Comments on: An Epic Tale

By: Aubrey

Aubrey — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:34:09 +0000

Larington: Yeah, the tower defense bits were inspired! By tower defense!

No but seriously. They were the high points, for sure. Some of the bioshock level design reminded me of it, like the part in arcadia where people are busting down the doors to get into the lab, and you can prepare by rigging the room with various traps.

By: PHeMoX

PHeMoX — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:13:11 +0000

The Unreal 1 soundtrack is indeed one of the best. Too bad I don’t have it anymore.

By: Nachshon

Nachshon — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 07:01:24 +0000

If it comes down to Valve v. Google, I pledge allegiance to Valve Software.

By: Omnibus: March 16th - 22nd | Rock, Paper, Shotgun: Pretentious, moi?

Omnibus: March 16th - 22nd | Rock, Paper, Shotgun: Pretentious, moi? — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 14:54:49 +0000

[...] Space there. Eurogamer MMO channel up. More from Scott Miller, talks up “portal race”. Epic on Steam. Hurray. Diablo 3, still not confirmed. Mass Effect PC coverage. Jim reviews Soulstorm. Nine years [...]

By: KingMob

KingMob — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:11:48 +0000

The Valvemen are obviously a sort of steam-punk influenced army. What do the Googleites look like? I imagine some sort of Northern Californian nature-loving hippies that recruit giant brown bears and so on.
Yes, steampunk versus bioorganic weaponry. I will play this.

Wait, and keep Microsoft to be the leftover vanilla human race, or are they so outmoded and dull no one can imagine playing as them, like the humans in Universe at War?

By: Jim Rossignol

Jim Rossignol — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:54:01 +0000

What was most interesting to me was that the preview of the game I saw the year before the release of the game had a much more flesh-out world. It’s clear that loads of stuff had to be trashed to get the game out of the door. I recall Mike Verdu abandoning ship towards the end of U2′s development, so I wonder if the ultimate failure of the game was down to studio mismanagement, or a lack of cash.

By: Shanucore

Shanucore — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:50:43 +0000

“It blows. Any attempt to defend it stands to make you look like a right pillock.”

Pish. The purpose of a game is, as a bare minimum, to provide entertainment to the player. This comment thread alone clearly demonstrates that Unreal 2 managed that for a fair few players.

Accusations of mediocrity are fair, but to accuse it of being far worse than that will require a little more than mud-flinging.

I’m looking forward to Jim’s retrospective take on the game.

By: Kadayi

Kadayi — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 01:10:15 +0000

I quite enjoyed Unreal 2 (though I never did finish it) the squad AI wasn’t too shoddy and the levels were ass huge IIRC. I gave it away in a clear out a while back, but must admit I’m quite tempted to fork out for it again.

By: Mickiscoole

Mickiscoole — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 22:13:28 +0000

I love valve and steam, but only for its game management, community and patching features, but I’m more of a retail buyer and will probably will stay that way.

By: terry

terry — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:54:13 +0000

I’m astonished…nay, outraged by the lack of Epic Pinball.

Edit: (Not really.)

By: Larington

Larington — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:37:23 +0000

I self hyped Unreal 2 having read an article (Err, I think in PC Gamer) where it sounded as though you could *choose* which factions/missions you helped out/with and that would have an effect on the last section of the game.

Which sounded really awesome at the time.

Then when I played it I discover that in fact, you didn’t choose who you helped – Rather you simply got told which missions you were doing. Found that to be a rather big dissapointment.
That said, I did really enjoy the sections of the game where you ordered some grunts into positions, setup some defences and held off groups of enemies even if the selection of where to put guys tended to be a bit obvious and lacking in flair.
So it certainly had its moments, but it just doesn’t live up to the awesomeness that was Unreal. And Unreal 1 suffered from the system shock effect (IE, its thunder was stolen by bigger hit released at around the same time).

By: ohnoabear

ohnoabear — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 17:15:19 +0000

Not sure about Jazz Jackrabbit, but One Must Fall’s developer released the game for free a couple of years ago. Still one of the best single-player modes in a fighting game ever. I think you can even play it online (not sure if any of the multiplayer options will work nowadays).