Have a look at Unreal II, a game that promises the use of next generation technology to bring you an experience that combines the stunning beauty of Unreal with the fast pace and intensity of Unreal Tournament.
A wide variety of screen shots and plenty of information about the story, game play, technology, weapons, and creatures will help get your hopes up high.
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Unreal II is the sequel to the original Unreal and takes place in the same fictional universe - but the main player character and the locations are different than those found in the first game.
As the player, you are the lone representative of the Law in a distant sector of space. You patrol your beat in the creaky but serviceable starship Atlantis, a former military escort vessel that was decommissioned and retrofitted for civil government service long ago. You are accompanied by a support crew of three: Ne'Ban is your trusty alien pilot, Isaak is an engineer who keeps the ship running, and Aida acts as your Intelligence officer - she monitors the situation in the sector, keeps you up to date, and briefs you before you leave the Atlantis to go on a planetary mission.
Things are quiet... until the sector erupts in a full-scale interstellar war. Battles rage on and around more than ten vastly different worlds as several alien races, multiple mercenary armies, and the infamous Terran Military engage in fierce combat. You are caught in the middle of the fighting, and must balance your responsibility to protect the colonists, archaeologists, miners, and other civilians in your sector... with the duty to discover the source of the conflict and put an end to the war.
Unreal II takes the form of a series of missions linked by the narrative framework of the game's story. Missions may take place in the dense jungle of a tropical planet, in the ancient ruins of an alien city, deep underground in a warren of tunnels, on the molten surface of a hellish volcanic world, in the bowels of an alien industrial facility, in the endless oceans of a water-bound world, or on board an enemy starship. There are more than ten unique settings, each with its own distinct look and production design.
The story unfolds through briefings, cut scenes, in-game dialog, and the action contained in the missions themselves. Story telling does not get in the way of the action - the game is designed so that the missions are fast paced and intense; there are natural pauses as the player returns to the Atlantis between combat missions.
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The Unreal II single player game is mission based - each combat mission features a different type of tactical situation, including assault with a squad of friendly troops, base defense, hostage rescue, civilian escort, stealth infiltration, and the traditional FPS search and destroy sorties. Opponents include a bestiary of strange alien creatures as well as human and humanoid soldiers and mercenaries.
Between missions the player will return to the orbiting Atlantis to find out about the next mission, research items picked up during the previous mission (such as new weapons), interact with fellow crew members, catch up on the story, and re-arm for the next sortie.
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Key new technology features include a tenfold boost in character poly counts and a hundredfold increase for environments, realistic outdoor scenery generated by a new large scale terrain system, procedural character animations and blending using a new skeletal animation system with component level controllers, and a particle system that allows the Unreal II project team to realistically model fire, smoke, cloth, hair, weather effects, and breaking glass.
Other technical improvements include upgraded NPC AI, a real-time dialog system for communicating with NPCs, texture compression, alpha blending, distance fog, a new version of the Unreal level editor, advanced particle physics with forces and particle collisions, and per-poly collision detection for characters.
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You'll find some favorites from the genre in addition to new and exotic weapons that you've never seen before. Old stand-bys include a powerful rocket launcher, a combat assault rifle, a scoped sniper rifle, and a multi-mode grenade launcher that fires incendiary, fragmentation, poison gas, EMP, and stasis grenades. New weapons include a leech gun that can slow an enemy down or drain his life force, a Takkra that releases hunter/killer drones that can track down and fire on an opponent, and a fearsome psi weapon known as the MindClaw. All told there will be 15 guns, launchers, lasers, and assorted instruments of mayhem.
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More than 24 enemies will make an appearance in Unreal II. The Skaarj are back as one of the warring alien races. The Skaarj make the only encore appearance from the original Unreal - the rest of the characters and creatures are brand new.
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