Unreal II: The Awakening - Mission Summaries

General Observations -- The Good:

1. Excellent graphics, especially the outdoor areas.

2. Beautifully detailed bases, ships (Atlantis, Dorian Grey), alien areas.

3. Models are reasonably well-detailed.

4. Fairly good interaction with non-player characters via the drop-down dialog menu.

5. Good voice acting. I particularly liked Isaak's raspy, bordering-on-insolent tone.

6. Decent story line, with some attempt at character development.

7. Somewhat useful training program at the beginning of the game.

8. Cinematics & cut scenes are not bad, but some have been repeated.

9. Good ambient sounds, enemy alarm & attack sounds, and tech sounds.

10. Music is generally good, but not memorable.

11. The holographic program in the Mission Briefing Room is a nice touch.

12. Little details on the Atlantis, such as half-eaten donut next to a foam cup of coffee, picture of Carrie-Ann Moss (?) in Isaak's quarters, 15-volume set "Greatest Sitcoms of the 20th Century" in Ne'Ban's quarters.

13. Plenty of areas to explore, even though they contain no action. The Atlantis has various hatches, outdoor areas have plenty of room to wander off and admire the scenery, and buildings have inter-connected areas that you get to visit later.

14. Well done mission briefings and interactive cut-scenes.

15. HUGE levels. While some of the missions are considerably shorter than others, there are many missions that are set in complex and expansive environments.

16. A wide variety of weapons, and a goodly assortment of enemies to try them on.

17. While the entire game is "mission-based", many missions have very good sub-missions -- defending an area, providing covering fire to someone on your side, rescuing a technician, etc.

General Observations -- The Bad:

1. The game takes *forever* to install.

2. Takes a while to load a new level or start the game after install.

3. "Run" mode is actually more like "walk" mode in other games, and "walk" is more like "crawl".

4. My biggest complaint is how the game will suddenly, and without evident reason, begin to *severely* lag. By "severe" I mean one frame every 2-3 seconds -- unplayable even when no combat is in progress. It does not necessarily have anything to do with the particular area one is in or the action that one is taking -- the same area will play fine once, but after a saved game reload or when re-visited will lag. The only solution is to quit the game and restart from the last saved game.

5. Occasionally, the reverse would occur -- everything got massively speeded up. This makes many of the normally slow-moving bosses lethal, as they not only inflict terrible damage and can take a lot of punishment, but they move around like flies on high-octane.

General Observations -- The Ugly:

1. The Spider Gun. Why bother? It's such an ineffective weapon that it's hardly worth the effort.

2. Concussion Grenades. They're only useful if an enemy is at the edge of a cliff, so that you can send it hurling to its doom. Otherwise they do no damage and only knock enemies off their feet for a moment.

3. Smoke Grenades. Enemies can shoot through and run through and not get disoriented, so what's the point of using them?

4. Many of the enemies (Skaarj, Izanagi & Angel mercenaries) move *much* faster than the player, sometimes making it frustrating to fight them, particularly when they attack in numbers.

Mission Summaries:

Sanctuary - Mining Complex Entrance

1. Cool scurrying insects that can be squished.

2. Good development of the path, starting with guy being dragged under door, to taking a swim under channels, to climbing long ladders.

3. Good mining complex architecture.

4. Izarians are not very dangerous individually, but they usually attack in numbers and move very fast.

Sanctuary - Mining Complex

1. Excellent build-up to Skaarj appearance, with elevator losing power, turning dark, and the rending and tearing on the roof.

2. Good fights with the Skaarj, although they can be somewhat unfair because the player moves so slow comapred to them.

3. Good-looking scenery and buildings, and realistic-looking power generator and shaft.

Sanctuary - Speedship Crash Site

1. *Excellent* atmosphere -- rainforest, lightning, thunder, glimpses of moon behind passing clouds, native flora & fauna -- very well done! Plus great ambient sounds of crickets, animals roaring/grunting/mooing, raindrops.

2. Use of beacons to lead the player forward is a good idea. Of course I wandered off in a different direction to explore, and almost got lost.

3. While exploring, it's possible to get stuck behind rocks or trees, particularly at the "edge" of the maps. In these instances I had to re-start from a saved game. During normal game-play (i.e., no random wandering off to explore) I didn't get stuck.

4. Excellently simulated firefight & battle at the end of the level, with perimeter defenses [plasma fields & gun turrets], enemies breaking through, marines defending.

5. Great music during cutscene before Hell Mission.

Hell - Descent

1. Beautiful scenery, with Gas Giant Guigan in the backdrop.

2. What happened to all the ammo I picked up on Sanctuary?!!!

3. Serious game performance lag because of the snow particles.

4. Nice story-line & plot addition, with the weapons scan, etc.

Hell - Discovery

1. Reviving the technician and getting him to open a code-locked door was a cool twist to the find-key-unlock-door routine.

2. It was unrealistic that I couldn't hurt the technician by attacking him. [Of course that would have resulted in being stuck on the level, because I wouldn't then have been able to open the code-locked door.] But this is a minor point.

3. The fights with the Araknids are quite cool.

Hell - Desolation

1. Very realistic-looking industrial machinery and devices.

2. Very creepy sounds, particularly the araknids.

Hell - Disclosure

1. Good-looking labs, although they appear quite similar to each other.

2. Terrific "tubes" that you originally walk under and later have to cross through.

3. Hellish fight with the Heavy Araknid, who is a formidable boss. The fight is made more interesting and difficult because the Heavy Araknid spawns light araknids that morph into medium araknids after scuttling through the ion beam, and because of the many types of attacks the Heavy Araknid has. This is a true "boss fight", because it requires contant moving around, offers little cover, and requires constant changing of strategy.

4. In one sense I found this fight *very* unfair because there is only one health pickup in the entire arena, and I was constantly taking damage from the Heavy Araknid and from its smaller cousins. In the end I won after many, many saves and re-loads.

Acheron

1. The concept of a single organism covering the entire planet is quite innovative in a game.

2. The Izanagi Ghost Warriors are *tough* opponents that move fast, hit hard, and generally attack in packs.

3. The interior caves are realistic looking.

4. Very short level overall, but cool race for the exit.

Severnaya

1. *Fantastic* scenery, with the sea and hills. It's difficult to picture carnage occuring in such a peaceful-looking environment.

2. Good, objective-based level -- arming 3 detonators to blow up the dam, and being given only 5 minutes to evacuate.

Kalydon - Obolus Repair Facility

1. Beautiful sun, filtering through clouds over hills.

2. Very difficult, almost *frustrating*, battle against four waves of mercenary Liandri Angels. There is too little ammo and cover against multiple fast-moving, accurate enemies with much greater fire power. At one point I almost gave up and resorted to cheats, but stuck in there and took the final wave out one by one when they reached the door to over-ride the security panel.

3. The bowl shape of the fight arena allows enemies to shoot at you above the plasma field generators, and with their use of lethal Avenger magnum pistols and rockets you lose health real fast.

Sulferon

1. Beautiful blue sky with giant moon and two other moons in backdrop (strangely similar to the one on Avalon).

2. Cool skeletal remains of giant native animals in the desert sand.

3. Very good mission - defend control room while technician decodes and downloads data. Tense, exciting fights that in my opinion were much fairer than the ones on Kalydon (which was also essentially a defensive mission).

Janus

1. Very well done desolate landscape with fog.

2. Great ambient sounds with the occasional peals of thunder (which made me jump a few times).

3. *Excellent* end fight to defend scientist. Allows strategic placement of marines, auto gun turrets, and plasma field generators. The fight was tense, but provided fair odds.

Na Koja Abad

1. Surrealistic scenery, but very moody and atmospheric, with acid rain splash and occasional peals of thunder.

2. Good looking storage areas, labs, and walkways, although somewhat similar-looking and repetitive.

3. The Na Koja Abad Excavation site is *stunning*, especially the interior, with its eerie alien design.

4. The Drakk Overlords and Sentries are interesting enemies, but nowhere as challenging as the human enemies (Izanagi Ghost Warriors & Liandri Angels). However, the Drakk Repair Droid (which first make their appearance on the Drakk Hive Planet, next) make the fights with Overlords challenging.

Drakk Hive Planet

1. Incredible attention to detail and the appearance of "authenticity". Very alien and sinister, and somewhat reminiscent of the alien episode in Duke Nukem 3D.

2. Fights with Overlords are made more challenging because of the Repair Droids.

3. In the Scrutiny mission there is an abundance of health pickups at the beginning, but the area is subsequently closed off and the health is not accessible any more. There is *no* health in the rest of the mission, and by the end I desperately needed some health.

4. At the start of Subjugation theres plenty of ammo but *absolutely* no health. To maintain the illusion of realism I can understand not leaving health packs randomly around the levels. However, where they have a stash of ammo near the bodies of victims they could easily have some health and armor shielding [as in the Scrutiny mission]. Starting a mission with only 28% health and 130/300 armor can be daunting and leaves no room for mistakes.

5. The Boss Drakk is a cool enemy, both in appearance and in behavior. After taking a certain amount of damage the body separates into two parts, with the top part continuing to attack before commencing with a kamikaze attack. The bottom then regrows a top and continues to attack as before. Despite how cool the enemy is, however, the fight got tedious towards the end, because it was a series of duck-and-snipe maneuvers that kept going and going and going.

Avalon

1. Beautiful skyscape, plus it was very cool to re-visit the area where I first started out in the game.

2. Cool touches, such as the skaarj dangling the guy off the balcony, and dropping him when you show up.

3. *Excellent* sub-mission to provide covering fire while Marine goes out to power station to restore power.

4. Good fight to landing pad, and good defense of landing pad against two waves of Heavy Skaarj.

5. Completely Unexpected (for me, at least) plot twist at the end of mission.

Dorian Grey Starship

1. Good opening scenario, but I was expecting the mutation of the Kai into the Tosc.

2. The Tosc are formidable opponents, and leave very little margin for error. Unfortunately there were too few of them in the level. Also, with the Singularity Cannon the Tosc go down easy. That's not to say they're a cakewalk, just that the weapon is so powerful. The best fight was in the beginning, when I only had the regular weapons and had to stay behind pillars so that the Tosc couldn't blast me with his singularity cannon.

3. Finding the escape pod while the starship was hurtling uncontrollably towards the sun provided some tense and fun moments. However, it could have been made more interesting if the countdown timer had begun sooner.

4. The somewhat tragic ending was an different and unusual for a game, and I actually thought it was very good. It made me feel bad for those that didn't make it, with their unresolved issues and emotional baggage. I was hoping that everything would be worked out in the end, and when it didn't happen I felt a twinge of remorse. This sort of thing *never* happens in an FPS game, and rarely even happens in action movies. Two thumbs up for the plot and story developers.