I rate Unreal Gold (with the OldUnreal mod installed) 4.5/5. Overall, this game is truly excellent. Even after all these years, Unreal (with just the OldUnreal mod installed), is still a solidly good game and the fact that it is legally free to download makes it even better.
With the OldUnreal mod, there is no real reason for anyone (like Nightdive Studios for example) to bother to remaster Unreal (or its Return to Na Pali expansion) unless they make truly significant modifications which are superior the latest version of the OldUnreal mod.
You can legally and freely download Unreal (and the OldUnreal mod and Unreal Tournament 1999 and Unreal Tournament 2004 (and updated versions of all those games) at https://oldunreal.com The website does not require you to input any information, register or sign up for anything in order to acquire copies and updated OldUnreal modded versions of these games.
NOTE:
(OldUnreal is not a mod but is actually the latest version of Unreal, that version being 227, which is an update over the previous (and final) official version known as 226f. In short, OldUnreal version 227 is a community patch for Unreal, not a mod.
See (T:S:B)IceLizard's comment to this review made on Jun 26 @ 7:26am.)
For those who are new to Unreal, it is important to remember that this is not a pure action game. Though it does a lot have action in it, the action is not non-stop but ramps up slowly over the course of the entire game. There are quiet moments here and there, especially at first. In many ways, Unreal is more of a linear first-person adventure game, more along the lines of System Shock 2 but with a simpler interface, nearly no spoken dialogue, fewer inventory items to figure out, weapons that don’t need to be repaired, fewer puzzles to solve and (as in Half Life) occasional NPCs who will help you if you prevent enemies from killing them. Throughout much of the game most of the fights you have will feel more like mini-boss fights against fairly difficult, somewhat intelligent opponents who attack a few at a time. There aren’t usually hoards of weak, stupid enemies to mow down. To put it another way, the gameplay is far more like Doom 3 than Doom 2.
If you think you would like a somewhat slow, somewhat thoughtful First Person Shooter, you owe it to yourself to Play Unreal. And when judging it, try to remember that this game came out after Quake 2 but before Half Life 1. In many ways, I suspect it is both an experiment to see what can potentially be done with First Person games in general (and an attempt to introduce more open, outdoor environments) and a reaction to/against the relentless, militaristic (and largely indoor) action of Quake 2. When you first step out of your character’s spacecraft in the game’s second level, keep in mind that being in a peaceful, wide-open outdoor space, with pretty sunlight, clouds and birds overhead, in a First Person Perspective game was, at the time, unusual.
+ Fantastic music throughout. The music tells the game’s story (and describes the game’s intended emotional tenor) better than the various written log files you find strewn around here and there (though the logs are helpful at providing details). Turn the sound effects volume down so it is quiet but still useful and crank the music volume UP. Using the Galaxy 3D Audio option helps with this.
+ Great enemy AI. Enemies will attempt to dodge attacks and flank you. Wounded enemies may occasionally retreat and either return with backup or, more often, may be found elsewhere, waiting for you with their backup forces.
+ All keyboard keys and mouse buttons can be easily rebound and OldUnreal recognized my gaming mouse’s additional buttons.
+ Interesting, unsual weapons which attempt to break away from the predictable weapon types of many other first person games. The second weapon the game gives you (the Automag pistol) is one of the most useful weapons throughout the entire game. It is hitscan (so its shots land INSTANTLY) and shot for shot, it is far more damaging than the minigun you get much later in the game, though it uses the same ammunition. If you largely ignore the minigun and focus instead on using the Automag pistol, you will very rarely, if ever, run out of ammo. The razor jack with its decapitation capability should not be ignored either nor should the BioRifle which, while short range, is EXTREMELY damaging. The multi-barreled rocket launcher is practically useless when you use many barrels at a time and its secondary grenade function is almost entirely useless in general (except against very slow moving enemies).
+ Unreal is a somewhat lengthy game. I think it took me roughly 20 hours to play through just once (including the Return to Na Pali expansion).
+ The OldUnreal mod was really easy to install.
+/- The sound effects of pretty good, even by today’s standards. Most sound effects are useful in some way (or go far in adding to the ambience, like the calls of alien wildlife in the distance) but the game’s music totally steals the show. The way I’ve always played Unreal is to have the sound effects take a back seat to the music.
+/- Controls feel responsive enough but can seem a little floaty at times. It feels as though you are a civilian using military weaponry and not quite knowing how it all works (which is what is going on in this game). The controls take some getting used to and definitely have a learning curve. I recommend turning off the double-tap dodging option unless you want to have a lot of frustrating times accidentally jumping off cliffs.
+/- The plot of the main Unreal game is potentially fantastic. It is potentially a hero’s amazing journey from being a dejected prisoner just trying to survive to fulfilling the role of a prophesized savior of an entire people, saving them (as many of them as you are able) from death and oppression (that is, if you decide to play the game in a nice way and try to save the NPCs you encounter instead of shooting them).
However, you can play through the game as a total psychopath and kill all the friendly alien NPCs you find but doing so hampers your chances of survival as they will then not be alive to show you various hidden supply caches (unless you shoot the NPCs after they reveal the hidden supplies).
The plot of the Return to Na Pali expansion is, unfortunately, severely stupid and makes no reasonable sense, though the expansion does have some good gameplay and music.
- Even with the OldUnreal mod, the graphics have aged pretty badly in a lot of places (especially the outdoor environments). Some thick fog placed to obscure the walls of the game world’s impassible terrain would have been welcome (as in the Turok games) and I think may have been a fairly easy but highly beneficial modification.
- By today’s standards, enemies have low polygon counts and so look quite blocky and chunky.
- The Return to Na Pali expansion has a truly stupid plot. Though the gameplay and music of the expansion is good and its numerous bugs have been fixed, the plot is unbelievably STUPID, especially the stupid "plot twist" roughly half way through.
- Some graphical settings in the menu can be hard to figure out but figuring them out can be well worth the effort (such as a single check mark box (called NoSmooth View Filtering) which, when unchecked, makes everything in the entire game (including the sky) smooth instead of pixelated, though the game does look a lot sharper when it is allowed to be pixelated (so whether you activate this is very much a matter of personal taste).
- The Galaxy 3D Audio menu option claims it is “deprecated” or obsolete but it is actually fantastically better than any of the other sound or music options, even on my Logitech z-906 THX 5.1 speaker system. Though some audio popping sounds do still occur in certain songs, at least the Galaxy 3D Audio setting doesn’t force the game’s fantastic music permanently into the background.
