Unreal Review
Unreal. Un-Real. Anyone who is old enough to remember a lot of old games, probably knows Unreal. Hell, i’m sure there’s a lot of gamers who have generally heard of Unreal. But, what do they think of? Unreal Tournament? The gaming engine that is in currently in it’s fourth iteration, right? Unreal seems to have been permanently overshadowed by Unreal Tournament, a game that is, all things considered, geared towards hot and fast multiplayer matches, rather than a developed single-player campaign. Not that I have any grudge at all against Unreal Tournament. It’s a fine game in it’s own right, and feels true to the gameplay style of Unreal: A hard, tricky FPS experience that will kick you in the balls every 10 to 15 minutes, just to keep you from thinking you’re pro, or anything stupid like that.
But, seriously. Was Unreal so shitty that Unreal Tournament kicked it out of line as THE game that carried the Unreal title into the future? Well, I happened to have a copy of Unreal Gold edition kicking around in my library, so I took a few days playing through the whole thing on hard difficulty to come to a serious conclusion. My conclusion, is that this game got unfairly buried.
Unreal was initially released in May of 1998 for ye olde’ computer, Mac and Windows PC, by Epic Games, then Epic Megagames, back when making a succesful game meant being colorful and innovative. Imagine that. It featured an engine that was new and state of the art back then. The Unreal Engine. Now, i’m not going to harp on the engine. This is a review for the game, not the engine. But it seemed destined to compete with the Quake engine that ID Software used for Quake 2 at the time, and actually, it did quite well.
Now then, how about the actual game? Well, there are plenty of space-faring games that have you as either a military-type or some virgin, grand old soul with tons of combat experience. Unreal kicks that concept in the balls. You are Prisoner-849, stuck onboard a prison vessel headed for a certain moon. Since you are never given an exact name or a show of why you were imprisoned, you could make up the backstory yourself. Maybe you’re totally innocent and got framed? Maybe you’re an eco-terrorist, or something equally barbaric.
Well, whatever the reason, you’re stuck in a metal box, waiting out your eternity until you get to the next prison moon. That is, until the prison vessel crashes on a hostile alien planet, leaving you at the mercy of fate and the Skaarj, a fierce, serpentine alien race with advanced technology at their disposal. Who are all more than glad to repurpose your corpse into a claw sharpener.
When you start the game, there’s no flashy cutscene, you just get dropped right into your now un-protected cell, nearly dead from beatings that come with the prison lifestyle, and nothing except the clothes on your back. From there, it’s up to you to get off the ship, and survive the forces that want to skin your sorry ass. Maybe find some weapons to “level the playing field”.
So, now you gotta wonder. There’s a lot of interest about the graphics, and the storyline sounds pretty engrossing. So is the gameplay actually any GOOD? Well, it’s flawed, but it’s functionally sound. It’s the standard old-school FPS action. Health packs, ammo, shooting dudes, so on and so forth. How is it flawed? I’ll get to that in a bit, hold your non-existent horses.
First thing, there’s no real stuff woven into the story through narrative, since everyone else on the planet either speaks not-english, or wants to rip your face off. Instead, you use a Universal Translator, a futuristic, PDA-looking device that will translate some text from the world at certain particular places. Makes it useful to tell what the actual hell you’re doing. Plus, you may start to get some actual ideas as to what’s going on. Also ,there is a small armory’s worth of extra tools you’ll be needing with your adventure. Several different types of armor, a shield, flashlights, flares, seeds, even a power amplifier.
Speaking of which, the weapons. The weapons are all colorful and creative. If you want to see all the weapons, go to a frigging walkthrough, but there are a few worth glossing over, but especially one worth talking about. You got pistols, you got electro-shock rifles, you have a six-barelled rocket launcher, even. But what’s really worth mentioning is the first weapon you get. The Dispersion Pistol. It’s a basic energy pistol that fires off a energy blast on primary that can’t be charged, but does no damage to you, or a chargeable blast that can damage you. The ammo pack recharges, so this is a good utility weapon for curb-stomping weak, pitiful foes underfoot, or breaking open the many breakable props that might have goodies inside. But, there’s more to this gun than meets the eye.
Hidden throughout Na Pali, you will find these things that look like a giant metal pill with lightning around it. This is an upgrade for the dispersion pistol. Turns out it’s modular. With each upgrade, the damage of the primary increases, the ammo usage and max ammo increases, and the pistol begins to unfold towards looking like a total badass. Towards the end of the game, you’ll even be able to take on ordinary foes with the dispersion pistol and still win. Definitely a nice idea at the time. Though, i’m sure this helped lead to the upgrade mechanic that is in way too many games for it’s own good.
Now, earlier in the review, I said that the gameplay was flawed, but functionally sound. I mean that in the way that the enemy A.I. isn’t just smart, it’s intent on trolling you all the freaking way to hell and back. After seeing lots of games where the enemy A.I is a handicapped retard being asked to say the alphabet backwards, you’d think that would be nice for immersion. But after the Skaarj Berserker that killed me five times previously dodges my rapid-fire bullets for the thousandth time and stomps my face, a certain level of irritation sets in. You see ,the A.I for all the nimble enemies (Codeword is NIMBLE), makes them try to dodge fire very, very often. I never thought i’d say this, but I wish the enemies would stay the FUCK still. Not to mention, all of the enemies have their own special quirky way to be annoying, hard to hit, and good at making you do the spinning death animation fifty times. The Skaarj pupae? Jump right out of your ar mview within a certain distance, so you backpedal into a wall, trying to get a bead on them. Serpents? Land a crap load of hits on you before you can deliver anything close to a serious blow. Skaarj Berserkers? Bum-rush you while launching energy bolts, then melee, making it so that your good, explosive weapons are damn near useless. And.....oh my sweet fucking god. The mercs. The mercenaries are all total fucking douchebags. Because they can put on a temporary shield that makes them immune to literally everything, plasma, bullets, explosions, fire, lava, everything. Granted, it only lasts a few seconds, but that’s ten seconds that they can blow your ass up, and you can’t do SHIT about it.
Oh, first time you play this game, play a mini-game. Every time you charge up a powerful blow on a merc and he nullifies it with his shield, take a shot. You’ll be extremely drunk by the time you see the conclusion of this game. But, you know what?
I can’t hate this game for that. I can’t.
Maybe it’s because the artistical vision is so undeniably sound. Perhaps it’s the fact that the concept of trying to survive on a hostile planet appeals to me. If you want to not get trolled to death all the time, you have to develop a method of taking on your enemies while managing ammo count, and be ready to switch up the method on the fly because there is always a good chance for an unscripted surprise moment. Like when I blasted a Skaarj warrior off a ledge, peered over it to finish the job, and he lept straight up at me, knocked me away, and landed back up on the ledge.
One thing I will definitely say is that this game is plenty long enough to entertain, if you’ll put up with it. It’s definitely a marathon, not a sprint. I would easily say that your first playthrough could clock 10+ hours, depending on your skill level and patience.
But, just when you think you’re done, and floating in space again forever, there’s still the expansion, Return to Na Pali. This expansion adds minor and major new foes, along with the return of all the same irritation-enducing creatures. And, of course, three new weapons to balance the odds out. But I am happy to say that the new enemies provided via expansion are at least somewhat better designed. In the expansion pack, you end up being sent back to the planet’s surface by a bunch of armored space marines to get back some computer logs from a crashed vessel. Of course, they betray you once you get on the ship, and you have to find your own way off the planet. AGAIN.
If you include the expansion pack, it definitely adds a considerable few more hours to the campaign. Even if you tried to power through it all, it could take a couple of days. But, hell, I don’t think I could do anything like that without going clinically mad.
The planet of Na Pali is an interesting and nearly fruitful adventure, if you can bear all of it.
And then comes the last feature of Unreal Gold. Multiplayer. And I would say it is decently fleshed out. Plenty of maps to choose from, whether you want KotH, CTF, or straight up frag-a-licious deathmatch. And they all look just as pretty as the main campaign maps, too. Except Darkmatch. But what do you expect? It’s s’posed to be dark. Feeling too shit? Getting face-stomped by friends for the 5,000th time? Then a Botmatch is in order. That’s right, full bot support. So now, you can gauge yourself against the A.I that Epic (Huge) Games provides. Good training, really. Because multiplayer is certainly different from SP. It’s not as overly extended and flourished as Unreal Tournament, but I still like Unreal’s multiplayer modes. Maybe just as much as UT-ter domination. Partially because I like the look and feel the original weapons had.
So, to summarize. Unreal is a classic FPS with weapons a plenty and A.I that is super-tricky to the extreme. It makes up for this though, with superb atmosphere, damn sexy mapping talent, and a soundtrack that does more than enough to ramp up the action to an enjoyable level. I would definitely recommend getting Unreal: Gold Edition wherever you can find it, whether it be Ebay, Amazon, GoG, however you get your games. And when you get to the Demonlord, tell that Cyberdemon rip-off I said Hi, and also, put rockets between his eyes. So long, and have a quiet time in the darkness.
-Silentdark12
