Written by Jeff Buckland, 5/4/2005
Played on:
Xbox
The Unreal series has had a tough time on consoles so far. PC gamers have been reluctant to buy these games because the ports so far have been generally inferior, and the controls are commonly a pretty big issue. Combine this with the lack of a real online community so far (the first Unreal Championship was plagued with exploits for months, killing off most online replayability enough that it never recovered) and how little-known the Unreal name is with many newer console gamers, and it's just a tough place to be.
It didn't really help that not only were the console ports inferior to the PC versions, but that they were somewhat crummy games in their own right. Unreal 2 was a pretty decent game, but there are far better FPS titles on the Xbox already. The stellar online and offline play of Halo has made console gamers wonder why they should bother with other games. Well, Epic, creators of the Unreal series, have taken charge of the series once again (after having Digital Extremes and Legend Entertainment handle a good chunk of the work over the last few years) and are delivering an all-new experience with Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict.
One thing I have to try and make clear is that it's best if you forget everything you know about previous Unreal games, because this one is very different, and is tailored much more for a console crowd without giving up its roots. Along with the FPS action, the game also includes a fairly complex melee fighting system which reminds me of what we saw in the Jedi Knight games - it's not quite a fighting game, but it's not just a button-masher either. The number of moves you have are slim, but put it in the context of a full-on first person shooter, and throw in the game's complex maps where acrobatics is key, and it's more than satisfying to play.
Epic truly put a ton of effort into redefining Unreal for this game. Many of their classic crazy environments that combine starships with Egyptians, robots with jungles and ice worlds have been maintained, but this is 100% new content. Many classic weapons are of course back, but some new ones are thrown in as well. The melee combat is also a viable option here, where you can use your melee weapon to reflect or mitigate damage from ranged weapons. Throw in some cool dash moves and new adrenaline moves which let you close the gap easily, and it changes the game in a way that hasn't been seen too often on consoles yet.
While the Unreal series has had a strong multiplayer component for a while now, Epic knew that with no user-made mods, they needed Unreal Championship 2 to deliver a ton of maps, characters, and weapons if they were going to compete with the likes of Halo. The single player mode they threw in isn't quite a full-on story mode, as it still has you fighting in arenas in bot-run deathmatches (or other multiplayer modes) with only a few bits of cutscenes thrown in. Still, it's better than I've seen in the Unreal Tournament series on the PC.
The multiplayer modes feature a full range of options, including split-screen action, system link, and Xbox Live! play. Up to eight players can get together in one match, and the way the maps are set up, eight is plenty. Some will complain about UC2's lack of an intuitive Halo 2-style auto matchup when playing online; instead, this is set up like older Xbox Live! titles. You need to find a game with acceptable options for you, and there is no guarantee that it will find a worthy opponent. Personally, I like it more this way rather than the Halo 2 way, but I can certainly see the merit in Bungie's method as well. I think the best way to handle this would be to allow both ways to find online games, but no one's done that... yet.
Epic packed in over 40 multiplayer maps into UC2, and the visuals in these maps are very nice. While they're not totally mind-blowing right from the start, you'll realize after a few sessions that the beauty is in the game's ability to throw eight players at each other, sometimes all in the same room with only a little slowdown. Epic already has new content in the works via Xbox Live! downloads, although it remains to be seen whether they'll charge for it. My hunch says that they'll be giving away new characters, mutators, and maps for free, as they are looking to topple other multiplayer games, and this is certainly an edge that they can use.
I figured that after the release of UT2004 I probably wouldn't be impressed with even more maps based on some of the same art style, but I was wrong - UC2's visuals are still great and the art is even better. In fact, the Xbox platform's limited memory is really what's holding back the graphics from being just plain gorgeous. We can't really fault Epic with that, though.
You may not have noticed that Epic has a new publisher for the Unreal series - Midway, creators of Mortal Kombat. And they've run with this, creating a bit of a MK crossover in this game. Not only can you do Fatality-style finishing moves (which are pretty difficult to do, but very humiliating if you can deliver one), but you can even turn on the announcer's voice from MK. Finally, one of the playable characters is the thunder god himself, Raiden. With a few of his signature moves and even a classic fatality he can use, it's really a pretty interesting crossover. At first I thought it'd be just stupid to have him in the game, but he honestly works pretty well alongside the huge range of characters you meet in the Unreal games.
