🚀 go-pugleaf

I just finished Unreal (took about 30 hours on medium skill) and here are
some of the thoughts I had. First here is the system I used:
Pentium 200 (non-mmx)
64 mb Sdram
Diamond Viper v330
CL Voodoo2 (12 mb)
CL SB Awe 64 Gold

Performance: I started out running in 800x600 which looked very nice but I
got too many slowdowns to be playable. Ran the rest of the way in 640 x480.
Still had a few slowdowns but it was very playable. Had a problem a few
times when in areas with lots of fog. Framerate would be so slow I couldn't
make certain jumps over lava. Turned volumetric lighting off and performance
improved considerably.

Weapons: To be blunt, the weapons suck. Only one or two are actually useful.
I ended up using the flak gun, eightball (which is still lame) and ASMD (or
whatever it's called) most of the time. None of the weapons pack enough
punch.  The weapons in Quake2 completely blow Unreal away. IMO, Unreal needs
something like the Supershotgun or Railgun, something that will take out any
of the little monsters with one hit.

Monsters: I was only really impressed with two of the monsters. 1) the
skaarj and all their variations. 2) The Krall. The models for both of these
were very nice looking: good animation, sorta scary looking. The AI was
pretty good too. The rest of the monsters are ok. I was kinda surprised when
the spiders were tougher than some of the larger monsters. They are really
just annoying (kinda like the flyer in Quake2; don't do alot of damage, just
annoy the hell out of you). The different Boss monsters seem well done.
Although the inclusion of one of them is kinda strange. I don't want to ruin
it for anyone, but lets just say the thing in the big red cavern seemed
really out of place with the rest of the game(shoulda been in Hexen2).

Level Design: Level design was sporadic at best. Some of the levels are
incredible, while others are really lame. There was a lag in quality of the
levels around the 8th or 9th until about 13th. (I wasn't counting, but that
seems about right). The outdoor areas a just plain huge which was nice, but
it led to a few problems(like wandering around forever and not knowing where
you are supposed to be going). Also, some of the levels only have 2 or 3
monsters in them. They seem to be more of a transition area than anything
else. A few of the levels are really, really huge (such as the castle and
the bell tower levels) and you really have no idea what to do. You end up
visiting the same place 3 or 4 times. Another thing that was annoying was
constantly going back and forth from one genre to the next. For example, you
start out in a tech level, then go to a native outdoor level, then into a
combo tech + native level. This continues on throughout the game. Once or
twice would have been fine, but every third level you are in a different
genre. One more thing, whoever thought that running through the dark and
trying to fight monsters was a good idea needs to have their head examined.
I think it could be ok for MP, but the player is at a distinct disadvantage
when the monsters know right where you are and you are running around like a
chicken with your head cutoff. It took me like 15 restores to finally beat
that idiot level. It stopped being fun and got tedious. BTW: the game is way
too long. It could have been ten levels shorter and been fine. I just kept
hoping it would end.

Controls: The controls are pretty good. You can pretty much use the setup
you use with all other FPS. I had to turn off dodging after I went off this
big ass cliff in the bell tower level. I think it would be more useful in MP
though. One big problem with your characters movement is how slow he swims.
It seems like you are swimming through molasses. This is a huge problem in
the Bell tower level because of all the water. It takes forever to get
anywhere (and this is a huge level).

Special Effects: I was impressed with some of the special effects. The
engine is really nice. Trains that move as well as rotate, lens flares,
fire, water ripples, etc. This is the new benchmark in 3d engines. There are
also some cool effects in the later levels that reminded me of 2001(warps
and such). I would have liked to hop into one of those biosuits though. That
would have been sweet.

Overall: It is a very good game. Is it the best game ever made? Who knows.
The true test is how many times you will replay a game. For Example: Jedi
Knight was a really good game too, but after winning it as both light and
dark jedi, I had no desire to go back and play it again. Same thing with
Hexen2. I still go back and play SP Quake2 occasionally, and I play the Hell
out of it in MP (especially CTF). In a month or two, I'll know better how
much I like it, by how much I'm playing it. Hopefully, Epic will have the MP
problems worked out by then.

Replies Welcome.
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