Well, it took me over 4.5 years, but I've finally completed Unreal 2! I tend to keep hold of savegames when uninstalling games, so this week I re-installed U2 and started where I left off, a savegame dating back to Feb 2003 
The funny thing is, one of the reasons I gave up was because I was finding one level (secret base in the desert) particularly difficult, always running out of ammo. But like I often find when coming back to a game after a break, it seemed much easier this time around - the same thing happened with halflife (2.5yr break) and Mafia (3yr break). Made more use of the sniper rifle and it seemed a doddle...
My general thoughts on the game:
-Nice array of weapons. The flamethrower is really cool, and I love the knockback effect on the shotty. The one downside is for some stupid reason they 'stacked' weapons on the same keys (1-5) rather than utilising at least 1-0. Why?!
-Storyline isn't anything special, fairly standard fare. At least they let you interact with crew members in between missions. Getting a narration on each new weapon/mode you obtain is pretty cool as it gives you a bit of guidance as to how the gun is supposed to be used.
-AI is OK but doesn't seem to have progressed much from the original Unreal
-Graphically when maxed out the game is decent for it's age, although the poor texture resolution is noticeable in places. Weapon effects are good, however.
-The best sections of the game are probably the 'defend' levels, where you have to setup a perimeter using forcefields, turrets and teammates. This represents a welcome change from the usual linear progression present in most FPS and gives you an opportunity to approach a situation tactically.
-Performance seemed a bit shoddy to me for such an old game - I've got a feeling it is a very CPU limited game as going from 0xAA 1xAF to 4xAA supersampling 16xAF max quality etc made very little difference to framerate. Most of the time I had 70-120fps but there were a couple of sections where it dropped right down to 37-45fps. This is on a 3.2ghz C2D with a 8800GTS clocked well in excess of OC2 speeds.
-While it's a bit hard to judge having played at a fair chunk of the game so long ago, in terms of length it is definitely a far, far shorter game than Unreal. At a guess I'd say it is maybe half the size.
-The flow of the game could have been better in places. I remember some of the early levels in a swamp tended to involve a lot of random wandering around trying to find where I was supposed to go - it lacks the 'radar' type features one expects from a modern FPS.
Overall, it is a slight disappointing sequel to UNR. It gets a lot of things right (weapons and 'set pieces') but the overall experience leaves a bit to be desired - it's certainly not what I would call a classic. Still at least it's better than the likes of FPS with a similar style such Halo and Pariah.
So, what are your views on this game?
The funny thing is, one of the reasons I gave up was because I was finding one level (secret base in the desert) particularly difficult, always running out of ammo. But like I often find when coming back to a game after a break, it seemed much easier this time around - the same thing happened with halflife (2.5yr break) and Mafia (3yr break). Made more use of the sniper rifle and it seemed a doddle...
My general thoughts on the game:
-Nice array of weapons. The flamethrower is really cool, and I love the knockback effect on the shotty. The one downside is for some stupid reason they 'stacked' weapons on the same keys (1-5) rather than utilising at least 1-0. Why?!
-Storyline isn't anything special, fairly standard fare. At least they let you interact with crew members in between missions. Getting a narration on each new weapon/mode you obtain is pretty cool as it gives you a bit of guidance as to how the gun is supposed to be used.
-AI is OK but doesn't seem to have progressed much from the original Unreal
-Graphically when maxed out the game is decent for it's age, although the poor texture resolution is noticeable in places. Weapon effects are good, however.
-The best sections of the game are probably the 'defend' levels, where you have to setup a perimeter using forcefields, turrets and teammates. This represents a welcome change from the usual linear progression present in most FPS and gives you an opportunity to approach a situation tactically.
-Performance seemed a bit shoddy to me for such an old game - I've got a feeling it is a very CPU limited game as going from 0xAA 1xAF to 4xAA supersampling 16xAF max quality etc made very little difference to framerate. Most of the time I had 70-120fps but there were a couple of sections where it dropped right down to 37-45fps. This is on a 3.2ghz C2D with a 8800GTS clocked well in excess of OC2 speeds.
-While it's a bit hard to judge having played at a fair chunk of the game so long ago, in terms of length it is definitely a far, far shorter game than Unreal. At a guess I'd say it is maybe half the size.
-The flow of the game could have been better in places. I remember some of the early levels in a swamp tended to involve a lot of random wandering around trying to find where I was supposed to go - it lacks the 'radar' type features one expects from a modern FPS.
Overall, it is a slight disappointing sequel to UNR. It gets a lot of things right (weapons and 'set pieces') but the overall experience leaves a bit to be desired - it's certainly not what I would call a classic. Still at least it's better than the likes of FPS with a similar style such Halo and Pariah.
So, what are your views on this game?
