Unreal II: The Awakening - PC

Anyone who has witnessed the Unreal series before will be aware that this is one hotly anticipated title. Up there with Quake and Half Life, Unreal has long been regarded as one of the top first-person shooters around. Well the sequel, The Awakening, is finally here and is set to reign supreme. At least until the arrival of Doom 3.

Set in the same universe as the 1998 original, but following a brand new story and with a new cast of characters, Unreal II casts the player 300 years into the future - to the origins of mankind's expansion into space.

Players take on the role of John Dalton - ex-Marine and Marshal of the Terran Colonial Authority - who discovers a chilling distress signal during one of his regular patrols. Upon investigating, Dalton is subsequently plunged into harsh combat with terrifying enemies, and into a conflict that will determine the fate of the galaxy. That's right folks - you are humanity's only hope for salvation.

As the game pans out, the story throws up an array of intense combat missions, which are linked in the usual way by various sections of scripted narrative. Each of the missions features a different tactical situation, such as a hostage rescue, a civilian escort and an assault on an enemy base, and each takes place across a variety of different environments. Locales such as the jungles of a tropical planet, the barren ice of a frozen moon, and the active, living tunnels of an underground world are just a few of the settings in which players fight for their lives.

As is compulsory with FPS games these days, a massive array of firepower is at the player's disposal, ranging from armour piercing handguns to weapons that tear apart the very fabric of space - pretty handy when the general mindset is 'shoot first, ask questions later'.

This is one explosive piece of gaming and deserves to be as widely received as was first anticipated. The only thing holding it back is that only PCs with some serious graphical 'oomph' are ever going to do the game any justice.
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