User Reviews (1 - 11 of 144)

Show these reviews first:

Highest Rated
Lowest Rated Newest
Oldest Most Helpful
Least Helpful

Unreal II is a major disappointment :(

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 19 / 21
Date: October 01, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Okay, first of all, I've got to say that I love the graphics in the game, but that is probably its only redeeming quality as far as I'm concerned. I have listed my multiple beefs with Unreal II as follows...
1.) Storyline has nothing to do with the end of the first Unreal.

2.) John Dalton (your character) moves waayyyy too slow. It's almost like he tiptoes his way into battle.

3.) There are only about 8 or 9 levels altogether. The first Unreal had 39 levels (not including the intro and ending sequences).

4.) What happened to the rest of the enemies of Unreal 1? Most of the enemies in Unreal II are human (boring). I want my Krall, my Titan, my SkaarjGunner, my Brute, my Gasbag, my Devilfish, my SkaarjGunner, My SkaarjBerserker, my SkaarjWarrior, my Skaarj....

5.) TOO MUCH BABYSITTING - I hate waiting for other characters in a game while they sit around doing their thing.

6.) There was no "Boss" which took about 70 or 80 rockets to kill, like in the first Unreal. Where's the sense of accomplishment?

7.) Where are my powerups? Why is that such a bad thing?

8.) Why did they even use the name, "Unreal" with this game? So there were a couple of Skaarj from the first game and the dispersion pistol (which cannot be upgraded - bummer) was available. Big deal. There is little resemblance to the original game. I know that the makers of the game wanted Unreal to "evolve" and to give it a different storyline, but they didn't have to ruin the game like this.

9.) You cannot skip the cinematics. Why can't you just hit the mouse button if you don't want to wait for people to finish talking? And why do you have to wait for Aida to take her sweet time to waltz from one computer to another? Why can't you just skip the debriefings altogether? Boy, what action this game has!

Bottom line: If it weren't for the excellent graphics, I wouldn't even give this game 1 star. Here's to all the newest games with all your polygons and polident and whatever else it is that makes great graphics. I think I'll stick to the original Unreal which has been out for almost 6 years now, thank you very much.

pretty, yet mediocre game.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 11 / 13
Date: February 14, 2003
Author: Amazon User

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.

What happened?

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: February 26, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Unreal was a great game if only for its groundbreaking technology and massive sp experience. Unreal 2 has great technology as well, but....first off, the game takes maybe 10 hours to beat (and that's a generous estimate) and is shorter than most expansion packs. Second, it has nothing to do with the original Unreal (which is frustrating, 'cause the final cutscene of Unreal hinted at some kind of sequel). The game plays like a dumbed-down version of the Mechwarrior or Heavy Gear series, where you go on short, pointless missions that are completely disjointed and have absolutely no oppurtunity for exploration (which was a strong point of the original Unreal). The worst part is, it took 5 years for this game to reach the market and yet lasts as long as if it had been in development for only a few months. Seriously, the old shareware versions of Doom and Heretic (which included a single episode and were FREE) practically offered more gameplay time than this over-hyped joke of a game. This is almost definitely a situation where the developers were so overwhelmed by the capabilities of the new Unreal engine that they completely forgot about making a good game and instead created a mish-mash of poorly designed levels with way too much pointless and unneccessary eye-candy. The only selling point of this game are the spectacular graphics (if you have a brand new, stacked computer); but everything else about Unreal 2 is a complete wash. One final note: in a blatant attempt to force people to buy 2 games, Unreal 2 completely lacks any multi-player support, so if mp is your thing, you have to get UT 2003. This also almost completely guarantees that Unreal 2 will have no community support and that once you beat the game, keeping Unreal 2 on your hard-drive will be pointless.

not worth the money

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 9 / 12
Date: June 02, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game does have some great graphics, but there is a HUGE lack of game-play. All the missions are short and linear, there's only one way to do anything. Like a previous reviewer said, you go along a path, kill some people, then run to the objective. There's only one path to take, you cannot get lost or take neat side-trips, you do it the one way or no way.

The weapons are kinda neat, but you cannot effectively use but 2-3 of them to get anywhere. The baddies always do the same thing, attack the same way.

And you can EASILY finish the game in about 10 hours the first time. Then you can finish in about half that time from then on. Someone got lazy when then designed this game.

When the price drops [lower] in the bargain bin, THEN you should think about buying this game.

Wait for updates before buying

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: February 12, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I've heard a lot about this game, and the screenshots looked great, so I grabbed it as soon as it came out.

After watching a cool introduction sequence, when I started the actual game, three things suprised me:

a) Unreal 2 ran as slow as molasses.
b) When the game's view zoomed in on a person, the textures on his body were all warped and distorted.
c) After playing for a few seconds, I got a General Protection Fault error.

Eventually, I found out that the GPF error was because I enabled the "EAX" sound feature (despite the fact that I have a SoundBlaster Audigy card that EAX SHOULD work with), so I disabled that. I upgraded all of my drivers and DirectX, so now the textures looked normal. But the game still ran as slow as molasses.

Unfortunately, lowering the details seriously blurs the textures, but you've gotta go what you gotta do, right? Well, after lowering some details, I got the game running decently, but that all changed when I got into a firefight. The game turned into a slideshow, and I would often end up losing almost all of my armor because I couldn't aim my weapons properly. I got up to a mission where the player walks around in snowy conditions outside of a base, and while the effect was very nice looking, it also made the game virtually unplayable. At this point I gave up on Unreal 2 because all the enemy had to do was run towards me and the game would slow to even LESS than a crawl, making my character completely helpless. What's most annoying is that my PC is brand new and top-of-the-line (well, it WAS three months ago), so performance like this is inexcusable, even with all the details turned down!

Last, but not least, a level editor comes with Unreal 2 where you can create your own levels, but when I loaded it up, I got another General Protection Fault. From what I have read in the game's official forums, the editor is an early version and many of the options are "not implemented yet" anyway.

Apparently, there is something wrong with the game itself, and many other people that I have talked with seem to have the same problems that I do. Sure, some people CAN run this game smoothly and with no problems, but from what I have seen, the majority have had serious technical issues with Unreal 2.

Overall, I'm giving this game three stars because I KNOW that this game has potential to be a winner; it has great graphics, sound, and a feasible storyline. However, it was released a bit too early, and is loaded with performance bugs and issues.

If you want to purchase this game, I recommend that you wait until the game's developers release a patch for the game that resolves its current problems. In the meantime, pick up a copy of Unreal Tournament 2003; it has graphics that are just as good as Unreal 2, and it runs better, too.

terrible gameplay

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 8 / 11
Date: March 03, 2003
Author: Amazon User

the gfx might be good.... but what good are realistic graphics when the gameplay stinks? This game has amateur-game-studio written all over it.... There is only one way to beat every level! that makes it basicly a walk-through interactive movie with linear advancement... gets very boring and doesnt require intuitive or logical thinking on the part of the player. After playing games like deus ex or nolf/nolf2, which had excellent story as well as multiple ways to complete each level, a game like unreal2 is a joke.
plus there are lengthy loading screens about every 5-10 mins of play....and im on a p4-2.26ghz with 1GB of pc4200 and it takes 1min+ to load levels! I mean max payne had nearly as good gfx in unreal2, but had much shorter loading screens and they were few and far between.... and not to mention in unreal2 u must wait 1min+ just to quick load after you die... it really tests your patience.

on another note, the reason i gave this 2 stars instead of 1 is because the introduction movie/ingame cinematic (with studio logos) actually puts you in awe... very breathtaking..... but from there on out the game goes downhill.

also, for people experiencing crashes.. there is a patch out that fixes it.. i had the same problem (i had to disable EAX) but after patch i can now enable it again and the game runs fine.

--------------------------------
overall.... this game is a waste of money.. it belongs in a jewel case on the "value shelf".

-duck

Reminds me of a cheerleader, all looks and no substance

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: February 05, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game looks amazing, the weapons, the environments, everything in this game looks hands down better then anything else I've seen to date, but after you look past that you see that there isn't much else to it. The levels where you "command" marines are the only levels that are memorable in my opinion and after you spend 10 hours or so playing you realize that it's over and that's never a good sign when a game doesn't include any multiplayer or vs. the CPU modes. The story isn't enthralling and between each mission you have to waste time running around your ship prompting your shipmates for their predetermined dialog, cut scenes should have been used here considering it takes about 20 seconds or so to load up your ship and then another minute or 2 to get thru with your shipmates scripted dialog and then another 20 seconds to load up the next mission, unnecessary. The weapons aren't particularly good or bad with the exception of the pathetic assault rifle which, of course, is your main weapon. I hate not to recommend this game but I can't, it's simply too short with very little replayability and no multiplayer, if UT2k3 and this were combined into one game I'd give it 5 stars, but with the absence of multiplayer support and only 10 hours of gameplay, I can't recommend it no matter how pretty it is.

High hopes, but doesn't fulfill

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: February 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

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.

An OK game but, not groundbreaking

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: February 14, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I will make this fairly short. I liked the first Unreal alot. It was revolutionary for it's time with graphics not seen before... If you had the best hardware to turn everything up. Unreal had great lighting, creepy atmosphere, great view distance, and a multi-layer sky that moved very nicely. Many cool games have come out since with some great ones like 'Return To Castle Wolfenstein.' Now we have Unreal 2 and with the improvements in graphics these days, along with much faster Pc's and Video cards I was hoping for U2 to have the character of the first game. I just didn't see the same character in U2. The graphics are good but, compared to recent games like RTCW or even the latest Unreal Tournament, I didn't like how generic the game looked. Like I said, U1 was quite a step forward when it came out. U2 just seems plain in comparison. Gameplay is pretty good but, there are many other FPS games I enjoyed more. So U2 was OK but, I was a little disappointed

The facts...

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 9
Date: February 21, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Here are the facts...

This is a great SINGLE player game, it was made to satisfy the masses who have missed the single player action of the orginal Unreal. I think many of the people who played Unreal Tournament give this game a bad review find it boring to play a single player game.

The graphics are probably the best of any game yet, which of course requires system resources (disk space, memory and video memory). If you cannot meet the suggested requirements, wait!

The gameplay is fast and furious, a good melding of insane online play and rudimentary AI.

The storyline is basic (as most FPS games are) and tells a very similar story as the first Unreal. The cutscenes are really pretty though.

Keeping this review short, I really like this game. I have not had the system errors (i.e. GPFs) others have had but I am no doubting thier existence. I will say this is WAY more stable than GTAIII, which was released a few months premature.

This game (I hope) is the beginning of the next generation of single player FPS for the PC. It actaully feels more like a console game that a PC version.

Review Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next 

Actions