Conclusion
The second thing that can have me practically giving-up (and really, really nearly did) is that there are a few points where there are very, very bad graphical anomalies – floating walls, clipping, trailing images and so on which is not only annoying but very hard on the eyes. I have to say that since the second mission they seem to have largely cleared up but I’m not convinced that they won’t re-appear, and the anticipation that my enjoyment could be ruined at any moment is almost as bad as the problems themselves. Some of the graphics problems are accompanied by crashes to desktop which is again frustrating but you at least generally have an auto bug-report feature pop up when this happens so that you know that someone somewhere is looking at doing something about it (although it does make you feel a bit like a beta-tester). Of course, the auto bug-fix feature crashed as well the last couple of times but I guess you can’t have everything.
There is only one last thing that I would criticise about this game and that is that it tends to forget your settings – not the controls, but I have to reset the graphics to 16-bit and turn off the shadows every time I play – which is irritating but not quite a show-stopper.
Overall, Unreal II gets a thumbs-up from me but I can only bring myself to give it a score of 6 out of 10. It’s getting a slightly contradictory score there because it’s as good a game as a proper hard-core FPS can be and needs credit for being so but loses a lot of points due to the fact that I imagine that an awful lot of people are not going to be able to play it to it’s full glorious effect due to hardware restrictions. If this game had been released at a time when the required kit was getting on a bit and therefore affordable I would have given it 8 out of 10, but it seems to me that releasing a game that will mostly only be seen to it’s full effect once it’s basically old news isn’t very sensible. A lot of the people buying this game will not be able to get graphics anywhere near to the maximum settings and by the time they can Unreal II will be in the bargain bin. It all seems rather self-defeating to my mind, but if you have a reasonable set-up, liked the other Unreal, Quake, and Half-Life style games, and have a little cash to spend then definitely consider buying this game very, very seriously.
