Posted July 04, 2009
If you've played the first Unreal game then the first thing you'll notice is that the style of Unreal 2 is very different.
To start with, it brings on the Power Armour, and with it the slow movement. After playing Unreal Gold and then playing this game it did take a little while to get used to how much slower the movement speed is. Some advice, however. Turn on dodging. By default it is switched off, but if you want any hope of moving at any speed and dodging rockets and such, you need the double tap dodging turned on.
The other big difference with this game is the length. It is rather a short game. Unreal Gold is huge, I've found, but this game is way too short.
Then there are the loading times. This game has very long loading times which becomes irritating at times. Even for the quick load function, it loads the entire level, whereas if it just loaded the player's stats and player/item/creature placement details, for example, it could have had significantly faster loading, but no, the entire level is loaded. My machine is is rather new with plenty of RAM, CPU and graphics memory, but even so some of the levels take 45 seconds to load up. At one part there is a level which consists of a fly-by video, then you walk through a metallic cavern over a bridge and through two large doors. No enemies, nothing special, and then it's the next level and loading time again. The only tip I can give here is DON'T DIE! If you die often then you'll get seriously annoyed by the loading times.
Some of the levels try to bring a bit of strategy into the game where you can place defensive shields, automatic turrets and tell some marines where to guard and patrol. The only problem with the last part is that to order a marine you have to walk up to them. What this means is that calling them back isn't going to happen, you can't order them over radio (but you can hear them over it!).
One person here mentioned random crashes. My system is running Vista Ultimate 64-bit and I had only one crash which threw it out back to the desktop. The crash happened as it was about to load a new level.
All of this said, however, the game is still pretty good. The graphics are very nice and the story is okay. They bring in many different types of environment too, from rolling hills, frozen wastes, desert, metallic Gigeresque settings to research centres and of course spaceships. These also bring with them a wide variety of aliens. Along with this there is a good number of weapons at your disposal, though some I never used and some don't work with single-player (such as the smoke grenades which have no effect on your enemies, they shoot just as accurately through the smoke).
For the price here at GOG.com, if you like the first person genre then get it. It's worth it for the price, but don't go expecting some fantastic game here. I'd like to have given this game 3.5 stars but GOG.com won't let me do that! As such, because it is worth the price I've given it 4 stars.
To start with, it brings on the Power Armour, and with it the slow movement. After playing Unreal Gold and then playing this game it did take a little while to get used to how much slower the movement speed is. Some advice, however. Turn on dodging. By default it is switched off, but if you want any hope of moving at any speed and dodging rockets and such, you need the double tap dodging turned on.
The other big difference with this game is the length. It is rather a short game. Unreal Gold is huge, I've found, but this game is way too short.
Then there are the loading times. This game has very long loading times which becomes irritating at times. Even for the quick load function, it loads the entire level, whereas if it just loaded the player's stats and player/item/creature placement details, for example, it could have had significantly faster loading, but no, the entire level is loaded. My machine is is rather new with plenty of RAM, CPU and graphics memory, but even so some of the levels take 45 seconds to load up. At one part there is a level which consists of a fly-by video, then you walk through a metallic cavern over a bridge and through two large doors. No enemies, nothing special, and then it's the next level and loading time again. The only tip I can give here is DON'T DIE! If you die often then you'll get seriously annoyed by the loading times.
Some of the levels try to bring a bit of strategy into the game where you can place defensive shields, automatic turrets and tell some marines where to guard and patrol. The only problem with the last part is that to order a marine you have to walk up to them. What this means is that calling them back isn't going to happen, you can't order them over radio (but you can hear them over it!).
One person here mentioned random crashes. My system is running Vista Ultimate 64-bit and I had only one crash which threw it out back to the desktop. The crash happened as it was about to load a new level.
All of this said, however, the game is still pretty good. The graphics are very nice and the story is okay. They bring in many different types of environment too, from rolling hills, frozen wastes, desert, metallic Gigeresque settings to research centres and of course spaceships. These also bring with them a wide variety of aliens. Along with this there is a good number of weapons at your disposal, though some I never used and some don't work with single-player (such as the smoke grenades which have no effect on your enemies, they shoot just as accurately through the smoke).
For the price here at GOG.com, if you like the first person genre then get it. It's worth it for the price, but don't go expecting some fantastic game here. I'd like to have given this game 3.5 stars but GOG.com won't let me do that! As such, because it is worth the price I've given it 4 stars.
