Unreal 2 Preview
05/29/2001
By Zaxxon

Way back in 1998, a little game called Unreal came out, to mostly positive critical acclaim. Many people bashed it for having terrible multiplayer capabilities out of the box, and some even said that the single-player game was lacking. I was on the other side of the fence--I absolutely loved every aspect of the game. I played through the game in single-player countless times, and lost many an hour to multiplayer matches. (The game was successfully patched until it was silky-smooth in multiplay) Unreal was also my first post-3D card game, so I'm sure that contributed to my enjoyment, but I found everything about the game to be nearly perfect. Fighting the Skaarj, who actually fought back semi-intelligently rather than dimwittedly standing and firing away as in so many other games, kept me glued to my monitor for a long, long time.

The release of Unreal Tournament pretty much ended my Unreal days, but when Unreal 2 was announced, my mouth began to water. It's being developed by Legend Entertainment, one of my favorite 'old-school' companies. I never did play Wheel of Time, but I played and enjoyed virtually all of their old adventure games. So when I found myself outside the Infogrames booth with the opportunity to squeeze into a showing of the game, I seized it. The room was exceedingly crowded, and I was unable to take notes, so excuse the brevity of this preview--it's all coming from memory.

We were shown several of the game's environments, all of which looked quite impressive. Nothing tangible is simply drawn onto the textures; everything is fully modeled, down to the smallest embellishments, like pipes running along the walls. In fact, one of the areas we were shown is an asteroid field, and each asteroid uses about the same number of polygons as did an entire level in Unreal, we were told.

When characters speak, their mouths lip-synch to the words, lending just a bit more realism to the game. All-in-all, the graphics are quite impressive. The flamethrower simply looks amazing, essentially photo-realistic, down to the little bits of napalm that leak out and fall to the ground when the gun is fired. Baking your enemies has never looked so good!

The game's story is a bit different than that of the first; rather than playing an escaped convict, you play the opposite role--that of the law, during an interstellar war between several alien races. You'll be able to return to your ship, the Atlantis, between missions in order to be debreifed. Not all of your missions will be simple 'search and destroy' runs. You'll occasionally have to escort civilians, defend an area from invasion, rescue hostages, or perform other strategic tasks. Only the Skaarj are brought over from the original game. All the other races and enemies will be entirely new.

But enough about single-player; what about multiplayer capabilities?

In addition to the traditional deathmatch/team deathmatch/capture the flag options, a new, expanded multiplayer mode will be included. Players will choose a class before entering the game, determining their speed, armor, and abilities. Each team will have a player called a 'tech,' who can to some degree control what weapons the team is spawned, as well as helps the team upgrade to better technology--automated gun turrets, force fields, sensors, etc. I'm looking forward to this mode of play; if done right, it could be tons of fun.

All in all, I was impressed by the demo, and look forward to playing the full game. Unreal 2 is slated for a first quarter 2002 release. For more information concerning the game, see the official site.
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