good, and I enjoyed the visuals experience. Since I'm using the latest NVIDIA 4x.xx detonator drivers, I experienced no visual artifacts, and very good performance, even with highest details at a medium 1024x768 resolution and higher. Though when I enabled all the AA And anisotropic filtering extras, I began to feel the burn: A BIT. If your a big unreal fan, I guess now or a later would be a good time to give Unreal 2 a shot. But if your not a unreal fan, and a big fps fan, or not at all, screw Unreal 2. I strongly suggest for Unreal fans that you download the Unreal 2 demo, for those who haven't played it, to develop expectations of the game in advance to really fortell if you wish to purchase it or not. All I know is Unreal 2 certainly didn't fill up my hyped up expectatons, and it probabely for youre's either, so.
Rating:
Summary: An ok game.
Review: I remember reading reviews about how this game was gonna save gaming. Whatever! Great graphics? Yes. Solid Gameplay and control? Yes. Good story? Yes. Multiplay and depth? NO. The game was too short and no multiplayer (although they have released it free from what I hear on the internet and are selling a newer version of this game with multiplay included), but it is too late for me. I loved the graphics and enjoyed the characters and the enemies were all very cool, but this game is not even close to saving gaming. That will be the job of Half-Life 2 and Doom 3. For the price this game is selling at now, it would be a worthy buy.I Payed full price expecting more, and when I found out there was no multiplay, I knew I wasted my money. Oh well. Life goes on.
Rating:
Summary: Great game
Review: This game is really cool. The graphics and sound are excellent. Anti-aliasing could have been better addressed, along with the character's movement speed. Everything is is top-notch, though. For everyone whining about how "bad" the game is - they're just Unreal (original) kids that are disappointed the sequel "isn't as good as the original" ... there's always people who think that whenever something is popular. This game is an excellent FPS. Go get it now. Especially for this cheap price. For multiplayer, get Unreal Tournament 2004. The "Special Edition" of Unreal II isn't worth the extra $10 because the XMP pack is a free download.
Rating: 
Summary: Horrible
Review: Let's make something clear.... I think everyone needs to know this, especially the people who make games like this: Games are not movies, and games are meant to be played moreso than they are watched. In this game, the emphasis is taken away from gameplay and put towards graphics, cinematics (which you HAVE to watch and you can't leave, and they're very long), and plot. I just bought this today..... I watched about an hour's worth of cinematics, I had to "search" for something (what is this, "Myst"?), and I never even got to play the game because it crashed, despite the fact that I have a brand new Dell. All I can say is, I was already fuming by the time. When it crashed I just took the CD out, bent it in half until it broke and then threw it in the trash along with the other crap that came with it. That's the problem with these new games, it's all about graphics and not the game itself. Moral of the story: GAMES ARE NOT MOVIES! AND STOP WITH THE COMPLEX PLOTS! PEOPLE LIKE SIMPLICITY!
Rating:
Summary: Nothing like the GOTY edition
Review: I was hoping for an upgraded version of the Game of the Year edition, but was greatly disappointed. While the graphics are decent, and some may like the SLOW introduction, it stayed on my computer only a short while ..... I'd much rather play the older version.
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