WC Article - Unreal review

Unreal Review by Jazzman-X

It's finally here. Almost hard to believe.The game that started development before
the original Quake has finally been released. I mean think about it... id has
released 2 games in the time it took Epic to do 1! Now the question is: Is it
that much better? Well......Yes and No in my opinion.

I want to start off by giving my comparative reviews of Unreal and
Quake 2 on several areas.

Game	Graphics	Control	Gameplay	Singleplay	features	multiplayer	sound
Unreal	9.5	9	8	10	8	1	8
Quake2	8	9	9	6	8	10	8

If you add all those up you will see that I give Quake 2 the nod for
being all around better. Some will almost definitely disagree, but
I feel many will agree with me. I will just quickly summarize my
reasons for each category.

Graphics:
By far the best of any game of this type. I will say that the
architecture of many rooms don't have the cool complex beams etc. of
quake 2 and many rooms do not seem to be quite as.... 3d as Quake 2
but the lighting and attention to detail more than make up for it.
I catch myself standing around looking at everything in almost every
room amazed at how long they must have spent working on all the
different textures and lighting effects. It is truly a beautiful
game.

Control:
Pretty standard fare right in line with Quake 2. You con configure
everything how you want and play with the same setup as you always
have. The control in the game responds very well and the only gripe
I have is sometimes jumping seems to be a real chore. The dodge
feature is pretty cool but no big deal.

Gameplay:
This is a tricky one. I'll come out and say it right away, the weapons
kinda suck. They are all real cool looking and the secondary fire is
cool, but they just don't feel right. I mean when you shooting this
kickass looking blue rail gun looking shit at a bot and have to shoot
him 5 times to kill him something just is not right. To me the weapons
look real cool but just don't seem powerful ever. Seems like you have
to shoot everyone at least 3 or 4 times with any weapon to kill them.

I do have to comment though that the sniper rifle zoom effect is very
cool. Seems it is the best weapon since I have killed bots with one
shot from time to time, with a head shot. (not sure if they were
hurt or not) some say "Its good not to have one hit kill weapons". I
disagree. If you are a good shot and hit someone in the head with a
rocket they should die, unless they have power-ups of some kind.
End of story.

Single Player Game:
The best by far of any 1st person game to date. I'm sure you have all
read about it. The game builds up tension, has great intelligent
monsters and has beautifully laid out levels. I have played this game
further through in single player already than I have ever played any
other 1st person game. That says it all for me. It draws you in and
keeps you going just so you can see what's next.

Features:
Again Unreal has a great set of built in features. It has single player
action, bot matches in several different style games, you can configure
every little option to do with graphics, sound, etc. You can even go
into a menu to configure specific 3dfx features! They did a very good
job on out of box features. The only reason Quake 2 got the same score
is because of all the after release mods. Unreal if it follows suit
could go beyond the score I gave it.

Multiplayer:
Blows huge hairy, fungus ridden chunks. They need to do some major
work here. I mean when I can go on a T1 connection to the main EPIC
servers with only 4 other people there at 11am and cant play because
of lag there is a problem. They have to fix this. I know that Quake 2
was a little rough on release, but no where near this bad. You should
buy this game for the single player game, not the multiplayer.

Sound:
Very good. On par with Quake 2 overall. The environmental sound
effects in Unreal are better, but the weapon sound effects are better
in Quake 2. The music is a non issue to me since I always turn it off.

In Conclusion:

I think Unreal is a very good game. I do not feel it is better than
Quake 2. Yes it is prettier, and the single player game whoops Quake 2
ass all over the place. Unreal just doesn't have the Multiplayer or
that.........feel to it that id has gotten us all addicted to over
the years. You will see what I mean after you make it past the
ooo's and ahhh's of the first few hours and start playing more.

I will say that I think Unreal could end up being better than Quake 2
in time. If some of these Mod authors start getting a hold of it
and Epic fixes the multiplayer problems there is no way to stop it.
Until then I'll play Unreal when no one is online, but if I see
somebody on the server......Unreal takes a nap.

Systems used for review:
P166, 48mb, Monster 3D, Generic 6.4gig HD, Diamond Stealth 3d 2000, 56k connection
P2 233, 64mb, Riva 128 4mg AGP, generic 5gig HD, T1 connection