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Unreal II Demo Released
G9o writes "The demo for Unreal II: The Awakening has been released. The 153MB file is available for download at Fileplanet or FileShack. Originally Epic said they weren't going to release a demo for it, but perhaps the mediocre reception changed their mind?" In related news, French games site FactorNews are hosting a press document that claims "Unreal II" for Xbox, "Unreal Assault" for PS2 and "Unreal Tournament 2004" for PC will all be shown by Infogrames at E3, albeit possibly behind closed doors.
I usually download whatever I can from http://3dgamers.com You don't get all the crap that FilePlanet puts you through.
Bueller?
And the colors made me use Lynx to write this.
who knew purple could be so bright and its my favourite colour but I don't think I can handle this shade of unreal purple.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
If anyone knows of a fast mirror on anon ftp I'd be interested :) I had those ads and waits.
Visualize Whirled Peas
Just my thoughts here, but releasing the demo probably won't help. Don't get me wrong, I loved Unreal, and I play UT2003 at least once a week, but Unreal2 is just crappy. Wait, here me through. The game has spiders in it, and that tells us ONE thing, they ran out of ideas. Sorry, but it's true, they just couldn't muster the quality you want in a game. So, in my way of thinking, a demo of a bad game isn't going to boost sales, since people will see just how mediocre the game is.
YOU SUCK BALLS!
Mind you, 100meg+ demos aren't very EASY to transfer nowadays, much less with the terrible state of sites like FilePlanet, etc. (Has anyone considered a positive use of P2P to split such large files over several clients?)...
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
3dgamers is the best site to download the latest demos without having to go through those other nazi services.
This screen is enough to tell me it's good: http://www.unreal2.com/screens/pc/2b.jpg
Now I just have to stand in line at file planet for 60 mins.
Bizarre -- I've already bought and finished both games. Not bad, just kind of short.
If slashdot would offer a bittorrent streams for subscribers... Anyway, anyone already got it want to set up a torrent?
Business News and Resources: www.usasource.net
Bada bing
I got it a few days ago with my PC Gamer. I thought the reason nobody was talking about it was because it sucked ass.
Nope, this colour has nothing in common with peas whirled or otherwise. It's more like violets or the original colour of Iris Flowers as painted by Vincent Van Gogh, which probably all look like whirled peas to you anyway.
Now combine that happy shade of purple with the glow of a neon sign...I hate to think what it looks like on a mac which tends to intensify colours that look ok on a PC
The Unreal thing uses a fair bit of this colour too.
OK now for the very original plot:
[* As John Dalton, an ex-Marine assigned to patrol the edge of human space... Unhappy patrolling the ass-end of nowhere...
Violent turmoil has errupted on your watch *]
Does this feel like David Weber "On Basilisk Station" to anyone? and his stuff was loosely based on the Hornblower series by CS Forrester (written before "Hornblower" developped new meaning)
Well I guess this the version for people who want more than just a book.
Of course I live in the arse-end of nowhere so I guess I'd better start preparing for action.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
I loved the original unreal. I really like Unreal Tournament, i literally worshiped that cd. I liked UT 2003, it was a good game and given its nature, it was hard to make bad since it was mainly concentrated on killing people/dumb bots. The real problem with FPS game sequels (especially those who are mostly single player) is that no matter how hard the authors try, its never going to be as good as the first. Its just like movies, where they try to milk as much as possible, hoping that new special effects / graphics and the franchises good name will make them enough of a sales profit. Unreal 2 just lacks the originality of Unreal, they are running out of ideas. Personally, i think they can put the Unreal engine to much better use. Look at Raven Shield. That is one sequel which happens to be better than its predecessors. But personally i think that while Unreal 2 is great in terms of the games technical design, its feel and story line are a bit lacking
yeah...same here...installed it at least a month or 2 ago..beat it....i honestly thought it was out already...this has got to be the ealiest leak i've ever had...odd
mat
Yes Unreal Tournament 2003 was an above average game, but Unreal 2 really doesn't look worth purchasing.
The majority of the people that play these types of games simply buy them for the multi player aspect and Unreal 2 doesn't really look like it
has anything special to offer which would compensate for the lack of that multi player dynamic.
I say hold onto your time/money and save it for the upgrade you will be needing before buying Doom 3.
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
I must be the only one that doesn't have to have the latest and the greatest.
.I've spent to much time away from playing games on my PC 24/7, and mistakingly developed a life!
I don't want a game that requires me to have to upgrade my current machine to the hilt just to play it.
The original UNREAL & UNREAL Tourn. were great, and they still run on my machine.
My reward for upgrading my machine and getting the latest version of UT will still bring the same result. I'll be FRAG'd repeatedly & often. But that doesn't mean I'll have anymore fun than I do now with a version I already have. No.
I find myself enjoying games like Out Of The Park 5 (www.ootp5.com) where it's all about the game play/story, NOT the 1.5 trillion Polygons that were drawn on my screen in the last 30 miliseconds
I think I'm getting old. .
"This must be a Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays."
Here's a link if you don't believe me.
Sadly, Unreal Tournament seems to have been the high watermark for this paticular franchise. I bought UT2003, and i liked it, but it was the same game, albeit with nicer graphics of course.
What's peeved me the most, is I remember playing Unreal 1 and UT for the first time, and being impressed with the array of weapons you had to play with. They were not the typical pistol-shotgun-machinegun-rocket cliches that most every other FPS had accepted as the gospel of arsenals. You had a goofy blade that could bounce off walls, a Snot-Gun, a 6 barrled rocket launcher and so on. You get UT2003 and there is nothing new (the ion-gun doesn't count since it's in only about a quarter of the maps)
The unreal 2 pops up and well the series seems then to be in trouble.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
who in their right minds thinks the shit-brown and piss-yellow YRO colors look good? This is just a continuation of the trend of making slashdot the ugliest big website out there.
mmmmm Half life
Whenever some little puke tries to sell me on the whole "HALO IS THE BEST GAME EVER!!!!!!" I just laugh.
Halo is nothing to Half Life.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
Hey, what about linux? does epic plan to support linux with this game too? If they want to maintain the image they are culivating of being linux friendly (see UT2003), they need to release this for us linux ppl. I don't like windows, and I am doing everything I can to get rid of that sorry OS (this is not a flame). I find windows to be buggy, bloated and full of BS.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
According to the nerd paradox, that makes you a loser.
Go figure.
so okay, i bought unreal 2 and played all the way through it. my review: it's lame. some of the environments are okay, but this brings nothing new to the fps party.
and it commits an unpardonable sin: it has non-skippable cutscenes.
game developers, i've got news for you: nobody cares about your idiotic plot! i bought your damn game so i could run around and shoot stuff, not so i could watch a half-baked story about the-needs-of-the-many-outweigh-blah-blah-blah. as far as i'm concerned, you owe me for the 15 minutes i wasted watching your masturbatory featurettes, and since i'm making $300/hr contracting these days, i figure you owe me $75. since i spent about half that on the freaking game in the first place, i think it's fair if you just send me your next game free. maybe it won't suck so much.
This is Fileplanet. "160MB Download: Complete in 1 hour 37 minutes." This is Fileplanet on Dialup. "160MB Download: Complete in 1 year 37 weeks." Any questions? Too bad.
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I hope they've changed it a bit.. What pissed me off about UT2k3 isnt just the fact it lags on most computers i've installed it on but how they changed the fecking interface.. They had a whole great GUI in UT and then had to change something that works into something like Quake.
I've left to find myself. If you happen to see me, please, keep me there until I return.
I've just started playing it, and so far I'm very underwhelmed by it all... so far the actual gameplay is boring me, and the graphics aren't thrilling me at all. The skins on the ships in the cutscenes are particularly amaturish looking.
What I would like to know about the graphics though, is it because of my lackluster graphics card? I have a Geforce4MX which I know is starting to get to the point of being old... but...
The thing that gripes me is that other games, such as RTCW or NOLF2 look absolutely fan-f*cking tastic on my PC, and because of the great graphics I'm drawn into the environments more and really enjoy myself. With Unreal II I keep being jolted out of the experience because of the crappy graphical things like average skins, and a real 'fake' feeling to it all.
Blah blah blah, old games are better games. Blah blah blah, why do I have to upgrade, the stuff I have works just fine. Blah blah blah. My Commodore plays Ass Commander 2 and that's the only game I'll ever need. Blah blah blah. Shut. The. Fuck. Up. You. Whiney. Bitch. Your sorry ass old people man posts are fucking annoying. Go take some Geritol and do an old man dance, but don't come on a website about TECHNOLOGY AND WHINE WHEN THE NEXT GENERATION ROLLS RIGHT OVER YOUR WRINKLED ASS.
http://fileaholic.com/cgi-sql/file-info.sql/148501
Not to mention torrent is in Unreal II descriptions everywhere, making a .torrent link hard to find.
They never released a demo for the orginal Unreal even though they said they would.
Here's why I think they released a demo of it. It's evidently already out, and since it sucks (according to posts i've read) it hasn't been a good seller. Maybe they think releasing a free demo to people will encourage them to buy the full version. Just a thought.
I have only one word: Wow.
Be based on the fact that FPS GAMES ARE BORING?
I mean, all this "the story stinks", "the levels are the same". This can all be said about any FPS game that comes out. This can be said about Doom 3 even before it comes out.
Same old run around and shoot, all thats new is eye candy.
People keep paying for FPS and then compaining "this one sucks!"
FPS games just aren't fun. Get over it.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Don't mod this down. I'm a little concerned about this. I've always valued the ability to post AC, and now it's gone with no announcement?
Let's hope it's a mistake, sometimes our anonymous friends cut through the noise and contribute some wonderful insight and important things.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
What I didn't like about U2 was the maps. They look great, but really they are pretty simple in overall design. If you take the time to explore them, you'll find lots of pretty little things to look at, but nothing to do. It's like they spent all their time on the small details.. and forgot the bigger picture.
WTF are you talking about? Do you mean that your Submit button has disappeared, the one that was next to the Preview button? Try Previewing your post (which you should have always been doing anyway) and see if it appears.
As a Mac gamer (I know, har har, but I have OS X suckas :P), I don't really bother trying to keep up with what's the latest and greatest coming out on the Windows gaming scene. From what I know, UT2k3 was released not too long ago. Now Unreal II? Are the games really that different?
Also mirrored:
http://editingarchive.com/view.php?ID=332
No registration needed!
So, who DID mod you down? Taco?
- is it still a samey quake style shooter clone?
- other platforms? Mac/nix?
A blog I run for the wealth
Unreal 2 has been out for a while and was summarily tanked by pretty much every critic out there. Simply put, the game is no fun to play, it's basically just a rehash of every FPS to come before it and offers absolutely no innovation. Nevermind the action is far from "fast and furious" and the weapons really aren't that inventive. The only somewhat cool weapon in the game is found on the very last stage and you only get to use it like twice. The "story" is AWFUL. The characters are total cliches. The levels are pretty much the same except for the textures.
The demo will be decieving, because the game actually is pretty fun for the first 2 or 3 levels. You expect the game to go somewhere but it really just stagnates and becomes progressively less and less fun as you go on. The only reason I finished it was because I was stoned. Let me warn you against the same mistake I made. Don't bother with this one.
Warning: it told me the wait time was 7 minutes when I first clicked on it, and it actually took over an hour. I got to watch Friends and the president (co-opting Will and Grace) on my ReplayTV in the meantime.
For those of you pissed that the president can co-op your viewing pleasure, instead of being broadcast on CNN only (or other fucking inconsequential channel), you can get the torrents from this page.
The fortune is particularly apt for this page: "Government lies, and newspapers lie, but in a democracy they are different lies."
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Can someone please setup a torrent of this?
Hey, how dare the PC Games icon be a Microsoft Sidewinder Precision Pro??
What? What do you mean? How do I know what one looks like? Why I own one and.... Don't look at me like that! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA#$(*))*#$NO CARRIER
What a crock.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Hate to sound like a troll, but first things first...Epic didn't make Unreal 2, just the engine.
Blame Legend for the demo coming out well after the game (they weren't sure they wanted to release one) and for the game not being that great (well, I should warn I haven't played the game but am very disappointed to say I haven't heard many positive things about the actual game's value and challenge).
The first time I played Unreal Tournament (the original) back in October of 99, I knew I was hooked. Fast CTF action on Coret...still the best game I've ever played IMO.
Demos can sometimes be exactly what you need to get you addicted to a game.
I found both games - and the original Unreal - hard to sit through.
You must be a man defined by his great patience.
If you think that this game is too short then you need to get out more and spend less time playing computer games. I've been playing it for about 2 weeks now and I think I'm about 3/4 of the way through. I know people that finished it in a few days. Where's the fun in that? Take a break.
I thought it was fun, the way you could give orders to marines in some missions, the banter between the characters (especially Dr.Myers) and the fact that the characters on the ship had actually stories that you could talk to them about that didn't impact on the main plot(AFAIK so far), and if you got bored you could just walk away while they where talking instead of being stuck there.
I for one enjoyed the spiders ("Oh great now they're giant killer MUTANT spiders"), reminded me of StarShip Troopers actually.
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done on the people who are still alive.
Now you know why they didn't release the demo before the game was released. I imagine that releasing a demo then would've been unwise since it probably would have hurt sales.
seriously... how is this news? wasn't the game released in february? anyways, gorgeous graphics but nothing special was happening with the gameplay except during the 'defensive' parts of the game. def not a 19/20 as isonewz rated it
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It needs to be included with Unreal Tournament 2003.
My roommate beat Unreal II the same day he bought it. Granted that's about 16 hours, but for $50 we felt cheated, especially with lack of any replay value.
Rather than cheating the consumer out of $50 extra bucks, Unreal II should have just been the single player to UT2K3, or bundled together to save money. I hope they learned their lesson this time trying to extort that extra bit of cash out of consumers. Look at the ad at the top of the screen. They're ALL for Unreal, and in all honesty, it's just the same game rehashed into an XBox game, singeplayer game and multiplayer game. *sigh* CliffyB sold out.
And at least make it a Gravis Gamepad or something for the Joystick... an MS sidewinder probably goes over as well as the Microsoft ads.
According to one review U2 has only 10-15 hours of gameplay. For who I wonder? I don't know about anyone else but I wouldn't design games that take uber-players 30-40 hours to finish if they played non-stop because the average person would never finish the game at all.
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done on the people who are still alive.
The demo was only 10 minutes long! And there's a 10 minute non-skipable video at the beginning at that!
No kidding. I didn't download 150+meg game demo from a slow server so that I could watch mediocre computer animation. It doesn't take many viewings of that before it gets real old.
Hint: FPS games are for people who like action. If I want to watch animation, I can rent it at Blockbuster.
But it's not worth getting upset about. These games will still be around, and they'll still be great in 2 years, when the hardware needed to run them is cheap as dirt.
Waste a lot of money now, or wait a little. No shame in being a generation behind on the games. It's smart.
Is the people that whine everytime some new technology comes out, or something that requires it. Look, there are perfectly legitmate reasons to want better eye candy, physics, AI and so on. Personally, I think almost all games could benefit from a better look and feel. You don't have to sacrafice anything for better graphics, you can keep the same game and just make it look better.
As for game types, well know what? Different epople have different tastes. Some people like twitch games, it is fun to play a game that is about coordination and speed, not logic or strategy. There is no One True Game Type.
So quit your bitching. If you don't like FPSes, fine, don't play them. That doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of people who do, and good reason for them to. If you don't care about games that use more advanced technology, fine, don't play them. However respect the fact that some people do like that sort of thing.
Eye candy can't make a bad game or movie good, it can only make a good one great.
A-Bomb
The graphics where simply amazing, but the plot and the game play seems to have been put together by the B-movie/game crowd.
Tell you what though, I'm looking forward to seeing who leases the engine and spends more of their budget on content and talent without having to recreate the wheel for the new graphics. We should have some very interesting games visual and otherwise to look forward in the near future.
It's $9.99 after a $20 rebate, shipped free from amazon-> Unreal 2: The Awakening
hooray! it's a sex wiki
you insensitive clod!
I'm smarter than the average bear.
great. now with slashdot games not only can we have duplicates stories, but we can have duplicate - crossposted stories!
I held back on getting the game, mainly because of all the negative reviews. So last night, I jumped over to happypuppy.com (again, I subscribe to their FileSwarm - aka Onion WebRAID CDN, and got the file at about 670/Kb). Installed it, and played it for 30 minutes. I think the biggest problem is the gaming community (me and all of you) are very demanding. Technologically, I think it's an excellent game. Story wise it's hard to say in just a demo. It did draw me in and keep me playing for a bit, I just wish the demo let you play over the LAN or net on this map, even just in a deathmatch mode. I guess since they weren't even going to release a demo in the first place, this is better than nothing..right?
check out oldunreal.com *especially* if you have a Nvidia based card as the guy's driver work wonders.
/. link I downloaded and installed jdoom (OpenGL version w/ transparency/particles) and quite honestly I've never had so much fun playing doom 1/2 in single player.
I played thru Unreal again...and it was a blast.
Unreal tournament took a while to grow on me.
Heh, thanks to a
Jaw dropping, considering its age and this is a hacked up/rewritten version.
I wonder if doom III will even compare?
It just seem like "The Awakening" is just the Quake2 of the Unreal Series.
Nothing "wrong" with it, just nothing impressive about it.
IMO, that is.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Very few companies can create a great engine and a great game at the same time, the only real exception is ID Software. I have no problem with that. The skill set needed to create a great engine is very different than that needed to create a great game. I have no doubt we will continue to see Many good games using the Unreal engine(s) in the next few years.
Because Unreal II sucked, that's why. It had a plot that's barely thicker than a human hair, uninspiring level design, unsatisfying weapons, unskipable cutscenes you really don't want to see again, very little atmosphere, cringeworthy dialogue, and barely existant AI which makes it just another shoot-and-drool exercise.
PC Zone said "This is no three hour no-brainer" when they reviewed it (and gave it an insane 94%). And, you know what? They're right: it's a four hour no-brainer.
Never mind. Half-Life II and Deus Ex II this year should help us to forget this and other disapointments. Oh, and hopefully the yummy looking S.T.A.L.K.E.R, Breed, Homeworld 2, Söldner, Ground Control 2, Judge Dredd, X2, Doom 3... <wanders off to drool for a bit>
> Hell, Im still playing Half-Life.
This is actually an interesting point. When Unreal (I) was launched somewhere in 1998, it was an awesome game. It was atmospheric, it had some storyline, which was not too good, but not too bad either, and the graphics were stunning. It would probably have been the most popular FPS-game, if HalfLife would not have been launched around the same time. HL blew Unreal away in almost every aspect: its graphics were much better, there were some _very_ good mods (I still play CounterStrike) and the atmosphere was unlike any other game.
To me, it seems that history is going to repeat itself. Or worse: U2 looks fine, but does not have particular innovations, whereas HL2 will have a kick-ass AI (dynamic facial expressions *DROOL*), even better graphics, etc.
Just my EUR 0.02
der Joachim
Geek runner, motorcyclist and professional know-it-all
let me repeat that:
Since the press release is hosted on a French site, I suggest we rename the game to "Freedom II".
my sig
It's completely sub-par in sound, story, and voice acting, but the graphics are nice. I'd give it a 2 out of 10. Over-hyped piece of crap.
because Aida and the rest of the crew die. Yeah, I thought that was lousy too, but not a reason to call it a bad story, just not a great one. I think that the team combat scenarios were well done, and I also don't understand what people complain about when they knock AI on any game. Turning the difficulty up usually seems to make everyone a little smarter!
Sheesh. Unreal had a fantastic storyline, but with this demo, I am not impressed. On the contrary, this demo convinced me to NOT buy the game. Big disappointment.
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
for you windows users, unreal 2 is currently $10 (after $20 rebate) at amazon. here is the page.
I think the Fileplanet subscription is definately worth it. It's what, like $50 a year or something? That's what my subscription cost me last year, plus I got a year free of CGW. It just expired and I plan on renewing it. As far as large demo downloads go, I don't think we're going to see them get any smaller... only bigger. Expect even more pain in the future. Solutions like Fileplanet subscriptions really help ease the pain. Newsflash: It costs MONEY to be a gamer. :P
Also.. shameless plug. There's a site, www.gamerswanted.com, that has transitioned over from another name/site and they're trying to get their forums up and moving. It's a 'quaint' forum and it's coming along slowly but surely. Everyone should feel free to drop by and poke your head in if you're interested in some intelligent, non-fanboy infested discussion in regards to gaming. The site admin has coded just about everything from scratch (including the forums) and it's still a work in progress. Features being added constantly.
Here are a bunch of FTP mirrors for it.
2 demo.exe&size=160931502
http://www.filemirrors.com/search.src?file=unreal
I'm getting 300k/sec off of the freenet.de one.
SuPz.orG
There is a mirror for the file on Streamload setup at:o .exe
http://www.streamload.com/steve/mirror/unreal2dem