Finished Unreal. Enjoyed it greatly for the most part, but the last ~1/4 or so left me with mixed feelings, because I'd say the game just overstays its welcome and drops most of what makes it great at that point.
Unreal is at the top of its game when it does justice to its title. When you go through places that feel alien and otherworldly, and you keep wondering what they were for or what happened to their denizens. The start is obviously the strongest in this regard, but I think my favourite section in general is ISV-Kran. It has a pretty great mix of the familiar (human stuff), with the alien (skaarj invasion, spaceship) and the mysterious (what happened here? Are there any survivors?).
Unfortunately, after the Sunspire it loses quite a bit of its mystique. At first it isn't as irksome, because the levels immediately after it are still either weird enough (like the 'cloud city' with the skaarj outpost) or just really well designed (Bluff Eversmoking), but you start noticing things that are just too familiar and thus misplaced at that point, like the gothic churches and such in the cloud city, or the fact that Bluff Eversmoking is just, for all intents and purposes, a "generic mountain monastery".
After Bluff Eversmoking the level design generally takes a nosedive, and I think they simply ran out of ideas or something. There's a bunch of filler micro-levels that feel pointless, like half the Skaarj mothership or the serpent canyon, and one that is just insanely fucking bad (cellars at dasa pass). I also thought the Nali Castle was very weak as well as the most out of place in the entire game - not only is it just a "generic castle", you also have to ask yourself why would the Nali even build a castle in the first place?
That last part also uses endless or seemingly endless respawns way too much, and each of these instances sucks. Cellars at Dasa Pass has like 3 or even 4 "arenas" with endlessly respawning garbage enemies that keep swamping you while you look around for a switch to lift the bars that block you from leaving, with the richest fucking bait and switch in history as in the final arena there's actually no switch, the respawns are not endless, and you are supposed to murder all the spawning idiots for a change, which is mind-boggling. The same thing is repeated later in the mothership core, except that here the respawns are level-wide instead of in an arena, and there's nothing there to give you a hint that you are supposed to keep running around looking for skaarj to kill until the way forward opens. Whoever thought this was good design should be whipped.
But overall, looking back it's a pretty great game even if the end stretch leaves you with a bad taste. Cool and varied guns (though it's funny how bad the minigun is when you consider that it's usually the "ultimate" weapon in most shooters), also nicely varied enemies with assorted skaarj probably being top 10 coolest shooter enemies of all time in terms of their gameplay depth - different skaarj exhibit different behaviour, the infantry can use all the player's weapons, and they are smart and mobile, which makes shootouts sometimes resemble deathmatch sessions - the environments are ace, and some of the levels are jaw-droppingly good. Also top notch atmosphere and feel of seclusion in a truly alien world. Pretty happy about having revisited it.
Now the question is - should I bother with Return to Na Pali?
Unreal is at the top of its game when it does justice to its title. When you go through places that feel alien and otherworldly, and you keep wondering what they were for or what happened to their denizens. The start is obviously the strongest in this regard, but I think my favourite section in general is ISV-Kran. It has a pretty great mix of the familiar (human stuff), with the alien (skaarj invasion, spaceship) and the mysterious (what happened here? Are there any survivors?).
Unfortunately, after the Sunspire it loses quite a bit of its mystique. At first it isn't as irksome, because the levels immediately after it are still either weird enough (like the 'cloud city' with the skaarj outpost) or just really well designed (Bluff Eversmoking), but you start noticing things that are just too familiar and thus misplaced at that point, like the gothic churches and such in the cloud city, or the fact that Bluff Eversmoking is just, for all intents and purposes, a "generic mountain monastery".
After Bluff Eversmoking the level design generally takes a nosedive, and I think they simply ran out of ideas or something. There's a bunch of filler micro-levels that feel pointless, like half the Skaarj mothership or the serpent canyon, and one that is just insanely fucking bad (cellars at dasa pass). I also thought the Nali Castle was very weak as well as the most out of place in the entire game - not only is it just a "generic castle", you also have to ask yourself why would the Nali even build a castle in the first place?
That last part also uses endless or seemingly endless respawns way too much, and each of these instances sucks. Cellars at Dasa Pass has like 3 or even 4 "arenas" with endlessly respawning garbage enemies that keep swamping you while you look around for a switch to lift the bars that block you from leaving, with the richest fucking bait and switch in history as in the final arena there's actually no switch, the respawns are not endless, and you are supposed to murder all the spawning idiots for a change, which is mind-boggling. The same thing is repeated later in the mothership core, except that here the respawns are level-wide instead of in an arena, and there's nothing there to give you a hint that you are supposed to keep running around looking for skaarj to kill until the way forward opens. Whoever thought this was good design should be whipped.
But overall, looking back it's a pretty great game even if the end stretch leaves you with a bad taste. Cool and varied guns (though it's funny how bad the minigun is when you consider that it's usually the "ultimate" weapon in most shooters), also nicely varied enemies with assorted skaarj probably being top 10 coolest shooter enemies of all time in terms of their gameplay depth - different skaarj exhibit different behaviour, the infantry can use all the player's weapons, and they are smart and mobile, which makes shootouts sometimes resemble deathmatch sessions - the environments are ace, and some of the levels are jaw-droppingly good. Also top notch atmosphere and feel of seclusion in a truly alien world. Pretty happy about having revisited it.
Now the question is - should I bother with Return to Na Pali?
Hitman 2 was the only game i've never finished aside from two new seasons of the reboot, because back then i had such a shitty bootleg version of it that i just lost interest and for some reason never came back. Also eddited my previous post a bit.
