It's called Unreal...Because it is....

[Beans00]

^Please play that song while reading this thread, or while posting

So back in the late 90s/early 00s my favorite single player fps was.....

^the box I had as a kid

I remember being absolutely blown away by the atmosphere and graphics of the time. One of the first games to really make my jaw drop.

So I was talking to Tacgnol, and he mentioned aside from a few minutes on a demo he had never gotten into Unreal. Just one of those games that missed him. So I got unreal gold, gog version, downloaded whatever. Got it working after 20 minutes, rebound controls to something not terrible. Then Tacgnol and a few other pals got in voice chat and I showed them Unreal.

I played for 2 hours and made it to Terraniux(almost a 3rd through the game). Got lost and called it a day. What stuck out to me was how playable unreal was today.

Great enemies and great ai. Probably the best ai in any shooter of the 90s/early 00s. The encounter design is definitely limited by the engine and processing limits of the day
Great level design.. Wasn't a fan of the water temple and ceremonial chambers although I got through them when muscle memory
Amazing atmosphere and music, art direction
Solid weapons... Except the 8ball, I always hated that thing lol

11/10, will definitely finish in the future.

Unfortunately we never got a real sequel.
Return to napali sucks(expansion pack), I got it way later with the unreal anthology. Never beat it
Unreal 2 is absolutely dogwater bad.
The UT games were awesome, at least 99-03-04. I never played UT3. Multiplayer only though(or bot matches).


The box says RIP Quake 2. Which is absolutely right, this game shits all over Quake 2.


Share your memories of Unreal, whether you loved it or hated it. Lets get... Unreal.


^Please play that music before you go to sleep tonight

 

[dbx]

Played the shit out of it.
Tinkered a lot with the unreal editor. Like really a lot.
So yeah, one of my favorite games of all time.

 

[Desman]

Unreal and UT99 are awesome, i just fucking love the music and the engine, same shit than Deus Ex, Alexander Brandon, Michiel van den Boss i love you !

Also all the cool remixes

 

[randir14]

I replay it every couple of years, it's like EverQuest 1 in still having some "magical" quality to me. Someone's working on a remaster mod called Unreal Redux that looks really good.

 

[tritosine2k]

Unreal2 mp / XMP was way better than anything you got down the line. Including UT, xbawks, steamturds etc.
Maybe if Q Enemy Territory was like XMP , Quake would be still a thing. But anyway.

 

[udm]

Alright you guys convinced me to replay Unreal

 

[lightbane]

Awesome game back then. It made me hopeful for the future... Then 2010s began.

 

[NecroLord]

One of the first and best examples of an atmospheric shooter.
Unreal is a proven and prestigious classic.
The soundtrack is also one of the best ones in a video game.

 

[Gostak]

[...]
Unfortunately we never got a real sequel.
Return to napali sucks(expansion pack), I got it way later with the unreal anthology. Never beat it
Unreal 2 is absolutely dogwater bad.
The UT games were awesome, at least 99-03-04. I never played UT3. Multiplayer only though(or bot matches).
[...]

I also thought that Return to Na Pali was more of a cash-grab.
The maps at least were pretty off-putting (maybe because I got it quite late anyway).
The spinner enemies were about its only plus.

But custom fan content more than made up for it.
https://www.unrealsp.org/articles/reviews
Who even has played half of it all?

Lemme try to remember which I checked

Operation Na Pali (some cool stuff)
Nali Chronicles (Spellcasting yay!)
Spatial Fear (not finished, enemies were kinda meh and hence gameplay)
Déjà Vu - Gryphon Revisited (maybe?)
Legacy (cool custom weapons Xena disc and a flamethrower jetpack e.g.)
The Tower of Shrakith'a (some of it at least, I think)
ShamuQuest: Part II (chicoverde fan)
Illhaven Saga (little of it for sure)
Shamu Quest: Part I
The Elder (IIRC)
Thirteen Mutants
Ortican
Nak'halinra Peak
Na Pali Haven: Redux (likely?
err, I'll stop here)

Yes, the music and bot matches ... good stuff.
Stepping out of the Vortex Rikers in a time when 3D accelerated graphics were just taking off.
The lead up to the first Skaarj fight ...

And it paved the way to it's real expansion botpack/ UT. <3

 

[NecroLord]

Return to Na Pali was an alright expansion.
Some great maps and action sequences there, but also some stinkers.

 

[Gostak]

Played the shit out of it.
Tinkered a lot with the unreal editor. Like really a lot.
So yeah, one of my favorite games of all time.

Care to make a map like described here ( https://ut99.org/viewtopic.php?p=131639#p131639 ) and we find someone with a decent enough connection to host us a game
of it with Codexers doing Avalon/ The Resistance for real in UT? :D

I can dream at least ...

Also fun
SmartStockBots (because they get around faster dodging a lot like humans) with Frag*Ball
or the SuperSmashBrothers like Bounce! (where the SmartStockBots perform better because of their good use of air control) Check out this map with it (would be better with humans, bots perform better on other maps):
DM-Summit_V2_Ecliptic

 

[Lemming42]

Unreal still feels futuristic somehow. Probably the music combined with the memory of how impressive the graphics were at the time. It makes me think of that era in the late 90s when it seemed like technological and social progress would just go on forever and the 21st century was going to become some kind of Star Trek utopia. UT99 has the same feeling but multiplied a thousand times.

Can't remember much of Return to Na Pali but I was always annoyed that it messed with the ending of the original game. The game - and really, the whole series, not counting UT - should have just ended with the prisoner stuck in space in that Skaarj escape pod, waiting for either the Skaarj to come and kill her or Earth forces to find and re-imprison her.

 

[NecroLord]

Unreal still feels futuristic somehow. Probably the music combined with the memory of how impressive the graphics were at the time. It makes me think of that era in the late 90s when it seemed like technological and social progress would just go on forever and the 21st century was going to become some kind of Star Trek utopia. UT99 has the same feeling but multiplied a thousand times.

Can't remember much of Return to Na Pali but I was always annoyed that it messed with the ending of the original game. The game - and really, the whole series, not counting UT - should have just ended with the prisoner stuck in space in that Skaarj escape pod, waiting for either the Skaarj to come and kill her or Earth to find and re-imprison her.

And those skyboxes man...
With the two suns, the stars and the clouds floating.
It was truly a majestic game.

 

[Old Hans]

It makes me think of that era in the late 90s when it seemed like technological and social progress would just go on forever and the 21st century

seriously the difference from 1990-1999 is insane.

 

[:Flash:]

It makes me think of that era in the late 90s when it seemed like technological and social progress would just go on forever and the 21st century

seriously the difference from 1990-1999 is insane.

Think about it, the difference between Wolfenstein 3D and Unreal was six years, same as 2018 til now.

 

[JarlFrank]

Yeah, games would get better every year. Better graphics, bigger maps, more complex features, smoother controls...

And now you can't even tell the difference between a current year game and a ten year old one, they look and play the same.
No wait, not quite correct... actually the current year one is more likely to be garbage than the ten year old one.

 

[onemananadhisdroid]

Better than Half Life for sure. And a very fun game in its own right. I remember playing it in 512x384 pixels for an extra FPS boost with a Pentium 166MMX + Miro Hiscore 3D (6MB 3dfx Voodoo 1).

But "the future of gaming" in 1998 was Thief. It made 3D games that year look archaic.

That is, until it wasn't of course.

 

[Alienman]

Played Unreal at a friend's house. I have to say, I really liked the campaign, but remained a Quake player for whatever reason. Should probably give it a go again. By the way, have any of you read the books? Curious if they are any good/fun.

 

[Eirinjas]

Unreal starts strong and becomes wearisome in the last 1/3 of the game. It was definitely the best looking game of its time, but I think Quake II's campaign is better. At least, it held my attention all the way through. Too bad Return to Na Pali is garbage and Unreal II a dumpster fire. Unreal Tournament is insanely fun though. I played the fuck out of it on both PC and Dreamcast.

 

[AlwaysBrotoMen]

Unreal 99 should always be compared to Quake 3. UT99 > Quake 3

 

[NecroLord]

Unreal starts strong and becomes wearisome in the last 1/3 of the game. It was definitely the best looking game of its time, but I think Quake II's campaign is better. At least, it held my attention all the way through. Too bad Return to Na Pali is garbage and Unreal II a dumpster fire. Unreal Tournament is insanely fun though. I played the fuck out of it on both PC and Dreamcast.

It has great maps like Chizra Temple, Temple of Vandora, The Sunspire, Gateway to Na Pali, Bluff Eversmoking, Nali Castle.
After Nali Castle, you get to the Skaarj Mothership, which is definitely not as fun to play as the outdoor areas.
Unreal was all about those massive outdoor areas.

 

[Nutmeg]

Unreal came the closest to providing the FPS as a fast-paced dungeon crawler experience out of all the FPS I've played in terms of its map design, the pace being my main complaint about actual dungeon crawlers. Beautiful game. Soundtrack as good as its maps.

 

[index.php]

Has anyone played the restored second expansion, Steele Dawn? How is it?

https://www.moddb.com/mods/steele-dawn-community-edition

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

One of those classic games which phenomenon I never fully understood. It looked absolutely amazing and that main menu castle flyby was enough to make you whoooah! back in the day. But pretty much no one had a PC to actually fully utilize it. This, coupled with the honestly pretty meh action (particularly the arsenal was rather disappointing) made me think of it as a bit of a glorified tech demo. I ain't gonna die on that hill though and I understand why it left a huge impression on many people.

 

[Konjad]

One of those classic games which phenomenon I never fully understood. It looked absolutely amazing and that main menu castle flyby was enough to make you whoooah! back in the day. But pretty much no one had a PC to actually fully utilize it. This, coupled with the honestly pretty meh action (particularly the arsenal was rather disappointing) made me think of it as a bit of a glorified tech demo. I ain't gonna die on that hill though and I understand why it left a huge impression on many people.

Same here. It was an alright shooter with amazing atmosphere and graphics, but that's about it for me. I was just as blown away with Far Cry years later (mostly for open world). Neither of these games had particularly great gameplay though and I never come back to them.