Squalion
Jun 3, 2003, 15:49
I downlo er bought this game in muchos anticipation after finally upgrading my PC to a beast that doesn't beg me for 800x600 or 16 bit colour depth, with the last FPS I played being Counterstrike with it's blocky textures and not too advanced physics.
I'll go through the points in the order that you experience them when playing;
Damn! I mean fuck me! I mean holy shit! The most beautiful graphics I've ever seen on my OWN pc. Superbly detailed polygons, bold, contrasting textures and wicked lighting and shadowing effects. This is only on a 14in monitor in 1024x768 too. Screenshots don't do it justice, only playing it or seeing it in a silky-smooth 60+ fps. The graphics are truly excellent, the amount of detail on the walls, floor, sky etc is immense. They're also atmospheric and well-coloured. I suspect you'll need a good pc, at least 1.5ghz, GeForce 4/R9000 128mb gfx card, and 512mb DDR ram to make sure it never has to swap, if you wanna experience it in it's full glory. The only problem is sometimes it's hard to make people/enemies out. The whole environment is so richly textured and detailed that when you're out in the open, it's often hard to make out people/enemies at even a short range. Maybe I just have a shit monitor.
Onto movement. My initial reaction was 'where's the Run key', then a little dismay when I realised it was set to auto-run, and holding Shift slows you to snail-pace. The running is slow, you'll have to get used to it, and I personally don't like the view-bob, although it can probably be turned off. To be honest it's frustrating going so slow sometimes, especially in long corridors. Jumping is fine, the system for climbing boxes and such is a little unorthodox but not hard to get to grips with, and rarely used.
Overall it's fluid and smooth movement, and using switches and the like is very easy.
The weapons hehe...this is the warm juicy orifice of Unreal 2. Even the basic pistol and rifle are fun to use, look cool and sound good. From the word go you soon get to use a frankly vast amount of weaponry from Magnums (albiet futuristic, no Desert Eagles here) to Flamethrowers to Toxic Gas/EMP grenades. I still haven't finished it and the weapon texture folder in the Unreal2 install has a lotta names in there to go ;). They're hugely fun to use with each one having a very different style and ideal usage. Each one has a secondary fire mode, this has always appealed to me in an FPS, and no let-down here. The effects are again, graphically sweet as fuck, especially the Flamethrower, has to be seen to be believed.
My only qualm with the weapons is that the 'connection' between the impact of the bullets and you, the player is kinda weak, I was shooting the Assault Rifle and could never quite tell if I was hitting something or not, the bullets don't show in mid air for all the guns and dont even always make visible contact with the enemies/walls. This made killing some enemies slightly hit-n-miss. Apart from that, can't wait to sample the rest of the selection.
The sound is...well..I'm not quite sure how to judge this, sound's never been a big issue for me in an FPS. I'll say it's good, it's atmospheric in the least and the bullet sounds are fairly cool.
The gameplay is top quality, the plot's more involving than your average shooter (although doesn't come close to the amazing Half Life's) and the combination of sweet graphics, fluid movement and ace weaponry makes this one helluva fun game to play. It's not too hard or too easy, and the missions and varied enough to hold interest.
Graphics 10/10
Controls/movement = 7/10
Weaponry 9/10
Gameplay 9/10
I'm not sure if I'd buy it if it turns out to be a short game, keeping fingers crossed it's a long'un. Just like my girlfriend did.
I'll go through the points in the order that you experience them when playing;
Damn! I mean fuck me! I mean holy shit! The most beautiful graphics I've ever seen on my OWN pc. Superbly detailed polygons, bold, contrasting textures and wicked lighting and shadowing effects. This is only on a 14in monitor in 1024x768 too. Screenshots don't do it justice, only playing it or seeing it in a silky-smooth 60+ fps. The graphics are truly excellent, the amount of detail on the walls, floor, sky etc is immense. They're also atmospheric and well-coloured. I suspect you'll need a good pc, at least 1.5ghz, GeForce 4/R9000 128mb gfx card, and 512mb DDR ram to make sure it never has to swap, if you wanna experience it in it's full glory. The only problem is sometimes it's hard to make people/enemies out. The whole environment is so richly textured and detailed that when you're out in the open, it's often hard to make out people/enemies at even a short range. Maybe I just have a shit monitor.
Onto movement. My initial reaction was 'where's the Run key', then a little dismay when I realised it was set to auto-run, and holding Shift slows you to snail-pace. The running is slow, you'll have to get used to it, and I personally don't like the view-bob, although it can probably be turned off. To be honest it's frustrating going so slow sometimes, especially in long corridors. Jumping is fine, the system for climbing boxes and such is a little unorthodox but not hard to get to grips with, and rarely used.
Overall it's fluid and smooth movement, and using switches and the like is very easy.
The weapons hehe...this is the warm juicy orifice of Unreal 2. Even the basic pistol and rifle are fun to use, look cool and sound good. From the word go you soon get to use a frankly vast amount of weaponry from Magnums (albiet futuristic, no Desert Eagles here) to Flamethrowers to Toxic Gas/EMP grenades. I still haven't finished it and the weapon texture folder in the Unreal2 install has a lotta names in there to go ;). They're hugely fun to use with each one having a very different style and ideal usage. Each one has a secondary fire mode, this has always appealed to me in an FPS, and no let-down here. The effects are again, graphically sweet as fuck, especially the Flamethrower, has to be seen to be believed.
My only qualm with the weapons is that the 'connection' between the impact of the bullets and you, the player is kinda weak, I was shooting the Assault Rifle and could never quite tell if I was hitting something or not, the bullets don't show in mid air for all the guns and dont even always make visible contact with the enemies/walls. This made killing some enemies slightly hit-n-miss. Apart from that, can't wait to sample the rest of the selection.
The sound is...well..I'm not quite sure how to judge this, sound's never been a big issue for me in an FPS. I'll say it's good, it's atmospheric in the least and the bullet sounds are fairly cool.
The gameplay is top quality, the plot's more involving than your average shooter (although doesn't come close to the amazing Half Life's) and the combination of sweet graphics, fluid movement and ace weaponry makes this one helluva fun game to play. It's not too hard or too easy, and the missions and varied enough to hold interest.
Graphics 10/10
Controls/movement = 7/10
Weaponry 9/10
Gameplay 9/10
I'm not sure if I'd buy it if it turns out to be a short game, keeping fingers crossed it's a long'un. Just like my girlfriend did.