Feeling Awakened yet?
The level designs are OK but nothing particularly special. They’re very pretty (as you have probably gathered from my earlier comments on the graphics) and there is plenty of stuff to hide behind, investigate, and get jumped-on from, plus a variety of combat environments ranging from ridges and dunes outdoors to the standard industrial indoor environments that you’d expect. The fact that I’m not going ‘oh, wow!’ over the level design is not through any fault of the developers, it’s just that there’s only so much new stuff that you can put into a FPS these days as any new FPS is preceded by some absolute classics which have done it all already. The levels are very linear, and while they have the same dark and slightly disorienting feel of the first Unreal there is rarely too much in the way of wondering where to go next (I know a couple of people who gave up on the first Unreal without even being able to find their way out of the prison cell that you start in – draw your own conclusions).
The gameplay is good, but again not spectacular, your character doesn’t move all that fast which is a bit aggravating, especially if you’re used to Half Life or Unreal Tournament. I guess that this is due to the fact that your character is supposed to be encased in a heavily armoured combat suit but it’s a little frustrating anyway. Other than that it’s all pretty standard: mostly full on, fast-paced killing with a very small amount of platform-type play, which is, I suppose, inevitable but due to the fact that the feel of the character’s movement is that he’s encased in a heavy metal suit it’s not really something you’d want to be doing too much of.
For the most part the sound is pretty good – still not as good as System Shock 2, for example, but then that really isn’t likely to happen in the foreseeable future (IMHO) – although there are a couple of points that aren’t so good, the main one, again in my opinion, being the assault rifle. It makes a suppressed-weapon sound, which just isn’t right! You have this damned great chunk of metal that looks like it’s been ripped off the arm of one of the ED-219s from Robocop and it just makes a thp-thp-thp noise. Personally, I would have had the assault rifle making a huge throaty roar, or at least I would have ripped the sound off the pulse rifles from Aliens. It seems that the developers decided otherwise, but I guess that’s more of a stylistic thing than a real criticism – it just sounds a bit wimpy, that’s all. I’d like to say more on the sound but to be honest it’s basically OK, it does the job, but at the end of the day even with the EAX turned on it’s only slightly above average.
Right. Time for a bit of a whinge. Just so that you can’t say that you weren’t warned I’ll mention some of places where UII has almost had me giving up on the whole thing and sending it back.
