Unreal II: The Awakening Critic Reviews

It speaks like no other game in the genre, loud and with feeling, and tells a story worth telling among all the explosions.

Never before have I seen this level of detail in a PC game. Unreal II blows the lid off the graphical standards we as PC gamers have set, and elevates the playing field to an unprecedented level.

A 3-D shooter that pays as much attention to a compelling single-player storyline as it does blasting enemies with futuristic weaponry.

Only the lack of a rich multi-player section and some odd design decisions keep Unreal 2 from being one of the best FPS’s in recent memory.

It's so predictable that a player will find himself quickly out-thinking the designers.

Amazingly beautiful, yet totally vacant in practically every other respect. It is certainly something fun to behold, but its lackluster showing in many other ways makes it tedious.

For anyone who is looking for an old-school action FPS experience with solid production values and lots of explosions, this is your game.

While the title does make some significant breakthroughs these are largely confined to a technical realm and offer little in the way of new gameplay.

The first Unreal made its name on, well, its unreal visuals, but we had no idea how saucy a first-person shooter could look until we tried the sequel.

While the game starts off strong, its personality steadily dribbles away, leaving you feeling you've played enough of it and never need to play it again.

Definitely delivers cool effects and dishes up some really amazing moments, but technical issues, a cornball story, and weak voice acting add up to a slight disappointment overall.

It is impressive. Since the five-year hiatus, however, there have been others that were more so than it.

Long enough to last you a few intense game sessions, and you'll easily polish it off over the weekend.

Sorry, it's been an epic wait for the tech upgrade... It's a good game, but too often resorts to recycling a number of first-person shooter clichés instead of breaking new ground.

To sum up, Unreal II is disappointing, not so much in terms of what it is as in terms of what we expected, what it hints at, and what it might have been.

The stupid and uninspiring storyline, coupled with some EAX related problems never got me hooked on this one. Unreal 2 is still an entertaining game, but it's way too simplistic and "old school" to live up to today's single player FPS standards.

It has the look and polish of a great shooter, but the gameplay of a merely good one. It's also a fairly short game with no multiplayer support to speak of.

A generic, rest on your laurels title from developer Epic that, while beautiful to look at, is a bloated (3GB mandatory install), largely plotless shooter that is disappointing given the pleasant surprise that the original "Unreal" was.

Introduces so many cool new weapons - like the blistering flamethrower, an incendiary alt-fire on the shotgun, and seeker orbs - that you feel cheated not getting to play with them against others online.

Forward-looking tech, backwards-looking gaming.