Yes, a positive Unreal 2: The Awakening review

Unreal II: The Awakening is a sci-fi FPS released in 2003. It’s supposed to be a sequel to the highly successful and innovative Unreal but it’s more like a spinoff. It features completely different pacing, gameplay, narrative and atmosphere ...aaand before we start: I really loved it.

Should you get it? 

It’s your standard space opera/sci-fi FPS from the first half of the 2000s. I found it decent enough for the genre but if you expect something like Unreal, you’ll be disappointed. Think about Unreal as Star Trek, and Unreal 2 as the first two seasons of Andromeda.

It’s waaay too overpriced: wait for a sale, I picked it up for 0,89 Euros.

The Story of Unreal 2: The Awakening 

You play as John Dalton, a space cop and one-dimensional hero guy. His job is to fly from mission to mission with his ragtag supporting crew and raggedy starship, trying to piece together a mistery surronding an ancient artifact.

Gameplay elements

Missions

Most missions in the game have an interactive interlude. They often take place on the main characters ship which is a neat idea. You can either listen to the briefing, get info about your (new) guns or the lore, or you can just simply explore the interior of the small carrier ship.

Layouts

The game uses a standard narrative: one mission on a planet, little interlude on the ship, mission on a completely different planet and so on.

Missions are highly linear and heavily scripted. Level design is okay but I’d have liked some more freedom to explore the surrondings. Some of the levels just felt a little bit cramped, a little freedom wouldn’t have hurt. (And bit of a grammar practice, either.)

Tactics

Dalton plays offensive during the missions but there are some parts when the player has to defend an area (or a door) against waves of incoming enemies. Tools you can utilise:

• autoturrets (rockets or bullets)
• force fields
• various NPCs (simple soldiers and ones with powered armour)

These tasks are usually easy to beat but they provide a little change of pace. Dalton is a little slow so you have to be careful how you micromanage your defense.

I’m a sensitve guy so I usually play on normal difficulty. I usually had no problem refilling my ammo, health and armour in the game.

Story and characters

The story was clichéd but it gave the devs enough freedom to create unique environments and atmosphere for the different levels.

Characters were mostly one-dimensional but the voice-acting was much more solid than I’d expect in a game like this. This little extra depth made the story work for me at a crucial point in the game.

Unfortunately the best character (the clever one on the ship, Aida) had a really bad design flaw. She was waaaaaaaaay too oversexualized while her character would’ve worked much better with more modest looks. Jackie Underwood made her a charming, serious and caring protagonist… but someone said “go with spandex, boobs and a snake tattoo”. Oh my god, that’s like '90's Tomb Raider again.

Movement

Dalton, the protagonist wears an obsolete power armor. It somewhat protects him but it also slows down the movement speed. Moving felt a little bit clunky to be honest but in a neutral way. 

I guess it’s one of the main problem for fans of the original: Dalton is more like a heavy hulk rather than a dynamic, agile fighter like the heroine from Unreal.

You can also peak around corners but you can’t shoot.

Gunplay AI and difficulty

Gunplay was okay for me: not memorable but certainly not bad. I liked 

• the second, more powerful pistol (limited ammo), 
• the fiery alt-fire of the shotgun (limited range), 
• the alt-fire target selector of the rocket launcher
• the alt-fire of the biomass gun (I can’t remember its name) which makes little spidey-filled landmines

The AI is simple as hell.

There are three difficulty modes which change the damage output and enemy health points.

Artistic elements

Visuals

The game runs on the second version of Unreal Engine which is based on the first one and has significantly enhanced features. 

I was satisfied with the visual aspects of Unreal 2. I loved the color palette, models, textures and effects were okay. Decent but not revolutionary.

The only thing that didn’t really work for me was the spooky alien world. I found it a little repetitive and weird in a not fun way but that part wasn’t really long fortunately.

Audio

Sound design is okay, too.

Atmosphere

The overall level of art is pretty inferior compared to the original Unreal. It was an immersive, exotic adventure and this is your standard scifi interstellar shooter. 

The saving grace is that they’re two completely different games. Unreal 2 worked for me because it reminded me of the great team-centered  tv-shows I watched as I grew up: Stargate, Babylon 5 and even Andromeda. And I still love the genre: Firefly, Star Trek (strictly up to 2016), Space - Above And Beyond… This game successfully managed to bring back those fond memories which I’m grateful for.

If it works on nostalgia level, it works on nostalgia level. It's okay for me.

Multiplayer

The original Unreal 2 did not feature a multiplayer mode, it was later added in the form of a free expansion pack called Expanded Multiplayer.

It was Gamespy powered so it’s LAN only now. From what I can gather, it’s pretty different from Unreal Tournament with more complex gameplay mechanics. There’s supposed a community mod to revive it; I’ll write more about it when I get a chance to try it.

Technical

The game ran well on Windows x64 with my AMD HD6670 which is a videocard from 2011. Stable framerate, no compatibility issues.

Biggest flaws

Unreal is a legend, Unreal 2 is “just another scifi FPS”. I found it decent enough but maybe that’s the problemc: it’s just decent compared to its predecessor.

Some background information about Unreal 2: The Awakening

The reason of the differences (or shortcomings depending on your opinion) is that Unreal 2 was developed by Legend Entertainment, not Epic Games. 

Legend Entertainment was the developer behind Unreal’s expansion pack, Return To Na Pali. It was okay but less refined and polished like the original game which is not surprising. I guess this fact explains a lot.

Summary

It worked all right, played all right and it also reminded me of some good memories from those old sci-fi shows from TV.

If you’re into the genre and the period in general, you may enjoy it but please, please: do not anticipate a true sequel to Unreal.