Dude, Where's My Flak Cannon? It's Like... TOTALLY UNREAL!!!

Author's Rating:

Pros: One fun game and one OK game at a great price.

Cons: Gameplay eventually gets repetitive. Unreal Gold is disappointing.

The Bottom Line: 
Totally Unreal is worth the money. The gameplay gets repetitive after a while, but it will still provide many hours of fragging fun.

Author's Review
A short while ago, I was in the market for another great First Person Shooter game for my PC. There was a lot of great stuff out there like Red Faction and the new Wolfenstein, but since I wanted something cheap, I narrowed my choices down to Quake 3 Arena, Unreal Tournament Game of the Year Edition, and Totally Unreal. Since I have Q3A on my Dreamcast, and TU has UTGOTY already included (plus TU was $5 cheaper than UTGOTY! WTF?) I plunked my cash down on Totally Unreal.

In the Totally Unreal set, you get more than a few goodies.
1) The original Unreal, plus the Expansion Pack (Gold).
2) Unreal Tournament Game of the Year Edition.
3) Map Editors for both UG and UT.
4) Preview disc of Unreal 2 and Unreal Championship.

Unreal Gold
Of the two individual games in the Totally Unreal pack, Unreal Gold is definitely the weakest. It’s a linear corridor shooter a la Wolfenstein and Doom. You play the part of a convict being transported to a prison planet, and awaken en route to find your transport has been forced to crash-land on some alien world. You explore the planet, blowing away the hostile natives while you desperately search for a way home.

The graphics are OK, but certainly not on par with the best of today’s crop. The creature animations are passable at best, and the lush environments are nice, though the graphics are a little muddy at times. The sound effects and music are definitely nothing to write home about.

There are actually two core games in Unreal Gold, the original Unreal game and the additional mission pack “Return to Na Pali.” The mission pack adds another 17 levels, 3 enemies, and 3 weapons to Unreal. I don’t care who you are; 47+ levels of anything this linear and predictable are too much. At least Doom had traps and mazes and other inventive leves. UG is just "walk, see an enemy, blow him away, keep walking.” I actually have to force myself to sit down and play just so I can see the ending.

Plus, the Deathmatch modes on this game totally suck. You’ve got the usual modes such as Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag, but I didn’t have that much fun playing any of them on this game. The movement of the bots is erratic and their artificial intelligence is downright laughable. I can’t count the number of times I’ve walked up to a group of 3-4 bots huddled against a wall with their backs to me, apparently trying to get a bead on another bot ONE LEVEL DOWN AND ON THE OTHER SIDE OF A WALL. Needless to say, Mr. Rocket Launcher got a little bit of a workout then.

The replayability factor on Gold is almost zero. I played through each of the modes on Gold just to get a feel for them, then never touched it again. It’s a complete waste of a CD, in my opinion. I would have been much happier with a CD full of more maps, skins, modes, or new weapons for UT.


Unreal Tournament
Unreal Tournament is the true pearl of the set. This game abandons the linear corridor play in favor of keeping the “deathmatch” as it’s core game, similar to Quake 3 Arena. It also has several other different modes around it:

Deathmatch is your basic “kill anything that moves” fragfest. The one with the most kills wins. Unreal Tournament has a huge assortment of maps that make it even more fun, plus you can download more maps and skins at affiliate websites. With Team Deathmatch you’ve got a squad backing you up and your goal is to frag the hell out of the other team while not getting into each other’s crosshairs. Whoever’s team frags each other the most wins.

Domination is pretty cool. You and your team try to secure the majority of strategic points on a map. Whoever controls the most points for the longest amount of time wins. Capture the Flag mode is so passé it’s not even funny. In CTF, basically you and your team try to defend your flag from your opponents while trying to steal theirs. Sometimes it’s fun when you’re playing other live players, but usually it’s nothing special. However, my favorite modes in UT is the one called Assault. You and your crack team of operatives infiltrate an enemy’s base with specific objectives to complete. If you successfully infiltrate the base and complete your objectives, then your squad must defend it from the other team. Whoever penetrates the headquarters in the least amount of time wins. It’s not quite Rainbow Six, but it’s still very cool.

The gameplay is addictive and the graphics are simply brilliant. The backgrounds, skins, and levels, and weapons effects for the most part are very well polished. On some of the levels in space, I sometimes even experienced a small degree of vertigo when the station was rotating. Great stuff. The sound effects are killer too; you can actually hear the pitch of some projectiles rise and fall as they narrowly missing your fragile frame. It all helps immensely to make the game feel very immersive.

Online Play
This is where Unreal Tournament really shines. When you get tired of “fragging” marginally intelligent bots, go online and challenge live opponents. Didn’t know that with sufficient armor and power-ups a rocket launcher could be pretty effective as a close range weapon did ya? Human opponents tend to play a little more unpredictably than the computer-controlled bots and it only adds to the fun. Reach out and frag someone.

The servers are very forgiving as well. I’ve played deathmatches over my 56K modem with ping times over 400 and have had little trouble busting caps in people with almost no lag or critical errors. You guys with the high-speed connections should have a field day, though.

So If you’re looking for a great FPS game and haven’t tried Totally Unreal yet, I recommend picking it up. In my opinion, Unreal Gold actually lowers the overall value of the set, but if you absolutely need to have another corridor game, you’ll probably enjoy it. If you don’t need another corridor shooter, skip Totally Unreal and get Unreal Tournament Game of the Year Edition. That one comes without Gold.