This isn't a recommendation for general gamers. If you're really into first-person shooters, sci-fi or the history of gaming then this is definitely worth your time, but there's a reason why nobody talks about Unreal 2 today - it was a let down.

During development, Unreal 2 looked like it would become the ultimate shooter of the early 2000s, matching Half-Life's record in setting a radical new benchmark for the genre to follow. An epic 20-hour story spanning numerous planets, with a rich cast of characters who you'd get to know along the way. It would bring RPG elements into the mix, with customisable weapons, dialogue trees, characters who would behave differently based on how you talked to them, and a story that would evolve based on your choices. This might be sounding familiar to you, and that's because it also describes Mass Effect. Think about how huge an impact that game had - Unreal 2 was trying to do the same thing in a full-blown first-person shooter, nearly five years earlier.

Don't get me wrong, although Unreal 2 has a lot in common with Mass Effect, the later game does most things better. Unreal 2's development was troubled, and ended up as a shadow of what it was intended to be. According to the Liandri Archive[liandri.beyondunreal.com], half the content was cut. Most importantly, completely the opposite of what was promised, it turned out to be highly linear, with near-zero RPG aspects. Although there is a dialogue system, you're just choosing which order to hear things in, so the story and characters are always the same. And with multiplayer and modding completely stripped so as to avoid competition with Epic's Unreal Tournament 2003, there's little replay value, so the game was largely forgotten after a few months.

So with the disappointment out of the way, how is it as a game, in the present day? In some ways it's pretty damn impressive. It takes you to a huge variety of environments, some of which you'll never forget - one lands you on a planet-spanning organism (complete with towering cilia hairs, oceans of mucus, pus fountains and pissed-off antibodies), another takes you to a biomechanical quasi-aqueous hellscape that looks like HR Giger working on The Abyss. Elsewhere there are sunsets, lakes, rolling hills, deserts, swamps, icy tundra, high-tech fortresses, and most of the planets are populated with weird animals. It's quite beautiful.

While the dialogue isn't what was promised, the characters are relatively compelling for the nascent standards of February 2003, and this is actually the earliest FPS ever to give me an emotional reaction to its storytelling. It tells a Firefly-like story of troubled ex-military types patrolling the galaxy's backwaters, becoming embroiled in a conflict between powerful organisations. (Interesting sidenote there, Unreal 2 and Firefly released just months apart.) It's a bit clumsy, lacking the polish of later AAA titles and feeling like a lot more narrative and character building had originally been planned, but there are definite feels to be had.

The audio is spectacular, sometimes sounding like a THX demo, and features music by the same guy who'd later compose for Mass Effect. And despite being a human generation old, Unreal 2 still looks pretty good - the game's technology was too advanced for 80% of systems at the time, with dynamic lighting, lipsync and particle effects on par with games from over a decade later. Often the low-resolution textures are the only sign that it's from the 2000s. It helps that it's absolutely dripping with detail, and feels like a labour of love.

Weirdly though, it doesn't feel like an Unreal game at all. It does contain Skaarj, the Dispersion Pistol and a few universe references (Liandri Corporation for example), but all feel like they were originally other things that were tweaked to provide an Unreal connection. The atmosphere is totally different, there's no shared visual language, the lore doesn't quite fit, modding is nearly impossible. And while the original game sheds its age by delivering one of the best shooting experiences ever designed, the combat in Unreal 2 is only average. There are positives - weapons sound good and there's a vast variety of ways to take enemies out... but the balance is strange (monsters are near-ineffectual yet human gunners can wipe you out in seconds), there's little indication of where you're hitting, most enemy attacks are hitscan, bodies vanish after a few seconds, and most critically you move agonisingly slowly (that one is fixable with some Notepad-fu). It's a bit unsatisfying. Not necessarily much worse than Half-Life 2's gunplay, but remember this is supposedly the sequel to Unreal, the king of combat, the sovereign of survival, the primarch of pwning, one of my favourite games ever made.

On the plus side, the gameplay is peppered with radio conversation between the (fully voiced) player character and your allies, and you occasionally fight alongside (very basic) AI soldiers, so you don't feel as alone as in most previous-generation shooters. However the flow of immersion is hurt by frequent cutscenes, loading pauses or pointlessly strolling your ship. (Yes, it has a hub ship to explore between missions just like Mass Effect, except there are only three NPCs and their interaction is limited.) And although the engine allows open environments, the level design is extremely linear; this is very much an on-rails experience. The main player choice is which weapon to use, as there are a dozen, nearly all with alt-fire modes.

Being from 2003, how does it run today? Well surprisingly Unreal 2 has a 1080p widescreen setting in-menu, and crashes are rare. If you check the comments section for this review, I've detailed how to increase movement speed, widen your field-of-view, re-enable the startup movie, shorten the map loading times, fix the main crash that some people experience, and how to dodge rockets. But if you don't need any of that, the main thing to remember is that you need to manually quicksave because the game has few checkpoints.

Wrapping up though, it's a creative ~7-hour sci-fi experience with artistic/cultural merit, still rather pretty and an interesting point in gaming history. Just be prepared for massive linearity, some clunky story beats and middling combat.

Interestingly, Unreal 2 did finally get a multiplayer component months after launch, and it was one of the best team-based online experiences I've ever had. Then a few weeks later, Infogrames-Atari cut funding, the master server died and Unreal 2's developer Legend went bust. Somewhere out there, there's a parallel universe in which Legend had all the time and money they needed to realise their vision, and Unreal 2 became one of the biggest names in the industry.

How to properly play this game before you start.

Access console using ~
Type BeMyMonkey
Type setspeed 2

Now you no longer have a stupidly slow walk speed and you can enjoy an Unreal game the way it was meant to be enjoyed. Fast.

One of the best games i have ever played and it still works on any os 11 years from it's release. Cant go wrong and for such a short game it was an incredible experience.

(Full review follows below)

• Game Name: Unreal 2: The Awakening
  
• Original Release: 2003
  
• Genre Tags: FPS; Action; Sci-Fi
  
• My Overall Grade: A-
  
• Estimated Playtime (Campaign): 8-12 hours
  
• Multiplayer Aspect: None
  
• Recommended To: Established fans of the genre; Those intrigued by the genre; Fans of the intellectual property; Nostalgia chasers

I personally was thoroughly surprised by how much I enjoyed Unreal II: The Awakening. There is actually a decent sci-fi narrative in there; albeit one that is a bit cliché. And the characters actually have personalities that manage to be mildly interesting. Mix that in with classic Unreal FPS gameplay and you get a pretty enjoyable experience.

The narrative will escort you from mission to mission (level to level), as you explore various worlds in the vastness of space to accomplish your goals. In between each mission you return to your spaceship where you can interact (mildly) with your crew and arrange your armament for the next mission. Having conversations with your crew allows you to gather background information and expands on some of the lore aspects. In this way, there are some parallels with the early Mass Effect games.

The different missions will take you to diverse environments with various objectives, but the core gameplay doesn’t evolve much throughout the game. However you will be able to unlock new weapons and armaments as you progress, which allows you to keep things fresh as you finish up the campaign.

One main complaint with Unreal II: The Awakening is that the movement speed is much slower than in other Unreal games. To be honest, it didn’t bother me that much. Luckily, if it does bother you, there is a way to increase the speed of the game using the console.

So it is true that Unreal II: The Awakening isn’t perfect, but I still really liked the overall experience quite a bit. I think if you enjoy sci-fi FPS games with decent narratives, and need something new to play: this is a good game for you to consider.

Follow my curation page to see more of my recommendations!

This game is an example of how the design wins over graphics. Immersive storytelling, unreal worlds of various look, and epic artwork - this is why Unreal 2: The Awakening is not getting older past these years.

Steam > Epic Games Store

TL;DR - An Unreal 2.0 Engine Tech demo/story-based FPS with a lackluster story and surprisingly not that much shooting either.

Have you ever rediscovered your music collection from when you were in gradeschool? As a kid, it was awesome and you thoroughly enjoyed it without regrets. Relistening to that same collection as an adult may leave you wondering, "How did I ever like Papa Roach?!" That's exactly what Unreal II is today: your elementary school playlist. Embarrassing. Dated. Nostalgic, sure, but still bad...but you couldn't have known at the time.

This uneventful, cutscene-filled game begins with...an uneventful albeit attractive cutscene with one of the many establishing shots littered throughout the game showcasing the generationally beautiful graphics for 2003. The devs use every opportunity to flaunt their graphics with unskippable and pointless cutscenes of John Dalton's shuttle flying to and from the mission area that, as a young teen, left me awestruck as the stars reflected off the canopy and blue flame erupted from his thrusters while my GeForce MX420 was pushed to its limits. After a basic tutorial and generic introduction in which Major Mc Military calls upon Dalton to investigate planet X because comms are down, the ricecake of a game really gets started.

You are thrust aboard your own starship with your crew of three. The ship is replete with empty corridors, crew dorms, and interactable service hatches revealing the 2d wiring below and is about as interesting as your hardened space mates. Aida, a cold, all business supermodel/ tactical genius that exists only to show pert cleavage and avoid the discomfort of having your ship be a sausage fest. Isaak, a chain smoking, gruff weapons expert/mechanic that explains your weapons' functions just in case you forgot what a gun does. Finally you have Ne'baan, an innocent, naive alien who's main function is to ask basic questions about each cardboard crewmember and elicit uninteresting expository information about their cliché back stories.

Ne'baan: "Why is Aida so mean?"
Dalton: "Well son, she was on a bad mission one time..."

Ne'baan: "Why is Isaak so aloof?"
Dalton: "Well son, he was on a bad mission one time..."

Get the picture?

The actual missions play about the same. You land and are greeted with a wide swath of land to linearly explore and take in one of the planet's themes: jungle, alien, tundra, desert, grasslands etc. Again, while somewhat fascinating as an early 2000's tech demo, you will quickly learn to loathe these "open space" sections since they only serve to bring the game to a crawl as there is often little to do save for traveling at a snail's pace towards the second half of the mission which typically consists of an indoor, corridor shooter. Each mission usually has a new weapon introduced, only a handful of which are actually useful, enjoyable, or usable since ammo is generally scarce for many of them. There is a rather large weapon selection with colorful animations and interesting alternate fire modes which resulted in me entertaining myself with the reload animations while trudging along the numerous action-free segments of a mission.

As for the combat, it is pretty standard fare with the majority of the enemies being cut and paste soldier types armed with the assault rifle, shotgun, and rocket launcher. As a result, these are most likely going to be the main weapons you will use and shooting an enemy from across the map with the pinpoint accuracy of the assault rifle wears thin pretty quickly. Since your character moves so slowly, it feels as if the enemy attacks are almost unavoidable and at any difficulty above normal, expect some serious BS deaths. There are some alien enemies that feature ranged and melee attacks, which at least disrupts the monotony of fighting power armored corporate mercenary types. It should be noted that a handful of throwaway lines of expository dialogue in the whole game explain the motivations of the enemy factions. On the right are the greedy corporations. On the left are the bloodthirsty aliens. Moving on.

What this game feels like is a greatly inferior version of the Marine campaign of AvP 2(2001) with some Halo inspiration sprinkled on top. A couple of the missions feature exploring an alien spaceship that looks frighteningly similar to the hive from Aliens. There's also a mission in which you must clear a research base infested with mutated spider like creatures. It's atmospheric and somewhat entertaining, but all it does is make you wish you were playing AvP 2 instead while simultaneously lamenting the fact that it's not available on Steam or GoG. The only other gameplay mechanic is a very light form of squad combat and base defense that occurs a few times. Unlike the squad combat of 2001's Halo that provided a temporary reprieve from the Commando-style gameplay in that game's campaign, Unreal II's squad usage consists of assigning one or all soldiers to guard a portion of a building while waves of enemies attack. The squad mates are about as useful as deploying sentry guns which are also provided and preferred.

Dead Air. That is an accurate descriptor for this game as the vast amounts of downtime, loading screens, and linear navigation results in a simply uneventful experience. The lack of scoring throughout most of the game further compounds this problem and while the soundtrack can be quite good at times in typical Unreal fashion, it is mostly relegated to scripted action sequences and the inconsistency is readily apparent. I found there to be plenty of unscored segments in which the clank-clank-clanking of John Dalton's boots is the closest you will get to hearing music throughout many of the missions.

So how exactly did I and so many others enjoy this game at the time? Because it was all there was. Chances are you played every single major title that came out during your summer/spring/winter breaks provided they got a 7/10 or above on IGN or Gamespot(remember the days when their word actually meant something?). For people mildly curious about what this mostly forgotten Unreal title is all about, I would earnestly say skip it and save 7-10 hours of your life as you really aren't missing much. If you are genuinely interested in what gaming was like in the early 00s, play it and marvel at its mediocrity like a quaint novelty from the past...or just boot up 3D Mark Vantage 2003 instead.

F...

U...

EPIC...

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The second game in the Unreal series is a successor in name only, bearing no resemblance to the original (apart from the presence of the Skaarj). You play as John Dalton, a marshall in the Terran Colonial Authority, with aspirations of returning to the Marines. A seemingly innocent mission sends you hunting for artifacts across the galaxy, culminating in a rather disappointing finale.

In my opinion, this game does get some unfair criticism but it was a major disappointment, compared to the impact its predecessor had.

Your experience will be vastly improved if you play with the speed cheat enabled - the default move speed is painfully slow and makes you feel like you are moving through custard. Beyond that, it is an enjoyable experience, although do not expect anything memorable or life-changing.

Played on Windows 10 Pro x64 - had quite a few crashes and freezes, mostly as a result of Alt-Tabbing.

LONG. LIVE. UNREAL