Perhaps I should start with my best memory from the game: I had picked up some sort of energy weapon while making my way out of the wreck of the prison ship Vortex Rikers, that I think the guards may have used. Not that I was overly confident about it though. I saw, something, leaving the scene of an eviscerated guard (might have been a prisoner) with this 'weapon' lying in a pool of the poor soul's blood. Wasnt enough to protect the man's life so how much was it going to help me? Stepping out of the crashed wreck I was confronted by a small valley atop a cliff. It seemed like late afternoon with a clearly alien sky above me. Strangely mesmerizing - this definitely wasnt Earth, it was just too different. I could see a waterfall across the valley and a river at the bottom of the cliff, a loooong way down. I picked up some sort of pistol like weapon, in a small house, and immediately felt much much safer. I explored the other side of the massive wreck of Vortex Rikers and saw an opening in the side of a cliff which I decided to explore. I had to be careful, something was in that wreck with me and I didnt know whether I could face it if I came across it. Slowly I entered what looked like a concrete tunnel - not small at all, perhaps two stories high. I was reaching a corner in the tunnel when everything quickly went south. I heard a rumbling and then a human scream followed by the sickening sight of a limp human body flying through the air splattering in wall above me. I was stunned, not quite sure what to do, however that question would quickly be answered for me. Coming round the corner was a brute of a beast. It almost looked human, only far too large . I didn't care to introduce myself and simply started running for my life out of that tunnel. Where to go? Back in the wreck? Hell no way. Perhaps it was silly in retrospect, but what I found myself doing was running to, and leaping from the cliff to the river down below. It was quite a drop and I only just made the river. Coming up for air, I knew I was safe from that thing. Surely it couldn't have followed me and thankfully it didn't. Now I had to try to get out of the river and tried to make my way upstream. I could make out what looked like a cave... I remember reading "entirely better than Quake II" in a PC mag way back when it released. Quake 2 was the unquestioned king of the fps genre when Unreal came out. I also remember borrowing 32 megs worth of RAM from my friends computer so that we could run the game smoothly on my pentium 200 on 640x480 resolution. If ever a game deserved 5/5 it is this one though rather surprisingly it often only gets 4/5 or 80-some /100. There is one phrase that perfectly describes the atmosphere in this game : 'hauntingly beautiful' ... Right from the start as you are on the menu where the camera flies around the Nali castle, and you listen to that impossibly provoking (cant think of another adjective - you have to hear it) music, you should realize this here is the start of something special. Compared to modern shooters unreal holds up surprisingly well - it would be a mistake to view this along the lines of shooters like COD or MOH. Rather it is more like the Bioshock of its day (without the rpg elements unfortunately). You are thrust into a wild, mysterious and deeply strange world that you cant resist yourself from wanting to explore. This is helped on by, thankfully for a change especially compared to games of that time, vast variety in the levels. Each level seems meticulously crafted as if pondered over for days on end. You want to see some proper level design - this is where you'll find it. There are ancient temples, stone keeps deep in the mountains, massive alien spacecraft, research facilities and a very old castle of the natives that has been invaded by a verrrry hostile predator like race, the Skaarj... In fact, you play as a stranded prisoner on an alien planet where the native population, the Nali, have been enslaved by the Skaarj. Just dont kill any Nali! If you do then they wont want to help you as you come across them in the game. You're not the only human stranded on the planet though - there are others and you keep on picking up logs of these people, reading about the dangers they faced and how they are planning to survive on this hostile world. At some point you could tell from the logs that they learnt of a safe haven, the spire, somewhere in the mountains and are planning to reach it. It creates a wonderful dynamic as you keep reading these logs at different points and plotting their progress wondering, did they make it? If I reach the spire, whatever it is, will they be there? Great memories, is what this game creates, in a wild alien and largely ageless world. You want over-the-top action, look elsewhere though. Not that the weapons lack oomph as some reviewers stated back then. Hmpf please, give me a flak cannon any day of the week in any shooter out there. I'll rip a cod-player to shreds... Short of the long : GREAT game. (coming from someone who has played fps from wolfenstein 3d up to crysis, bioshock and everything in between worth mentioning)
