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Edit: I didn't put this in Matrox gaming because I no longer play games on a Matrox card. Additionally, I wouldn't even want to BEGIN to play this game on a Parhelia, noting how horribly it runs on Radeons and GeForces.
Well, I know it's very new, but I just thought I'd comment on this overrated, overhyped piece of dog shit.
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This is possibly the worst game ever made. It is made worse by the fact that everyone thought it wouldn't suck.
Let's start at the beginning, shall we?
Edit: In every instance, I'm comparing this to either its multiplayer counterpart Unreal Tournament 2003 or to Return to Castle Wolfenstein or Medal of Honor... basically recent Quake3 engine games.
Installation. There is no option to NOT put 1.5 gigs on your system. I know, hard drives are big nowadays. But frankly, CD drives are fast, and it's irksome. Oh well.
The game uses SecuROM. In fact, it installs a tech support wizard for SecuROM. Why? Because recent versions of SecuROM are known to lock you out of your game if you DARE to have cd burning software or even a CD burner installed in your machine. Needless to say I cracked the game the minute it was installed. Sony can keep their degenerate "nazi protection" schemes away from my PC, thank you very much.
The game opens with a queer screen saver. Some might find this amusing or cute. I find it stupid. Next, we're taken to an options screen. The options screen is clearly broken, but let's not delve TOO deeply into that. Suffice it to say that after about half an hour of juggling keys, I managed to get the controls set up to my liking. On MOST FPS games this takes 30 seconds, not 30 minutes.
Then the game opens ... with a loading screen. Yes, just when you thought that the disc cache had finally caught on... this game loads between rooms, between cutscenes (which can't be skipped) and between everything. And loading takes a LONG time. On my machine it can take a full minute between a cutscene and a level... or between a cutscene and a cutscene!
Saving takes an equally long time. "Quicksave" takes about 30 seconds. Compare this to Return to Castle Wolfenstein, where saving is instantaneous and loading (once the engine is initialized) takes about 2 seconds.
So right away I'm pretty convinced that this game is not going to impress me. But hey, I'm waiting to be given a gun - that's what Unreal is all about, yeah?
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Graphics:
Well, on my Athlon XP 1800+, with a half gig of DDR 2700, an 80gb HDD, a Radeon 8500 clocked up to 275/275, and an Audigy2... it sucks. Had to drop to 800x600, and turn everything down, and it STILL lagged. Can't enable vsync, since oftentimes I'm only getting about 20fps. Turned all the quality sliders to medium or off.
With everything turned up, the game was pretty. But only in-level. The cutscenes are TERRIBLE. Especially laughable are the scenes of a shuttlecraft (total of 8 polygons) landing on a planet (which is lushly rendered at the bleeding edge of what a graphics card can do nowadays). Why couldn't they apply the same lighting and effects to the shuttlecraft? As it is, it looks totally out-of-place.
Edit: Did I mention that the cutscenes, even at 800x600 with no effects... jerk and lag a lot? Yeah, this is a TOP-NOTCH graphics engine. (And yes, that was SARCASM.)
Sound:
The sound is quite good. Especially with environmental effects. I genuinely got creeped out at times. The voice actors are horrific, but that's not unusual in this genre of game.
Gameplay:
Ok, this is where this game goes from crap to festering pile of crap. Let's begin, shall we?
Your running speed is somewhere between "cold molasses" and "dead crawl". I know you're supposed to be wearing power armor, but everyone ELSE in the game can move faster than you, and YOU'RE the indestructible marine, yeah? (Colonial Authority Marshal, whatever). I mean, the training geek, who is a tech and a wuss... can run circles around you. You're just downright slow... except when jumping. When you jump, you move at lightspeed.
Heaven forbid you press the "walk" key. Why would you want to walk, when running is slower than most fps games' slowest walk speed? Pressing the "walk" key guarantees that you will never move from the spot you're in.
Weapons... the standard blaster is useless. I know it's kind of SUPPOSED to be useless, but it's REALLY useless. You can't aim it, because it travels so slow that you won't hit whatever you were aiming at. Easily dodged by even the slowest aliens... except that all the aliens move at Warp Factor 10.
The rifle is good. You'll use it exclusively. It eats ammo, but it's good.
The grenade launcher is... ok. Hurts you more than the enemies.
The shock lance, which the enemies use to utterly RAPE you, is useless. Seems like it might be good, but it isn't.
Levels:
Well, the level design might be good, it's hard to tell at 800x600, detail at the lowest, and with all the dying and doors conveniently welded shut so you can only go one way, and the dying, and the aliens that appear out of nowhere right behind you even though you cleared out the area and came in the only door... did I mention the dying? On the standard level this game is impossible. You move at 2mph, the enemies move at Mach 12, your weapons are inadequate at best, and when you die it takes a good 5 minutes to start the level from your last save point.
Enemies:
The enemies ... well I only found one kind of enemy. The miners refer to them as "damn space monkeys". They sound like hyenas or wolves or something. They're blue and grey. They're impossible to see because they move at Mach 10, and after you kill them you realize that they are a series of polygons.
I mean, honestly... UT2003 (same engine, they claim) has AWESOME character models, that move and pose and bend and have an ultra-realistic skeletal system. Unreal 2, on the other hand, has humanoid models straight out of Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight (you remember that, yeah? ANCIENT game? Circa 1995?) and alien models straight out of... well... I don't have insults enough for these aliens. They're just plain ugly. About 8 polys each. Yuk.
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Overall, I give this game three thumbs down. I know I only have two thumbs. Cope. If you bought it, return it NOW, get your money back before it's too late. If you pirated it, just delete the damn thing. I don't know what happened to Epic. Unreal Tournament 2003 was great, but then Unreal Tourney for XBOX came out. That's the SECOND shittiest game ever, don't even get me started on it... and now this.
- Gurm
Well, I know it's very new, but I just thought I'd comment on this overrated, overhyped piece of dog shit.
-----------------
This is possibly the worst game ever made. It is made worse by the fact that everyone thought it wouldn't suck.
Let's start at the beginning, shall we?
Edit: In every instance, I'm comparing this to either its multiplayer counterpart Unreal Tournament 2003 or to Return to Castle Wolfenstein or Medal of Honor... basically recent Quake3 engine games.
Installation. There is no option to NOT put 1.5 gigs on your system. I know, hard drives are big nowadays. But frankly, CD drives are fast, and it's irksome. Oh well.
The game uses SecuROM. In fact, it installs a tech support wizard for SecuROM. Why? Because recent versions of SecuROM are known to lock you out of your game if you DARE to have cd burning software or even a CD burner installed in your machine. Needless to say I cracked the game the minute it was installed. Sony can keep their degenerate "nazi protection" schemes away from my PC, thank you very much.
The game opens with a queer screen saver. Some might find this amusing or cute. I find it stupid. Next, we're taken to an options screen. The options screen is clearly broken, but let's not delve TOO deeply into that. Suffice it to say that after about half an hour of juggling keys, I managed to get the controls set up to my liking. On MOST FPS games this takes 30 seconds, not 30 minutes.
Then the game opens ... with a loading screen. Yes, just when you thought that the disc cache had finally caught on... this game loads between rooms, between cutscenes (which can't be skipped) and between everything. And loading takes a LONG time. On my machine it can take a full minute between a cutscene and a level... or between a cutscene and a cutscene!
Saving takes an equally long time. "Quicksave" takes about 30 seconds. Compare this to Return to Castle Wolfenstein, where saving is instantaneous and loading (once the engine is initialized) takes about 2 seconds.
So right away I'm pretty convinced that this game is not going to impress me. But hey, I'm waiting to be given a gun - that's what Unreal is all about, yeah?
-------------------
Graphics:
Well, on my Athlon XP 1800+, with a half gig of DDR 2700, an 80gb HDD, a Radeon 8500 clocked up to 275/275, and an Audigy2... it sucks. Had to drop to 800x600, and turn everything down, and it STILL lagged. Can't enable vsync, since oftentimes I'm only getting about 20fps. Turned all the quality sliders to medium or off.
With everything turned up, the game was pretty. But only in-level. The cutscenes are TERRIBLE. Especially laughable are the scenes of a shuttlecraft (total of 8 polygons) landing on a planet (which is lushly rendered at the bleeding edge of what a graphics card can do nowadays). Why couldn't they apply the same lighting and effects to the shuttlecraft? As it is, it looks totally out-of-place.
Edit: Did I mention that the cutscenes, even at 800x600 with no effects... jerk and lag a lot? Yeah, this is a TOP-NOTCH graphics engine. (And yes, that was SARCASM.)
Sound:
The sound is quite good. Especially with environmental effects. I genuinely got creeped out at times. The voice actors are horrific, but that's not unusual in this genre of game.
Gameplay:
Ok, this is where this game goes from crap to festering pile of crap. Let's begin, shall we?
Your running speed is somewhere between "cold molasses" and "dead crawl". I know you're supposed to be wearing power armor, but everyone ELSE in the game can move faster than you, and YOU'RE the indestructible marine, yeah? (Colonial Authority Marshal, whatever). I mean, the training geek, who is a tech and a wuss... can run circles around you. You're just downright slow... except when jumping. When you jump, you move at lightspeed.
Heaven forbid you press the "walk" key. Why would you want to walk, when running is slower than most fps games' slowest walk speed? Pressing the "walk" key guarantees that you will never move from the spot you're in.
Weapons... the standard blaster is useless. I know it's kind of SUPPOSED to be useless, but it's REALLY useless. You can't aim it, because it travels so slow that you won't hit whatever you were aiming at. Easily dodged by even the slowest aliens... except that all the aliens move at Warp Factor 10.
The rifle is good. You'll use it exclusively. It eats ammo, but it's good.
The grenade launcher is... ok. Hurts you more than the enemies.
The shock lance, which the enemies use to utterly RAPE you, is useless. Seems like it might be good, but it isn't.
Levels:
Well, the level design might be good, it's hard to tell at 800x600, detail at the lowest, and with all the dying and doors conveniently welded shut so you can only go one way, and the dying, and the aliens that appear out of nowhere right behind you even though you cleared out the area and came in the only door... did I mention the dying? On the standard level this game is impossible. You move at 2mph, the enemies move at Mach 12, your weapons are inadequate at best, and when you die it takes a good 5 minutes to start the level from your last save point.
Enemies:
The enemies ... well I only found one kind of enemy. The miners refer to them as "damn space monkeys". They sound like hyenas or wolves or something. They're blue and grey. They're impossible to see because they move at Mach 10, and after you kill them you realize that they are a series of polygons.
I mean, honestly... UT2003 (same engine, they claim) has AWESOME character models, that move and pose and bend and have an ultra-realistic skeletal system. Unreal 2, on the other hand, has humanoid models straight out of Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight (you remember that, yeah? ANCIENT game? Circa 1995?) and alien models straight out of... well... I don't have insults enough for these aliens. They're just plain ugly. About 8 polys each. Yuk.
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Overall, I give this game three thumbs down. I know I only have two thumbs. Cope. If you bought it, return it NOW, get your money back before it's too late. If you pirated it, just delete the damn thing. I don't know what happened to Epic. Unreal Tournament 2003 was great, but then Unreal Tourney for XBOX came out. That's the SECOND shittiest game ever, don't even get me started on it... and now this.
- Gurm
...the first part is so good...
).
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