Unreal 2: The Disappointment

[mike breck]

Remember when you first played the original Unreal.

Remember the first time you crawled out of the Vortex Rikers and said "Wow!" when you saw this huge alien vista all around you.

Remember how you said "Wow!" many times at some of the THIRTY-SIX giant levels and architecture.

Remember those memorable battles with Brutes, Behemoths, Giant Horseflys, Gasbags, Krall, Mantas, Mecenaries, Slith, Pupae, Titans, Squids, Warlords, and NINE classes of Skaarj each armed with different weapons.

Remember all the unusual alien weapons you had at your disposal. How you managed to master the Razorjack, Shock Rifle, and land a Flak shell on a Skaarj's head from fifty yards.

Remember how you had to develop radically different tactics for each enemy - close-up, medium range, or long-range.

Remember how you back-pedaled furiously when attacked by two or more fast-moving Skaarj who side-stepped and rolled to avoid you fire.

Remember how the hairs on the back of your neck stood up when you confronted the Slith for the first time.

Remember trying to protect the Nali from being killed and the disappointment when you failed.

Remember the intense close-up combat when you finally dared to enter the Skaarj Mothership.

Remember defeating the Queen.

Remember how you felt totally alone in a very hostile, alien environment and it took all your wits and skill to survive.

So, with all of that in mind, does the sequel live up to the original? As far as I'm concerned - no. This is a good, fun game which exists on the periphery of the Unreal Universe - but it is not Unreal.

It has plenty of eye-candy but it lacks the adventure, grim excitement, and epic scale of the original. As most of the time is spent fighting humans, it could have been called:

"Unreal Tournament 2003 Single Player Mission Pack"
"SOF2 in Space"
"Unreal Starship Troopers - the Halo Effect"
"Unreal Star Trek Voyager"


That's a pity, because with this game engine they could reintroduced the Skaarj in very impressive way. However, the Skaarj have been relagated to a mere token presence. A mere nod of the head back to the original.

However, it may be understandable, because at the speed our hero moves at, he wouldn't last five minutes in Unreal with a couple of Skaarj gunners bearing down on him at great speed. Perhaps that's why he was kicked out of the Marines - he had too much lead in his butt. Unfortunately they've slowed the Skaarj to compensate for this. They move like Brutes now.

Perhaps I've been spoilt by the marvellous levels and vicious battles in Mods such as Operation Na Pali and Xidia Gold. In these mods, the Skaarj and Krall attacks and ambushes could have you literally push your chair back thro the wall. Many of the level designs had you walking around saying "Wow!". You could enlist armed Nali to help you fight massive battles. Lots of nice touches to make you smile with pleasure.

However, Unreal 2 just feels (feel is the wrong word - because I don't feel anything) just like a collection of separate maps thrown in and held loosely together by mission briefings on the Atlantis.
Some say this allows you to catch your breath between levels, but I would argue that I was never "out of breath" to begin with.

Someone at Legend or Epic was quoted as saying cheerfully that the game wouldn't be out for long before some modder creates a nude skin for Aida. Oh really? So that's the reason for these useless scenes on the Atlantis - to provide titillation for sad people who should get out more or get a girlfriend.

Wouldn't it have been more interesting if the Atlantis had been blown up after mission two and all were killed and you had to survive while being hunted down? Or the crew were captured and you had rescue them from the Skaarj home planet, with the help of Skaarj slaves before they were executed?
No - I suppose not. That would have been too complicated and epic a storyline. Too Unreal.

So in my opinion, the "real" sequel to Unreal now lies in the hands of the great amatuer level designers. They will take the Unreal 2 engine and show us what Unreal 2 should have been.

As Mr. Spock would say "It's Unreal Jim - but not as we know it."

[DragonNOA1]

hmmm, mike, i never knew u were from scotland... a little of topic but, anywho

i can relate to everything you said above. all those feelings rush back to me and i remember why i feel unreal is one of the best games ever and why i played it more than any other game i know. as being the resident unreal junkie (not unreal 2 mind you) i feel bad that i haven't actually purchased unreal 2 yet. well with school, work, and me just beating ghost recon and now moving onto desert siege, i prolly wouldn't have time to try and start a new game. i want to be able to play it and immerse myself in it, knowing how much i did so in unreal 1, but many ppl keep saying to wait. to tell u the truth, i usually wait and buy games when they are cheaper and have expansion packs out and have bug fixes. so maybe i'm always a few months behind (just beat ghost recon) but i save a lil money on the way. and by the time i do finally buy unreal 2 (at a cheaper price), hopefully, like u say, all the 3 party mods will be out. speaking of reminds me on how i almost bought a new HD just to be able to store all my downloaded unreal 1 maps. man i had CDs worth. good times, good times.

[DragonNOA1]

i forgot to add that the announcement of unreal 2 is one of the reasons why i wanted a bigger and better computer, and since i liked computers as it was, decided to go ahead and build my very first one, which is an XP2100+ which you see below. so if unreal 2 doesn't do anything for me in the future, at least it got me off my lazy butt to build a kickass rig that i can be proud of and call my own.

[mike breck]

Yep,

You'll need it for Doom 3 and Quake 1V.

Hopefully id will get it right with those two classics.

Hopefully...

[ghost_of_war]

I would just stick with Unreal Tournament and Unreal Tournament 2003 if you like the Unreal series. U2 didn't impress me at all. I'd have to agree with Mike about it being a collection of new maps tossed together with that cutie in the cutscenes. LOL...

[Nuclear Krusader]

Thanks for the review, Mike. Then I'll definitely spend my money on Max Payne and NWN instead of paying 70 bucks for that flop.

[DragonNOA1]

yes nuke, max payne was awesome and you will definately enjoy it.

[Xayd]

UT2003 was similarly a big disappointment compared to UT. It's basically a hack of the X-Box Unreal game modified for the PC, nothing else.

Digital Extremes, the makers of the original UT, were removed from the development process by Epic about halfway through. It seems that Epic thinks the game is all about the eye candy and they didn't need to pay people to actually make it a good "game".

Seeing as they have had less people playing UT2003 on some days than UT per Gamespy stats, they're learning a hard lesson ;).

From North America anyways, there's exactly ONE competitive CTF clan from UT that's moved to UT2003, and perhaps 5 to 10 TDM clans. The rest simply refused to play it, the game for lack of a better word "sucks".

It was pretty funny, actually. Epic rushed the game out to try and make it available for the preliminary CAL tournaments this past year, and CAL had to cancel a couple of UT2003 mods from the tourney because not enough people wanted to play bad enough to even sign up.

R.I.P Unreal, the line of Unreal/UT games are all but dead.

[DragonNOA1]

good point xayd, i agree... at least unreal 1 & UT will live on in our memories as great games. but while you feel the unreal series is dead, we all know epic will try again with another unreal. Unreal Warfare will prolly be a combo of UT and unreal single player but the question is will they get it right? time will tell...

[Alienware_Dude]

Are they actually coming out with a Quake IV?

[DragonNOA1]

yes, quake IV is being produced by RAVEN, so you know it will be good.

[Xayd]

That's a big positive. Quake 3 left alot to be desired, but Raven has proven themselves capable of producing great FPS games, so hopefully it'll turn out great.

[whargoul]

I hope that Doom 3 turns out to be more than just a pretty game.

[DragonNOA1]

well doom 3 is going for the "atmosphere", with a small multiplayer element thrown in (4 players max?). looks pretty for sure if nothing else, after hearing about unreal 2 we can only hope for the best w/ another pretty game like doom 3. i have confidence.

[Nuclear Krusader]

Doom 3 will feature the same storyline as the first one.

I heard that they are putting more emphasis on graphics than storyline. That is not good.

[Demosthenes]

Doom had a story?!?!

Wow.

[Nuclear Krusader]

LOL.

It used to. I really enjoyed the first chapter of the original Doom because of the story mentioned in the Readme file.

But when the story was dropped in favor of simple carnage, the charm was broken and my interest in the game was Doomed.

[DragonNOA1]

doom 1 might have had a story but i was too amazed at the graphics and level designs and finding all the secrets and fighting multiple baddies at once that the only story to me was to survive. it was so awesome for its time, just graphics wise, that the story became secondary and was, i feel, just to survive and find keys. now-a-days that would be terrible but back then, when it was new, it rocked!

[mike breck]

Nuke,

Don't get me wrong. Unreal 2 is an entertaining little game and has, excellent graphics, some nice levels, and gameplay.

However, the point I'm making is that, it is not a "sequel" to Unreal. It bears little resemblance to Unreal in any way whatsoever. It's more like "Descent meets Red Faction".

So, anyone, who has not played the original, will find it an average FPS with gorgeous graphics and a mighty engine. However, die-hard, Unreal fans will find it disappointing that they did not build on the Unreal Universe created in the original game, mission packs, and mods.

I have the feeling that the developer's didn't really appreciate how ground-breaking the original was and what standard they had to acheive to surpass it.

Perhaps they've been working on Multi-Players too long and have lost the spark and originality they had for Single-Player games.

I saw more freshness and originality in NOLF2 than in this. Fighting an enemy while the trailer is being lifted and carried away by a Tornado! Now that's the sort of idea I consider original.

:)

[Nuclear Krusader]

Thanks for the headsup, mike.

I'll pass on U2 regardless. Unless until the game is sold for 20 bucks.

What I look in a game is (in that order):

+Immersive storyline.
+Original storyline.
+Scripted events.
+Nice graphics.
+Awesome sound.

I love DeusEx because it sucked me so into the plot that I forgot about eating and sleeping. And gotta love too those Half-Life scripted events, you never knew the way you'll be surprised the next corner.

What good are the graphics that put a tremendous strain on your CPU if the storyline is lame?

I loved NOLF because of the kodak moments and the humor in it. I haven't played NOLF2 but it's in my wish list already.

I'll eventually be getting Unreal 2, but for now I already bought my copy of Red Faction.

[Demosthenes]

Doom had a charm about it that just would not survive nowadays. Perhaps it was the air of originality, the popularization of a new genre, or the fact that it was mostly open to third party hacks, but something tells me Doom was truly a product of its time. It avoided criticism and scrutiny simply by predating the institutions which induce said things, like rating systems and commercialism.

Anyway, Doom just did not need a plot. It was the only game of its kind like that. You could pick it up anywhere and the story just did not matter. There was no need for the transparent story facade woven in so many FPS clones. Half-Life came closer than most and Deus Ex did a pretty good job, but I believe, rather loosely but nonetheless, that success could be found in the marriage of Role Playing Games and First Person Shooters. (Having said that, I realize that Morrowind had done just that, and rather nicely I must add). If the right balance were struck and the elements properly woven, I think an RPG-FPS title would do quite nicely.

Respectfully,

Demosthenes

[mike breck]

I agree with a lot of what you say Demosthenes.

However, Doom was peculiar in that it almost became a game between the fans and the developers to see if the developers could flatten the player with ever-increasing tricky, devlish levels.

The more they gave us, the more we cried out for more difficulty, more sneakiness, more devlish tricks, traps, and ambushes. We wanted punishment and they gave it to us in spades.

It's one of the few games where you die with a wry smile on your face, saying "they got me that time - I didn't see that coming".

So, as far as I'm concerned, in this particular case, even if the keep the same format but augment it with awe-inspiring level design and eye-candy, then I'll be pleased.

The worse thing they could do is slow down the action with a innane story-line and cut scenes which try to legitimise the original tongue-in-cheek concept of Demons invading Earth and it's colonies.

In fact, even just updating the original games with the Doom 3 engine would be acceptable to many Doom fans.

The question is whether Carmack can go beyond that and actually improve on a great, classic game.

However, it is a very difficult challenge to take great games like Doom and Half-life and improve them. However, I'm hoping if anyone can prove that IT IS possible, then the great John Carmack can.

We live in hope.

[Demosthenes]

Personally, I think the days of the open development forum are gone.

First, the engines are becoming much too complex for the developer to create even a simple level editor (like DoomEd) that an enthusiast, let alone a non-codewarrior, can pick up and use intuitively. It is not impossible, it just takes more ambition that what Doom required with its nice 2d world.

Second: competition. Doom was the alpha and the omega. There were precious few games who even came close to the original breadth and scope of Dooms customize-ability. Now, there are tons of games to choose from. DoomIII might stand above the rest by a shoulders height, but it will not be standing on heads like DoomI.

Third, the open atmosphere no longer exists. Take a look at the internet. Its founding was not one of commercialism, bureaucratism, or militarism (though the predecessor ARPAnet was an Armed Forces project, the military very wisely left them alone). It was none of these. It was a bunch of scientists who worked openly and freely. I dare say its hierarchical structure and attitude is much akin to the modern hacker identity revolution occurring today. Removed from the economic worries of failure, the scientists were free to experiment. Then when civilians and, even worse, the private business sector, got its hands on the internet and subsequently the scientists, this open forum quickly collapsed. That is partly why the internet has become rather static the last decade and a half.

So goes it with game development. There was no monster budget for Doom, no furious hype, no suits, just a bunch of enthusiasts working off each others ideas. Perhaps this is an idealized view, but, what can I say, I am a dreaming idealist.

But I agree with the story. Doom was not meant to hold one. It carries only three things: blood, guts, and living to the next level.

Respectfully,

Demosthenes

[cobra]

U2 sux

[DragonNOA1]

nice cobra... nice
don't hold back now :D