Unreal II: The Awakening

"A good FPS, but not as good as it could have been"

In 2001, Atari and Epic games announced they would be bringing Unreal Tournament series to Xbox in the form of Unreal Championship and was said to have vehicles and online play. When the game released, there was online play, but no vehicles. 1 year later they announced Unreal 2 for the Xbox, which is basically the PC version and all those things that didn't make it into Unreal Championship combined into one. Though the first Unreal game wasn't on Xbox, you pretty much get the picture once you play Unreal 2. In Unreal 2 you play as John Dalton, who is an ex-marine assigned to patrol the edge of human space. While on patrol there he receives a distress signal, which he goes to the scene and uncovers an ultra-violent conflict, which happens to be the stirring of an ancient evil. Your goal is to stop its awakening, but whether you can do it or not is another story…
This game is jam-packed full of online action. You choose the team you will be on, either Red Team or Blue Team. You pick the character class in which you will be a Gunner, a Tech, or a Ranger. Which once the game starts and you select the spawn point that you want, you are then pulled into the action in huge fully map environments were you and your team will be battling it out with the other team in a brawl to gain the control of your opposing teams ancient artifacts, which you have to collect all your opponents artifacts as well as keeping your own artifacts to win the game.

Gameplay:
There are the basic options of the main menu like Single Player, Multiplayer, and Options, but what is new is XMP, which leads you to the system link play as well as Xbox Live. So the way to look at it is XMP is the Mega-Multiplayer mode if you will.

The Single Player is your basic FPS single players were you have certain missions, and move on to the next level. Fortunately you have an option when you first go into the single player story that you can choose to practice or move on to were you need to go, which is great for those beginners. There are some problems with the single player mode which can really get to you like the constant long loading times and the frame rate drops. The frame rate drops aren't that big of an issue, but the constant loading times make it seem like the game will take you forever to beat at the pace it loads. Also there are no vehicles in single player which you can really need sometimes to get to places faster. The single player is fun and full of action with suspense at times, but it has all been done before.

The Multiplayer offline is fun to a certain extent, but all of it could have been a bit better. The offline multiplayer doesn't have vehicles, but all and all if you have a lot of friends who come over and like fast action paced FPS, I would say you will get your 40 bucks worth, but the fun will not last forever.

Online play has to be the highlight of the game and that alone is worth the 40 bucks. For the online mode is the only time in that game were you can use vehicles, which don't exactly control like Halo's vehicles as one might expect. There is only one online game mode for the game right now were it is your job to go to the other teams base and capture their artifacts that they have and return them to your base, while at the same time keep all of your artifacts safe so the other team doesn't come and steal your artifacts or for that matter they can steal their artifact back…so in the end the object of the game is to capture all of your opposing team's artifacts and keep your own. Team play takes a major role in the online, were all you have is your teammates and you, so you better hope you got people who know what they are doing and not going just going to team kill. It plays like Unreal Championship, but with hardly any lag and has vehicles for you to use to your disposal.

Graphics:
From the way the grass sways and the oceans waves role in both single player and multiplayer is simply breath taking and you get a true sense that you are actually in that world. The game does a great job with lighting, where you can actually see your reflection to a certain extent. Also the game's single player environments look lush and detailed, but are just a tad weak as far as the textures go. Now the Online maps look just as good as the single player, but when it comes down to certain details such as the actual flames from an explosion the details looks pixelated like a title you'd find on the N64.

Now as far as the guns and character models look, thats sort of iffy. The guns and character models both look plain. The mouth movements of the character's look like they have a block for a jaw when they are talking, but you can't really notice it until the cut scenes later on in the single player, but there are no mouth movements at all in the multiplayer, which is a disappointment.

Sound:
The typical FPS sounds, except with a little Unreal twist. Also the in game music is actually pretty good, but nothing to brag over, but it does have suspenseful music at times. Also the game does a really good job with the sounds of the environment and the different things you walk on, also the explosion sound effects are top notch.

Conclusion:
If you like Unreal Championship, you should love this game as it has things to offer that Unreal Championship didn't. Also if you have XBL, the game is a must buy for any hardcore gamer. If you don't have XBL I would look elsewhere.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/09/04