ATARI Unreal II: The Awakening ( Windows )

Discount Price: $4.99

Features:

• In this massive game, war suddenly breaks out and alien races, mercenary bands, and the military are all fighting each other. You have to find out why and (hopefully) survive.
• You'll have to defend those who are trapped in the crossfire - colonists, miners, archaeologists and other civilians
• Travel to 10 unique alien worlds and complete numerous challenging and deadly missions -- from a tropical jungle planet to an endless ocean world
• Intense life-or-death action in beautifully realistic and engaging game worlds
• Infiltrate enemy targets, explore & discover ancient ruins and escort civilians to safety

Customer Reviews:

When it doesn't crash, it's... decent. [Posted on 2004-09-06]
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

Better than the Original [Posted on 2006-02-26]
As a person who plays every first person shooter for the PC, Unreal II ranks among the best. Great story and incredible playability. This is one of the few you can win without cheating but still remains challenging enough to never be boring. A few clever puzzels sprinkled in also break up the point and shoot action. The graphics are beyond amazing, so have a good 3D accellerator installed to enable all the shading and rendering features. Play this baby full screen on a large monitor and you're swept up in the action. The first Unreal was very good, but this one takes it beyond the next level.

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