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Dom Robinson reviews
Infogrames 
- Price: £29.99
- Players: 1-online
System requirements (rec.):
- Windows 98/2000/XP/Me
- Intel Pentium III/AMD Athlon 733Mhz (1.2Ghz)
- 256Mb RAM (384MB)
- Hard disk space: 3Gb
- Video: 32Mb nVidia GeForce2 MX (64Mb nVidia GeForce3/ATI Radeon 8500)
- Windows compatible soundcard (Soundblaster Audigy)
- Modem: 33.6kpbs (Cable/ADSL)
You’d have to go back a few years to the original release,which is why I was most looking forward to Unreal 2: The Awakening,particularly because these days single-player first-person shooters (FPS) are fewand far between. Most developers tend to go multiplayer-only, such as therecent Xbox Unreal debut,Unreal Championshipand, of course, any new FPS would have to go some to overtake the exceptionalXbox title,Halo.
You take on the role of John Dalton, a Marshal for the Terrain ColonialAuthority. You’ve been to hell and back in combat and you live for the daywhen you can enjoy that all over again, so it’s a real pain in the backsidethat your request to do so has been turned down yet again.
So, for now, your job will be to babysit an alien from a far-off planet becausehe’s been causing trouble back home. They need someone and you’re doing nothingthan patrolling the quite areas of space.
Then just as you’re returning to your ship, Aida tells you she’s picked up adistress signal from a planet in need, there’s no schematics or blueprintsavailable of the inside of the troubled area and the drop-off point is milesfrom your destination.
Sounds like we’ve been here many times before, but I didn’t mind as I wasjust hankering for some new FPS action.
Checking the stats on the back of the box (listed atop this review), I wasa little cautious. 3Gb hard disk space? That’s far more than I’ve come acrossbefore, although when I came to install it, it only appeared to want a slightlymore conservative 2.2Gb.
Then the processor spec. While I fulfil the rest of the specs with a 64Mb ATIRadeon 8500LE graphics card, 384MB RAM and broadband internet (although youcan play modemless), I fell down on having a mere Pentium III 600Mhz, but thatwasn’t short of the 733Mhz required so I thought I’d be okay, especially asI have the recommend memory and graphics card.
The graphics do chug along a little bit, but nothing I can’t get over, whilethe sound is as you’d expect from such a game in Dolby Surround.
Playability-wise, I was annoyed that I wasn’t allowed to make turning left/rightwith the cursor keys an option. I know most people use the mouse for this, butI do like to use the keys from time to time. There’s certainly no reason NOTto make this an option.
Then after the introduction, the training course, mission briefing and theweapons test, I eagerly awaited the main game. “Stand By”, read the screen.Then, oh dear…
- General protection fault!
History: GetEventTool Build: Jan 7 2003 18:16:21
Pardon?
I even rebooted the PC and shut down just about everything else incase that with the spanner in the works. It didn’t work. Then, to add insultto injury, for some reason it screwed with the playback of my PC’s .avi files..mpg ones were fine, but the problem caused with the former was that whendisplayed on a TV, the picture came complete with a blue or yellow trianglestuck over the left-hand side.
Where the hell did that come from? I noticed the game installed a fair few.ogg files, so perhaps they buggered up the Ogg Vorbis DiVx codec? Somehowafter uninstalling Unreal 2 and rebooting, things eventually went backto normal, but unless I can find a way around these problems and play the gameproperly, this is one ‘unreal’ experience I do not wish to repeat.
After checking some reviews on Amazon’s site (click the link above), it appearsI’m not the only person to experience a General Protection Fault.
Then, courtesy ofNat Goss,I was able to resolve this problem with his help by uninstalling the Ogg codec(I was also using OggDSO995 like him) and reinstalling it. I also uninstalledand reinstalled the game itself.
As I write, I’ve now gone through a couple of levels in the game, and it doescontinue to chug along on a lowly Pentium III 600Mhz which mars the enjoymentsomewhat. However, it’s not just this where disappointment lies. The game isjust so basic compared to what’s gone before.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved the original Unreal. It was an absolutestunner in its day. As the main menu appeared and the ‘camera’ swept around acastle, I was in awe of the graphics on view. Yes, it was rather a long gamebut it had atmosphere – something else this game is lacking.
The press release makes this title out to be such an advance in gaming history,but I’ve killed enemies relatively few and far between, opened some doors,switched a power station back on, recovered an artefact, trudged through themarshes with my colleagues in a level that was so pedestrian it nearly put meto sleep and dealt quite easily with an end-of-level boss or two.
I was so looking forward to this release, and so far I’m disappointed. I’llrepeat one word to the developers of this, and any FPS game in the future –Halo. If your titledoesn’t stand up to that tour-de-force, then you’ve got to question thevalidity of your release.
As I understand it, this isn’t a particularly long game so I’ll continue throughto the end and report back on whether things get any better, but this is reallyone for the die-hard FPS fans.
SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC
PLAYABILITY
ENJOYMENT
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.