| | First Encounter:Martial Law
Xbox gamers (especially those on Xbox Live) have already embraced Unreal Championship for its wild action, inspired level design, and huge multiplayer contests. Now, for the first time, Xbox owners get a dose of single-player Unreal with a plot. (Or, at least, more of a plot than, “You’re in a kill-or-be-killed tournament. Go!”)
Unreal® II—The Awakening is the story of an interstellar lawman on a quest to recover powerful artifacts before a nefarious alien species combines them into a galaxy-threatening super-weapon. As a space marshal, you’ll have access to the latest and greatest weapon technology that the Terra Colonial Authority (TCA) has to offer. Along the way, you’ll battle terrifying alien menaces, add members to your crew … and blow a lot of stuff up.
The campaign opens much as the one in Halo did, with a brief gameplay and weapons orientation. You can jump right into the first mission, or you can head down to the training area to become familiar with your basic weapons, armor, and heads-up display (HUD). You even have the option of a quick five-point death match against your tutor, just to prove that you’ve been listening.
From there, it’s time to go to work. A mining colony has issued a distress call, and your first job is to check it out and offer whatever assistance is needed. Once you arrive, you find all but one of the human staff have been killed by unknown aggressors—and the one guy that’s left isn’t all that helpful. As you make your way through the corridors, machinery, and sunken chambers, you’ll be attacked by feral alien monsters with powerful technological weapons. You’ll have to fight your way through to the last survivor before you find out what they want.
Fortunately, you have some powerful weapon technology to work with right from the start. The dispersion pistol is not bad as a fallback weapon, but it doesn’t pack enough punch or have a high enough rate of fire for multiple foes. The combat assault rifle (CAR) is much more effective, firing a steady stream of uranium shard bullets that will chew up just about any living thing they hit. When you kill aliens, you can also take their weapon, the Shock Rifle, and use it against them. As is traditional withUnreal games, each weapon has a primary and secondary fire capability. The pistol’s secondary fire allows you to charge it up before releasing the blast to create a much larger impact. Using the left trigger on the CAR will cause its bullets to ricochet and bounce off of hard surfaces, so you can nail that sucker who’s taking pot shots from around the corner. Even the Shock Rifle, which fires rebounding rounds of energy, can produce a large EMP-style burst that really packs a wallop. Other weapons will become available later, such as the Grenade Launcher (with up to six different kinds of ammo), Machine Gun, Rocket Launcher, and even a Flamethrower.
Another mainstay of the Unreal series is its excellent level design. As the no-nonsense space marshal, you’ll be exploring scientific research facilities, jungles, ice fields, and lava flows, each packed with the textures, colors, and detail thatUnreal pioneered. There are claustrophobic hallways, wide-open courtyards, dense forests, and blinding glaciers in which to do battle, and multiple alien races like the Izarians and the Skarij to defeat.
Unreal II—The Awakening is designed around the single-player campaign, but it wouldn’t be Unreal without some multiplayer mayhem. The game supports cooperative play for two players and features exclusive Xbox multiplayer modes via XboxLive. If you like a little story with your carnage, and you like it to look sharp, Unreal II—The Awakening is ready for action.
By Pete Hutter |
