Unreal and Epic Game's Unreal Engine feel like the watershed moment for video games that every medium experiences where technology is serviceable enough for neigh any vision. Playing this blog and hosting games of a wide range of quality has shown me limitations in both design and approach that the technological canvas imposes on the creators. Unreal Engine is the living life blood of what makes Unreal the game it is. There's a time old discussion of game play and graphics and how the lion share of creative effort and engineering should be split between the two. However it's very important to understand that the vision for Unreal the game is made possible with the Unreal Engine.
The game features massive levels unlike that of any FPS I've played before with vistas going off for what feels like forever with no fog to mask the lack of rendering like seen on N64 games. Loading screens in Unreal ,unlike Hexen or other idTech based games, don't have to hide behind doors but let the player clearly see where they are going as the game takes a moment to load. The effects work though boggles the mind and really flexes the kind of things Video Add In Cards can accomplish. Glass and water distort in creative and translucent ways I've not seen an FPS game until now. Bullets and explosions are either rendered with polygons or have the best sprite effect use I've seen. Physics make chunks of meat float in the water, bounce the player like Quake does with explosions or to my great surprise have rope like elements bounce at times. Bloom lighting and colored lighting look much better than what was seen in id Tech 2.5 and still have a dramatic effect on me with the presentation simply not possible in even simple scenes without it. The dynamic lighting however in Unreal Engine is what gives the game atmosphere, tense game play areas that are free to play with light and darkness like I could only dream of when playing DOOM II. The lighting is incredible and completes and already incredible visual package. It seems the lighting effects more surfaces and smaller details in both color and dynamic ways than seen with id Tech 2.5.
The tech impresses and ignites my love for realtime rendering. While the games that would do that for me in real life came much later if I was who I am now in 1998 it would likely be Unreal that would be my "Crysis" moment. It wasn't long ago I was blown away by the level of interactivity, lighting and texturing available in Build Engine games like Duke Nukem 3D. However some 1.5 years later Unreal is a jump so large I lack the worlds to describe. The thing about this era is clear to me is that there was no singular "Crysis" moment. DOOM II, Hexen, Duke Nukem,Quake, Golden Eye, Turok, Quake II and now Unreal all felt like the entire expectations and reality in which games are created and played fundamentally shifted in expectation and quality.
Unreal's beauty however is not just skin deep. Unreal has left me with awe in my impressions and memories with the game. Moments that are truly timeless and will always stick with a gamer. Crawling out of a typical post Quake FPS level with awesome dynamic lighting to suddenly walk out and find yourself in a valley with a water fall that you jump down to. Its a monumental moment for the genre. Some of these moments are serene and beautiful existing to only breathe life into this living world the player is part of. Some offer to heighten the incredibly tense combat moments playing with light sources and darkness in a way that forces the player to adjust their senses. The introduction to Skarrj using dynamic lighting and a great sound track to near through the player into a panic attack as they fight for their lives. Some other moments just make your jaw drop and heart race for other reasons such as a slith being smart enough to follow you after pushing you off into the water where it sims faster and attacks stronger. Easily one of my favorite and most surprising moments in the game. These kind of enemy surprises or environmental immersion haven't really came across in an FPS game before on this of quality, interactivity but also just immersion and drawing the palyer into a believable world which may be Unreal's only ironic part when it comes to naming. This isn't to say Unreal isn't short on charming gimmicks. A health plan that the longer it grows the more health it gives you shows off the engines geometry transformations well but also gives the world a little charm. Natives smart enough to guide you to hidden treausre should you keep them alive are neat ways of just seeing how Epic Games had the freedom to really toy with these actors and elements while structuring a level. Unreal is far less rigid feeling that past FPS games because of this and has an almost more simulated feel to it in place.
While immersion and scope are clearly where Unreal stands apart, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and Epic Games largely borrows from the id design bible. Its very a "Quake Clone" as much as Dark Forces or Duke Nukem where "DOOM Clones". The game is fast paced falling in the same speed bracket as Quake II though still not as extreme as Quake I or Blood. A large host of weapons fit the typical roster with attempts by Epic Games to make Unreal's Quake like arsenal more unique unto itself. Some of the attempts are fantastic and match the similar efforts of 3D Realms in differing the arsenal of the FPS while not straying too far from the golden design standard of id Software. Guns like the Flak Cannon are wholly unique and possibly my best take on "what can we put in the shotguns place" problem. The spread and range along with using physics to bounce the shrapnel around an area and blast enemies into chunks is one of the most satisfying weapons I've played in an FPS game. The rail gun is a straight Shadow Warrior rip off and I'm fine with as its extremely useful and rewarding on Unreal's fast and highly animated targets something neither Shadow Warrior or Quake II gave you.
Aside from the stand outs though Unreal's weaponry is pretty lack luster especially coming onto the stage after Quake II or Blood. The Stinger is a poor and less satisfying machine gun that largely works on damage sponge enemies as crowd control is rarely a thing in Unreal's combat loop. Enemies tend to appear in few numbers and move around areas more than games before it. The dispersion rifle does cool things with its upgrades and changing form, again technically very impressive, however it simply stays useless much like the coolly named enforcer pistol. The Rocket launcher functions like Quake however another oddity exist the 6 barreled fire stick weapon. It shoots basically short range motors with its alt fire function showering the enemy with all 6 of them albeit much less accuracy. It's cool however largely useless as campaign maps rarely give you the room to attack highly mobile targets with blast rate weapons. All in all Unreal is not up to the standard id Software or 3D realms has set in gun play. It's fun and excited at its best times and rather mediocre the rest of the time.
Much of the gun play shortcomings in Unreal are due in part to the less than stellar level design. While these areas are beautiful and fun to explore they are met with several short comings and less than stellar qualities about them. The most egregious problem with the level design its break the expected rule of having an fast paced FPS giving the player plenty of movement options. I found myself all too often caught on geometry when fighting enemies or just lacking space to use various weapons on such a consistent level I wondering why they gave them to be to use in the first place aside from suicide. In fact because of the high mobility of enemies the rail gun became my go to weapon and was so much better suited for combat I had a hard time switching for reasons other than ammo. It's also worth noting that the single player pacing of this game is very slow with a slight Turok focus on getting around large levels, pressing buttons and soaking things. This approach helps Unreal exploit its best qualities however the choice to very slowly trickle out new additions to the arsenal of the player severely killed in interest in a way Quake II did not by albeit still too slowly feeding me more weapons and enemy types.
While the gun play loop of Unreal is fairly mediocre It's enemy design shares the same mixed bag approach. It's here I feel Epic Games thought this was more clever than how it worked out in actuality. See there's little enemy variation and they appear in about the same frequency as Quake II. It creates for a quickly stagnant combat progression as the game goes on these elements age the fastest. Again I have to mention the slow roll out of fun weapons to the player as that would have mitigated the problem. Quake II's weapon set for instance seems in part response to a similar enemy variation problem Unreal faces. It makes me wonder playing all these games together if its a design trend or lack of 3D processing capabilities because nothing has reached DOOM II levels of throwing enemies on screen and I miss mowing down a hoard. While being blow to bits and blood flying and floating is very nice in Unreal I still give the carnage and brutality edge to id Software and this comes down to a personal blood lust preference if you will not that Unreal is a lesser game because of it. Much like how Virtual Fighter or Dead or Alive of the time didn't need to be Mortal Kombat.
Immersion is a tricky and usually toxic word to use in game discord. Often immersion is used as a marketing gimmick or a hot take critique about some picky rendering or design choice. Unreal has humbled me and brought warmth back into my jaded opinion on the use of that word however. As I am about to use immersion to praise Unreal a great deal and while its highly subjective in its own right to assert immersion as being a quality of a game I can focus on the objective ways in which it accomplishes this for me. Unreal easily has the best use of music in a FPS game. The ambience and wonder it creates breathes so much life into this physically large and densely detailed digital world. It seems to contextually play tracks based on encounters and locations and really gives this alien world exploration impression that is haunted and beautiful while full of life and wonder. Luckily Epic Games seemed to be keen on their prowess here and built large parts of the level deigns and game play loop around simplistic puzzle solving that forces the player to for a brief moment soak it all in while still being challenged. Turok did this well mechanically and maybe even a littler better but seeing it all together in Unreal Engine is a step far above what was possible on N64 in mid '97.Breaking character here I will say this is an obvious major inspiration for Halo Combat Evolved and what would be the crashing onto Halo and the ambience of that game while on the ring, including a dynamic sound track that wouldn't be for 3 more years though.
Unreal has this massive connected world and it's the closest I think a FPS game has came to a truly load free open world. Sure there are loading screens but where they are placed and how far apart the player must see them is truly wild to see especially coming off of Quake II which handled that much worse in id Tech 2.5 despite going for the now trendy Hexen II take on connecting shooter levels. We are seeing the industry at this point have a keen move away from the more arcade mentality that DOOM II set out and a more cohesive set and set of actions akin to Gold Eye or RavenSoft's games. Epic Games had a big challenge that Raven, Iguana and others had also encountered, that was how to make these massive labyrinths intuitive and navigable. Quake I did this likely the best one by having much smaller levels, an easy out, but adopting a more roller coaster mentality where the player literally just had to keep walking into trouble to find his way out. Quake II and Hexen II used a lot of text updating the player with a small focus on visual clues. Visual Clues to guide the player in the right way in a massive area with multiple ways by sometimes changing the environment from the way it looked on a previous pass through or having interesting lightnings and objects or more directly offering a carrot to the player in the form of ammo or health. These games all clumsy struggled with this problem and while I found Quake II the most intuitive its interesting to see how Unreal does what I feel a worse job overall while doing many of the individual elements better. Unreal easily grabs the players attention with visual ques much better, things are just more interesting to look at the the art direction of the game is a large step up over what id Software last put out, Epic is able to do this with much larger scenes with more complex environments to allow objects to exist purely to be interesting to look at. The design and combat carrot mechanic work really well. Much better than Blood and with far less pace breaking and disorienting platforming Turok gave us. However again it's Epic Games lacking level design that allows areas to easily get extremely confusing, switches and goals not always easy to track and some down right hard to do so. It's more a pain akin to Hexen II though the pace and style of that game fit a slower less intuitive design and in some ways would could argue RavenSoft wanted that challenge to exist. No such clever trade offs or intentions are found in Unreal.
Going into Unreal has been such a pleasure. Its a very well made game that always steps out on its best foot first. Immersion, world building, a few wacky guns and some stellar enemy engagement. All these strong characteristics earn it, its spot among the greats. In 1998 this game was astounding and I'd say its still awe inspiring even to this day blog or not. I found the gunplay and game play while having great high moments largely unsatisfying compared to 3D Realms or Id Software as well as the all too frequent mediocre combat areas and level design. Epic Game's Unreal however still creates plenty of mind blowing magical gaming moments both for the industry and the genre. Gaming memories that last a life time because they impressed, sparked joy, or wow'ed you like DOOM did back in the day. Its the most immersive and beautiful FPS game to date ('98). The bright colorful alien world mixed with grimy temples and broken off world tech created a much needed fresh top notch experience for the genre. Unreal astounds and drops jaws but it also creates a magic world to be a part of and I'm filled with memories and love of it. Move over id Software, as of this day Epic Games had earned the right to sit beside you.
No comments:
Post a Comment