I was feeling nostalgic last week so I started playing Unreal again. Probably for my third time through at this point! While Unreal doesn't have as much replay value as a game like Half Life it certainly does have its moments! Unreal was one of those really impressive FPS games for it's time. It boasted great graphics and intense game play. Of course by 2008's standards these graphics merely look silly! But if you were picking this up in '98 like I was, you were pretty impressed.
I figure I'll throw in some points about playing this on a more current system, since I experienced some issues here and there. Being a game made for Windows 98 it doesn't translate perfectly over to an XP 32 bit system. I have no idea what this would do on Vista's 64 bit architecture. Basically when re-installing it I got a strange error with the option to "ignore". You can definitely get away with doing that and then it will install fine. Strangely every time you reinsert the disc to play some more you have to cancel out of the install process and that "ignore" message comes up as well. I'm not sure if this is just my system, but I recommend saving quite frequently, at least every time you hit a "load" screen. For some reason the game will randomly crash after a little while and it exits out completely for you. This can be frustrating if you've been playing for a while, because it doesn't auto save between load screens. Otherwise it played very smoothly on the newer system. You can also get the Unreal Anthology which has been updated to handle Windows XP. Oh and this was on a Pentium 4, 3.0 ghz system.
That being said, I'll move onto the actual review for anyone thinking about delving into this great game for their first time. The first thing you notice is that you have almost no health. You begin to discover why as you start wandering around a crashed space ship and it appears you were some kind of prisoner. Naturally the first things you need to do are finding some health and then find some way out of the ship. The ship is kind of a boring part of the level, but it leads you a bit into the story line because you clearly crash landed on an alien planet. When you finally get out of the ship the first thing you'll notice is how amazing and stunning the world is that has been created for you. Outside it's very bright and vibrant in spots. This felt a little different compared to games like Quake, Half Life, Doom, because a lot of those games are very dark and have a major dungeon crawl atmosphere to them. Unreal has a lot of that usual stuff as well, but it also has a lot of time spent outside where you get to see amazing scenery. One thing the developers did right was making you feel like the in game world was huge! This was really impressive and fun when you first got into it.
As you explore and interact with the world you learn more about what's going on with this planet called Na Pali. Apparently the native people are called the Nali and they've been enslaved by an alien race called the Skaarj. The Nali are extreme pacifists and I can't help but think their designers wanted them to be Buddhists for the most part. The Skaarj on the other hand are the main enemy of the game, though not the only enemy creatures you'll face. They are a warrior race that pretty much takes over wherever it sees fit. You'll notice that the Skaarj design is clearly influenced by Predator. They have a humanoid lizard design and have a mouth design that looks just like that of a Predator. To brandish even MORE similarities they also have energy weapons and steel double claws attached to their arms. As you can see this isn't very original. Another part that is kind of unoriginal/strange is the Nali castles that you come across. They are clearly living in what we would term a medieval level society versus the Skaarj who have high grade technology. Strangely you come across large castles that look like they're straight out of thirteenth century England. I know... strange for a race of pacifists. Despite all this, those parts are some of the most fun to play through. I loved going into the castles and running around!
Another aspect that made Unreal very special, when compared to other FPS games, was the sheer amount of atmosphere that is injected into this game. It truly does feel like you're on an alien world. The sounds, the textures, were all there perfectly bringing you into this world, almost so much that you didn't want to leave! You even hear echoes off of cliffs if you're walking through a cavern, it's like they tried to get as many little details in order to immerse the user. For it's time the Unreal graphics engine was also very impressive and really took things up a notch in the gaming world. They also programmed enemies to react more realistically to the user when confronted. So when I'm fighting against the Skaarj enemies they will actually make an effort to jump out of the way of my shots. This was really cool to see and I really only found that in games like Half Life.
The maps you have to navigate through are pretty massive at times. I really felt like a lot of the level design was also influenced by the great game Marathon. A lot of times in order to open a door you have to search out a series of levers, or whatever, in order to proceed onto the next section. This game literally has hours of game play and probably took me in the vicinity of 20 to 30 hours to complete, so you really get your moneys worth. The downfall to having such large maps is it's kind of easy to get lost sometimes if you're trying to complete certain tasks. Another detriment to the game was the lighting. I put this game on maximum brightness levels in order to help me see where I was going. Sometimes that wasn't even bright enough. There are sections of this game that are absolutely dark, especially towards the end of the game. While this creates a very scary atmosphere, I felt it hindered the game play once in a while. The reason this hurts game play is because the flashlight function is incredibly annoying to deal with. You have to pick up flashlights or flares in order to see in the pitch black areas. Now to make it more realistic the flashlights eventually run out of batteries or something, but this was poorly incorporated because they only last a few minutes. Seriously, the flashlights in real life would NOT die so quickly and then it's up to you to go find another one. The only reason this hurts the game is because if you no longer have light, you can't enjoy the environment nearly as much.
Aside from a couple flaws this is a pretty awesome game and I had a lot of fun playing it. In '98 this came out around the same time as Half Life and they were both the must play FPS games that year. Half Life ultimately won the game of the year slot mainly because of story line. Unfortunately Unreal's story line is pretty poor in the greater scheme of things. The user doesn't really feel a greater purpose to their mission and instead you are merely trying to complete levels and puzzles. Whereas Half Life created a vastly well written world where you were trying to get out of a facility and stop an experiment gone out of control. Unreal just couldn't compete with something of that caliber and it's not nearly as engrossing on that level. Beautiful world and really fun to play overall, but not the best of the year.
Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5
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JohnWilkins97, 1 month ago
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