One Game, Endless Fun

Unreal® II—The Awakening brings something new to team-based shooters. Known as XMP (Expanded Multiplayer), this all-encompassing game mode fully tests your teamwork and resource management as well as your first-person shooter skills. Where other games give you several different modes with several different objectives, XMP combines all the best elements of traditional team shooter modes into one glorious über contest that can be played out on XboxLive™ or via System Link.

It all starts here.

At its simplest, XMP is a variant of Capture the Flag. The main way to win is to collect all four of the glowing artifacts and return them to your headquarters. Each team starts off with two of the artifacts, and it’s up to the teams to slug it out to control ‘em all.

That’s hardly all there is to it, however. Each team is composed of up to four players. These players can choose from three classes of soldier: Gunner, Tech, and Ranger. The Gunner is your basic heavily armed and armored infantry, packing a rocket launcher and a flamethrower. The Tech is lighter, faster. It hacks the fastest (more on hacking later) and carries a shotgun and EMP grenades. The Ranger is the fastest and carries a light pistol and sniper rifle, but the Ranger also has the weakest shielding. Each class has access to the team’s advanced tech weaponry, which comes into play as the game progresses.

Power Station.

Each team shares a pool of energy that members can draw upon to power-jump jets, vehicles, and a host of other goodies like auto-turrets, land mines, and force-field generators. These items become available during the round only if you have enough team energy to activate them. Your team energy level fluctuates during the match, depending on how much each team member uses and how much the team’s assets are generating. If you’re about to jack a powerful Juggernaut tank, and your team’s energy dips too low, the vehicle will go off-line, and you’ll be stuck being a pedestrian again. Worse, if you don’t have enough team energy, you won’t be able claim the all-important artifacts. All you can do is carry them around until the energy level climbs high enough to register the prize.

If the team totally runs out of energy, not only don’t you get to use high-tech gizmos, you’ll also lose the game. To prevent this, you need to hack the generators scattered over each map, so they’ll provide energy for your team. Hacking is a simple matter of holding the “Use” button until the equipment has been successfully converted, and some classes hack faster than others. Anything that has been hacked can be re-hacked by the opposite team, so generator sites are bound to see a lot of firefights as each team duels for control. Virtually all of the important assets on the map can be hacked: energy generators, deploy points, artillery guns, and even the front door of enemy headquarters.

The Harbinger.

As mentioned, XMP includes vehicles for each team’s use. They come in several shapes and sizes, with varying levels of offense. The Raptor is a light, fast, jeep-style assault vehicle, where the larger Harbinger is more like the Warthog in Halo®: Combat Evolved. The ultimate beat-down machine is the Juggernaut tank, which comes with a huge cannon, auxiliary machine guns, and a flamethrower that the driver can operate. Vehicles can carry passengers as well as deliver firepower, so you’ll want your teammates to pile on when you get behind the wheel.

Unreal II first brought XMP to PC gamers, but now this extensive and immersive contest is on the Xbox. It requires:

Good judgment as well as good reflexes,
Solid teamwork as well as strong solo skills, and
A general’s view of the entire war as well as a grunt’s perspective on the current skirmish.

For one game that is many games at the same time, check outUnreal II and its XMP game mode.

By J.N. Cobb