Developed by Legend Entertainment (Wheel of Time, Unreal Mission Pack: Return to Na Pali), Unreal II - The Awakening is a single player experience. It is designed to immerse you in a living, breathing world of stunning, yet menacing beauty. The game takes the concept of the first person shooter and drops it into the middle of a Hollywood Sci-Fi blockbuster movie of Epic proportions. The story unfolds through high intensity combat missions linked by a narrative framework of in-game scripted sequences. Each mission will feature a different tactical situation, including hostage rescue, civilian escort, assault on an enemy base with a squad of friendly troops, defense of a structure or area against attacking enemy waves, stealth infiltration and reconnaissance, or more traditional FPS search and destroy sorties. With the Unreal Editor software bundled once more, one can expect many game mods as people create their personalized Unreal universes.
I feel like this game would've fared on its own much better if it went further overboard with variety of settings and enemies and such. As is it's kind of stuck in the middle ground of not being Unreal enough for fans, and not being unique enough for its own sake. Putting interesting settings (like a living planet or alien ships and such) aside, this is a very average and cliche FPS, and mediocre at that. Such a shame, but it's still fun imo. It's more of a guilty pleasure for me, especially since I've spent considerable ammount of my early gaming years playing this and Painkiller.
Great story, atmosphere and production values. But gameplay feels like an afterthought. Not bad, but doesn't even come close to its predecessor.
Lol I end up rating everything unreal almost each time by 8. I am intimately familiar with this game's developement and at one point it was like Blood 2's mess, except it got a polish from some really talented people. It was a mess of decision changing, making game more linear and meeting demands of the publishers who were like slavemaster to the company who made it because they bought them over from gti. The original concept was much grander and the game started on modified unreal 1 engine being the next step after ut's release. While the story details of the initial version are sparse it still featured the corporations from the original game like Inuit. The Hell facility used to be run by them. There are some alternate paths in the levels like in hell via the vent shaft but they are difficult to find for casual players and they were well hidden so that the publishers wouldn't spot it easily. Grayson Edge gave up on trying to mask it though and made his levels incredibly linear while in the alpha version they were still fine (the 2000 version). Some of his later levels were also cut and sections and there was a plan for singleplayer expansion too. Sadly with u2xmp they closed legend down and any wip ended right there.
An outstanding game overall,but lacks the fast paced action and aggressiveness of the previous Unreal games. The story is good and carries you through different levels on different planets. Characters are great and you kinda get attached to your crew members of the ship. Interesting level designs and a variety of weapons to carry(some of them turn obsolete as you progress through the story).
There is a certain beauty to this game that strikes me and impresses me.
Good but it's not similar to unreal 1.
It's not really Unreal. Different weapons from the classic suite, all new aliens and enemies except the Skaarj (and they don't really factor in to it much)...
But don't let that put you off. This is a very good game with a solid storyline and a delightful cast of characters. Wonderful scenery abounds as you tromp across the far reaches of space, and the banter is excellent throughout.
And the ending... gets me every time.
the begginning really sucks... But when you reach later maps you get so many cool weapons that you cant stop playing
great graphic and model desigh,bad level design.well,when i first saw u2 trailer,l thought this game will be great,but after i played it,very sad,the imagination from u 1 all gone,just only better graphic and models design, but really poor level design, story and music .Look at resident evil halo they got so much better story and gameplay ,but u2 became a tech show only game. lucky ut series later not the same.But now they all gone, no unreal game anymore.
The best game about cosmic adventures.
Don't get me wrong, It's really descent title, not a masterpiece, but a good game. But it completely lacks an atmosphere of the first Unreal! There are no iconic weapons such as Flak Cannon od ASMD. The Skaarj appear on maybe three missions and there's no Nali and Na Pali. Most of the game you'll be fighting human mercenaries with hitscan weapons. The levels are very small which is a contrast to Unreal's large and complex maps. The plot is predictable and the characters aren't interesting.
It's a good reminder how not to make sequels next to Deus Ex: Invisible War and Duke Nukem Forever.