My most memorable, and terrifying moment was the first encounter against Skaarj. You go into a tunnel to collect something at the end of it, lights shut off one by one once you get the item. Pure darkness, can't see shit, you hear Skaarj growl, hear his blades. All of the sudden strobing backup lights come on, and Skaarj is IN YOUR FACE. It's been close to 20 years since I played it, still remember.
+LibertyChive I remember that moment: As the lights turned off, i threw a flare in the middle of the corridor. And then I stood in a small circle of light, surrounded by nothing but darkness. No music, no ambient sounds. After a while I saw a figure running towards me, with a growl echoing through the depths of a mine and sending shivers down my spine. With my hands shaking I started to shoot, missing every third shot. I could see the monster only for a brief moment, everytime i fired my gun. In the end, as the lights came back, i just stood there, breathing heavily, next to the monster's corpse.
+LibertyChive Fuck yeah that scene is epic. My brother had just bought a sorround speaker set and excitedly told me to come to his room. There he fired up unreal and showed me and my friend this section. I shat my pants
No mentioned of the atmosphere of this game? The level design and the music has like the strongest feel ever in a game. An unforgettable lonely gloomy experience.
4 year late reply, but yes, totally. I remember the awesomeness of fighting to the top of the Sunspire to take the weird wooden elevator and then getting out of it in the next level in the clouds of Na Pali!
@@Kor1134 They're both very different. While DOOM's soundtrack is absolutely amazing in its own right, the mystique of Unreal's soundtrack is still unmatched IMO.
The game was even better then the review portrays it. The graphics, scale, level variety and atmosphere is completely unmatched by any game of this period. And this is SP alone, add basically perfect MP with bots included, and you have a masterpiece.
First time you step out of the Vortex Rikers onto the planet....that soundtrack. No such thing as outdoors in late 90's gaming before this. Still there in my top 10 moments in video games.
No. It's not even that. Quake had outdoor environments in 96. Terminator Future Shock the same year. What Unreal did was bring the presentation of exteriors to a whole new level, but it wasn't the *first*.
Yeah dude totally agree. The moment i remember is making your way through the Dark Arena using the flares for a light source and then fighting the Titan!
Your reviews are so good I am downloading a whole bunch of them in the highest quality available and leaving them somewhere safe for my niece (she loves watching me play on the PC) to watch when she becomes older.
@@Gggmanlives Ok I must say @GmanLives .... Unreal also set the grounds for this shit where everything is dark and you can't see a fuck ... that's the only thing why I remember a Unreal 1998........ before that... the games had darkness but you could see perfectly...... like in the movies from the 70's or 80's where it is a completely dark room ... but the viewer sees perfectly what's going on....... Now... you have to imagine what is happening.... and also in the games....... yeah .. yeah .. yeah .. is more realistic. .. blah... blah... blah ...... .. but it sucks ....
This was the first game that I ever saw running on a graphics card: my mind was fucking blown back then... I remember being so amazed, and I still have fond memories of seeing it at my friends house!
Damn. You hit the nail on the head. I've been playing Unreal since I was 7, still my favorite game of all time. I even got a "Prisoner 849" prison stamp tattoo. Great review!
Just wanted to add that you are not the only survivor, plus your aim is leave this planet, not to kill the skaarj queen. You can dig into the history of Na Pali and in case you start to sympathize with the oppressed natives you may want to kill the queen of course, but the story starts with you wanting to find means to leave this planet. You did not mention the weapon alt fires which are awesome. The rocket launcher even has a time triggered lock on, u can upgrade the first weapon several times and the minigun projectiles don't have traveling time. The fact I missed the most is that the flak cannon "the shotgun of the game" fires hot pieces of metal:) I believe it is also glowing hot and cools down with time (at least from UT: Why the Flak Cannon is the greatest gun in PC gaming), and metal pieces recoil individually from walls, what is pretty nice since u can easily kill urself with that:D btw big up for this review! one of the best games ever, especially the music, atmosphere and level design!
'Older gamers will see something like a large pool of water and instantly know that there's got to be a tunnel under there, or at least some health or ammo tucked away. Younger gamers aren't used to that kind of level design, and will probably be a little bit stumped.' Way to make me feel old, Gggmanlives :(
I was 24 when this came out in '98 I remember it being seriously the greatest back then along with q2 . I remember just letting the Castle flyby just replay over and over.. my voodoo2 card could play it at 800x600 pretty smoothly :) . Anyway for some reason I never beat it and just recently decided to play it again.. on my 4k tv nice colorful and shiny but yeah.. a little simple . seems way easier .. I'm just flying through it now , hopefully I can have the patience at 41. Great review BTW.
I was 16 and had a Voodoo 1 with a Pentim II MMX, 300 mhz. It barely ran at 640x480... graphics accellerators were a big deal at the time. I did the same with the castle intro, it's a matter of style more than graphics in this case. This game has elegance and style, atmosphere.
Unreal was an amazing game, and ought to be held in the same regard as Quake or Doom. It's kind of a shame that its legacy was kind of overshadowed by Unreal Tournament, the Unreal engine itself, other games like Half-Life, and the fact that a true sequel was never made (I wouldn't call Unreal II a "true" sequel, if you catch my drift).
This game made me understand and fall in love with architecture: the beauty of the temples encountered in the Na Pali world are unforgettable. The ambiance of Unreal was out of this world. Definitely my favorite.
I wish they'd make a game like this now. a first person shooter where they just throw you in huge levels and let you figure it out. Unreal was a pretty fantastic game and watching this review makes me want to play it again.
Jimmy of the Whovians here - I love this game. Been playing it since 2001. I play it using Unreal Tournament, so I can use voice packs, skins, and weapons made for UT. Also, their are tons of maps and levels you can download for free out there on the internet.
+Carol Ann Swan (Lady Swan) You are on a prison ship that crashes for no apparent reason, you wake up in your cell with dead prisoners all around the cell area. Once you get out of the ship you find yourself trapped on an alien planet filled with (mostly) hostile creatures of all sorts (do not shoot the bunny's or the cows, they are are harmless). You have to journey through level after level looking for a way off the planet. It's older and the graphics are dated, but UNREAL is still one of the best adventures you can experience in gaming. A true classic.
I should bring up the fact that there are 2 dedicated fan groups that still play and mod unreal. Oldunreal and Unrealsp. Oldunreal even made a huge unofficial update to Unreal that provides all kinds of new affects and bug fixes, and even brings over content from the beta.
After watching this I went back to play it again and realized that this is wrong actually. The 'main character' is whoever you have selected as your mesh in player select when you start a new game. A girl just happens to be selected by default but you can change it before starting a new game. Heck, you can play as a Skaarj if you want.
I remember activating an invisibility item in one stage, just so I could get closer to a group of enemies that were all really closed to each other, just to see what they were doing. THEY WERE SHOOTING DICE. Seriously, this game is amazing.
just recently started playing this game for the first time, with the only other shooters under my belt being Halo 1, 2, reach, and 4, i've dabbled a bit in other shooters but those were the only ones i finished and i feel so compelled to finish this one, i feel like it captures the action style of the original halo, with the deep world exploring of something like say metroid prime, minecraft, terraria, or myst. and considering only one of those mentioned games came before this, it's really impressive how good this game is.
Funny how that's shorter then D00M 3 because that game was 12-18 hours. However, 8-12 hours is a great length compared to the average 5-7 in games today
By far the best "pure" FPS game I have ever played. Incredible level design, an amazing soundtrack, fantastic weapons, a challenging AI, and finally really intriguing story. What else would you like from the game? But I would like to add two points to the review. First, the story, while minimal, is actually great and keeps you interested. It is definitely deeper than your usual story in FPS games. Second, it really feels like you are trying to escape from the planet. You get the feeling that you are traveling across the large chunk of planet in order to find your way out simply because you have those transition levels, which I really enjoyed. And in the meantime, as you travel across the planet, you start reading about the messiah that was supposed to come from the sky and save Nali. What a game!
i was 16 when i first played this game...the lighting was amazing on my 3dfx Voodoo 2 graphics card. I just looked it up...8MB of memory!! I now own a 980 GTX with 4GB!! Can't believe how far we've come...
I haven't played Unreal yet but It's on my list. I find though that a lot of people tend to not talk about this game. I think when people think of Unreal they think of Unreal Tournament.
Unreal held the 1st place in FPS games (even ahead of Quake 2, which came out in the same time) until Half Life came out. So saying it was not great is just wrong.
I don't know what it is. Quake's gameplay just feels so much better. While Unreal has amazing environments and soundtrack, the game and gunplay feels wonky and non responsive to me. And I played both game a few days ago.
Maybe its just me because I was so young when this came out, but I'm so shocked this game doesn't get brought up more. Maybe it does and I just miss out on it, but I had to dig up info before I discovered it and then I still never hear it actively discussed with the exception of this video being made. Sure I understand its tournament games took the spotlight but its ridiculous how much this gets overshadowed as a result. I'd kind of compare it to how some don't even acknowledged warcraft 3 because WOW overshadows it so much. This game is just incredible though. The music, AI, variety, and level design all add up to something pretty awesome. The only problem I have with it is sometimes the AI is a little too good... sure its awesome overall but sometimes you just have one of those days or moments where you just want to move on and the 14th time you bump into bullet sponge grunt with intelligent dodging and shield powers (which in another game could be tweaked to pass off as a boss) gets tiring. Apart from that weird circumstance where sometimes the AI overstays its welcome with the person playing, I'd say this game is a hidden classic that should be passed on to newer players interested in good FPS gaming.
I played all the Unreal Tournament games, but this one i hadn't got the chance. But, On the last summer sale of Steam I bought the Unreal Complete pack and boy, what I was missing... Now played and completed, Unreal Gold had been a wonderfull experiencie to me. A Huge adventure with a great setting, weapons and enemies that even today still worth playing. Great Review as always.
The combined playthrough will make a perfect literature stuff, with all the ambience and elements put on paper... reminding us of each and every step of extreme anticipation...
I still remember following the adventures of Kira as you play the game. After reading all her conflicts and struggles to stay alive, when you finally see her it really pulls some emotion.
I remember when this game came out, I never played it at the time. I received a VHS tape with gameplay recorded of it. I watched it countless nights to go to sleep to.
The graphics on this game when it first game out were absolutely incredible! Brings back so many happy memories - my best mate got it for Christmas one year. One of my all time favourites 👍
@Gggmanlives I found your channel by accident and it's good to see that there is someone who appreciates old shooters such as Doom, Unreal, Quake, Blood etc. Subscribed and hoiping for more reviews. By the way have you considered doing playthroughs of old school FPS games? Or do you feel that it's just not your thing?
Next review, Unreal Tournament :D. Probably one of the best multiplayer FPS ever! I still play it ones in a while, even after all these years of playing these damn games :P. BTW, you've just received a new subscriber mister! Awesome reviews :).
younger gamers would find the level design complex because they are used to aim assisted linear bullshit... I'm not even going to mention those franchises here but back then we used to fucking dive in the game discover everything by ourselves now days even though games are linear they still go to youtube and watch a playthrough cause they get stuck... gamers now days are so spoiled
+kodemasterxWhilst technically a 'new generation gamer' by my age, I do agree that everything's way too dumbed down nowadays... What happened to real games...?
Aryzen Inniriea it's simple: the more people who can play the game the better. It's all about money now and not so much innovation. These used to be what we now call Indie games. Now that gaming is a multi-billion dollar a year industry, companies care more about maximizing sales instead of making complex and great games. Don't get me wrong, there are still companies out there that are big and still make great games. But it still all comes down to the dead US presidents(more or less) on dyed cotton.
It's taken me a month and this game was literally my childhood, being the game i couldn't get to sleep because of as i was so excited to get up at 5 in the morning to play this awesome game.
One of the best games ever released for pc. Graphics were a blast on my Voodoo1 :-) The part where the light shut off in the tunnel was so creepy... I was 17 back in 1998 and I was pretty scared :D The Unreal Editor was a nice add-on too :-)
Great review on a great classic game! Several great aspects to this game you did not mention in this video one of which is the Unreal Editor feature. If you can figure it out it is possible to make your own custom levels. Also with the cheat enabled you can be invisible and in ghost mode create more challenging missions for another player or yourself with added enemies ammo and gear.
I've always wondered what this game was like. I bought it with my first job's paycheck. I think full retail $50. I didn't know as a kid that I would need a graphics card, and was crushed when I played it on my dad's old PC at 3 frames per second. I could only imagine how it would have really played then, with the epic music and my imagination to go by :P
I played this and it just blew my mind, since many games now are starting to go back to the past it'd be great if they took a page from the original Unreal and us a similare game play style.
Note: you can play the entire campaign on co-op, by 1. selecting multiplayer 2. change mode to co-op 3. select the first level of the campaign, it's called "Vortex Rikers: Vortex2" it will work exactly like the singleplayer campaign, by finishing a level the next level will start.
I love this game. One of the milestones in PC gaming. The unreal engine was, well, unreal back in the day. But as much as I love the game there was always something about it that felt cold and synthetic. Some maps were awesome but sometimes the game feels more like a tech demo or a promotional game for the unreal engine. It might be the somewhat generic action techno soundtrack on some levels or the fact that there's no speech in the game. Instead we are shown an lcd screen with green text on it when we need to be notified of something. It was a translator, nice twist but it doesn't go far. Some maps felt huge and desolate and sometimes that added to the mood greatly but sometimes the world didn't feel real. Anyway, still loving this masterpiece, cheers!
Such puzzles in this game. So many memorable moments. Seeing the first skaarj, fighting the first skaarj, getting the flak cannon, the sunspire, the castle, and the girl with four breasts...such a great game.
The 'Crysis' of its time, or should we had called Crysis, the 'Unreal' of its time. I remember seeing the recommended settings for Unreal. Pentium 2 450Mhz, 64Mb RAM, Voodoo 2 graphics card, 400mb HDD for full install. It seemed so unreachable back then, and so way more advanced than what the N64 could handle. Great times.
***** It depends. Unreal 1 really felt like an epic adventure back then. It really did. Q2, minute-to-minute gameplay was better of course, but the scale and variety of locations/settings of U1 is without analog.
Man I loved this game, good to see someone approaching it from a positive perspective. The way the levels are arranged makes them feel almost non-linear: they aren't but often I felt like I was just exploring rather than going down the obvious proscribed path. Much like Half-Life the way the levels link up to each other makes it feel like an epic journey rather than just a series of levels. Would be interested to see what you thought of the sequel.
Also geat at this game is the story, which you must often read in books, which you are often hidden. Great review. I hope you make a Unreal 2 review ;)
Got this game in 2001 - and still play it (although I play it in Unreal Tournament, so I can use UT weapons, voice packs, and models). You can still, for free, download more levels for this game and maps for the game.
because of this vid i bought the game downloaded the patch and played it at 1440p. What a pleasure this game was the ending in the space ship was great
+maxsettings what patch did you use, was it 227i? I tried that patch but my antivirus software detects a serious Trojan, I'm annoyed because I want to really enjoy U Gold, because I heard the older 226 patch is full of bugs and glitches
+Spank Rocket itwas 227 i think there is 2 versions not sure witch one. but i got it from the old unreal website didnt have any problems with it. There is a steam guide i found to install the patch.www.oldunreal.com/textures.html
Personally I feel I didn't approach it properly, I found the game way too easy at first so I flipped it up to hard and got my ass handed to me by those straffing assholes, they were way too quick for most of your weapons so it kind of killed some of the experience. But I still very much enjoyed this game and I am very happy you covered it, Great Review as always!
I remember my dad sitting me down when I was 8 and putting this game, warcraft 3, and quake on the family computer. I played those games for hours a day before finding half life on steam years later. Those were the days of good gaming. 1990s-early 2000s were the best games. Now it’s just who can make the game look more like real life. (Ik not all games are like that today. Red dead 2 is not like that.)
I think it's a great game. Good weapon design, nice level design, impressive graphics for the time, and it's a long game! Enemies were a little bulleet spongy, though.
Though Unreal may seem like a quaint, nostalgic game to play nowadays, it was an absolute nightmare to get running stable when it was first released. It took numerous game patches and video driver updates to keep it from constantly crashing to the command line with bizarre, undocumented errors. The code finally reached a level of stability that made the game playable, but it was quite the rocky road getting there. Doom, Quake, Quake 2 and even LithTech engines were Rocks of Gibraltar compared to the code mess Epic originally released.
The only one FPS from the 1990's that can compete with Half-Life. Even though it plays pretty much like some kind of more sophisticated Quake, the soundtrack and design are off the charts!
I never knew there was an unreal single player game. I remember there was some second one, but never learned of a first. I certainly remember unreal tournament, of course.
The Flak cannon has saved me many times as it doubles as a shotgun as well as a grenade launcher. And I can't switch weapons in the middle of a fight. The simple geometry scales up well with anti-aliasing on modern systems and looks sharp unlike later games full of semitransparent flat textures that look chunky and digital up close, or not so close depending on the age.
I do remember being stumped by this game when I was a kid. Also I didn't use mice yet due to being used to the "2.5D" games like Doom so by this time playing shooters felt more cumbersome to me lol. Then after I played Half-Life I pretty much stopped playing FPS games for a while. Maybe I'll look for this old CD and give it another shot.
Flak Cannon is definitely one the best weapons in the game. In my opinion THE best weapon for dealing with the quick Skaarj who dodge the slower weapons.
My problem with the game is.. well that I didn't really saw it's value as a kid. The world was so "unreal" and I felt like a stranger in a world I don't belong to. I guess this is what they wanted with the atmosphere to achieve, but it didn't clicked for me so I never finished the campaign. But it was the first game in my life that made me playing multiplayer. So I credit it for that. Made an experience I'd never forget.
I think this game still looks really good nowadays. The graphics themselves don't, but the scope of the game's levels, lighting effects, and just overall vibrancy are things I wish would be seen in today's shooters.
I almost can't believe that Unreal came out at the same time as Quake 2. I respect Quake 2 but I loved playing Unreal. At the time it blew me away with its amazing graphics and huge levels. I felt I was on an adventure on an alien world. Quake 2's graphics and level design seemed very dated when I first saw Unreal and I still feel that way.
