Unreal (1998)

I'm generally not enjoying it too much - lots of bland Quake 2-y spaceship corridors, and the shooting/movement is pretty floaty and unsatisfying.

It does have some really nice moments, though, like when you exit your crashed prison ship and emerge onto this expansive alien planet, with turquoise waterfalls and little critters running about the place, then you look up and flying reptiles circling lazily above you and planets hanging in the sky, while the wondrous synth-y score comes in. It feels like it's drawing on similar influences as No Man's Sky. It's definitely the first natural outdoor environment I've seen that is easy on the eyes.

The NPCs are cool as well. They're kind of primitive slaves; if you shoot them they start worshipping you and running away from you, but if you just walk up to them, they beckon you to follow and lead you to hidden weapon closets which they then open for you. It's quite affecting when one of them heads off to help you then gets caught by their Skarj master and is eviscerated.

I'm in a temple section at the moment, which has some light puzzles - shoot the chains to free the raft, push the lever to fill the pool etc - and is quite relaxing, but I've just got stuck! So I'll check out a playthrough and then come back to this one in a few days, I think.

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I haven't got too far yet, but so far it's "alien pistol that shoots green bullets" or "alien chain-gun that shoots blue bullets". Also, the Skarj AI is quite good at navigating, but all the flipping and rolling and stuff just mean that I stand there waiting for it to finish the gymnastics and run straight at me so I can pelt it with bullets. Plus they generally show up in corridors so I don't have much chance for tactical manoeuvring. It's all showy surface details, which seems to be a microcosm of the game itself. I prefer it to Quake II already, though, and hopefully I'll find more to like as it goes on.

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I played a little further. The Tomb Raider-lite temple section got a bit wearing with all the underwater mazey bits, and I just got stuck again at a bit where the solution (I found out later) is to push one of a dozen wall decorations that usually aren't buttons. Ugh. It seems there's a village section coming up so I'll push on to that and see how it goes, but I feel like I might be giving up on this relatively early as well.

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 I just played through that whole spaceship bit where you're trekking around pushing buttons for hours; it's like Dark Forces except with insanely tough enemies constantly being thrown at you. I cannot bear any more of this game, I'm afraid, it's a huge slog.

It makes me appreciate Half-Life all the more seeing earlier or contemporary games do similar stuff but just not as entertaining or satisfying.

Rating: Red