QUAKE II + HALF-LIFE + HALO: CE = Unreal. This game is great! You wake up aboard a prison ship that has crashed on an alien planet, you must survive and make it off the planet. This game encourages exploration, with plenty of secrets and weapons to find. You can also try to save the native aliens on the planet who will sometimes give you extra supplies (they are being enslaved by the aliens trying to kill you). I really enjoyed this game and would recommend it to anyone who wants to take their time and explore an alien planet while shooting some aliens along the way.
10/10
My 1998 Game of the Year!

Prepare yourself for one of the greatest FPS games of all time, alongside Doom and Duke Nukem 3D.

Unreal puts you in the shoes of Prisoner 849, an otherwise nameless character with no dialogue or emotion, who was a prisoner on the prison ship Vortex Rikers that crash landed on the planet Na Pali.

You emerge from the crashed ship and take a gander at the vivid detail of the amazing landscape around you. Fight your way through tough enemies that can appear from anywhere just to find out what happened to the rest of the crew and what your options for survival are. As you progress through the world you learn more about what happened to everyone and how far they made it, what happened to the planet natives, and who the alien invaders are and what they want. Gather new weapons and discover the right tool for the job as you face new and bigger enemies. You'll quickly find out that some weapons have the ability to completely explode an enemy, sending body parts flying and bouncing with a trail of blood, while others can sever limbs with the same outcome.

When you finish the game and discover your final outcome you have the pleasure of going back and playing again on harder difficulties. Harder difficulties not only make the enemies stronger and your weapons weaker, the enemies are faster, come in greater numbers, and (my favorite) they become SMARTER. Smarter, meaning they hide, ambush, fake their deaths, and mislead you down the wrong path.

The multiplayer aspect is much appreciated. Play online (if the servers are still running) or go against the computer in a botmatch and make the match you want to play, with maps inspired by levels from the main story.

Built back in 1998 on the brand-new Unreal Engine the game takes your breath away with amazing detail and a breath-taking score to compliment the variety of environments throughout the game. Customize your controls with action-mapping and fine-tuning sensitivity, while also changing the HUD to need your desired style.

The only downside to this game is the lack of detail and textures when you get up close to an object or environment wall. According to an interview with developers, this was the result of a time and budget constraint. Just imagine what they could have accomplished without those constraints and how different our games would be today. Many games and development companies use a variant of the original Unreal Engine, such as Battlefield, Borderlands, Life is Strange, Duke Nukem Forever, BioShock, Dirty Bomb, and many, many, many more.

I originally got this game not long after it came out and was blown away by everything and immediately fell in love with it. I would highly recommend this for anyone that is up for a challenge and appreciates old, revolutionary games that changed the way we game today.

Unreal is certainly one of the most atmospheric sci-fi-shooters. It is understandable, because with such large-scale locations, such expressive music and such attention to detail environment differently and can not be! Cleverly chosen sounds and colors give each location right mood, consistent with the rest of its components - the nature and pace of her events, music. As a result, at each location in the game has its own unique atmosphere.
And throughout the game (and it is long!) Does not leave a feeling of complete loneliness, really feel like the only survivor, completely lost in this strange world, where the harsh high technology once met with a peaceful "stone-wood" way of life .. . and at the very end of the game remains the hero even more alone in a tiny capsule, in the void of space, and perhaps forever ... Chill from it all. Note the original design more weapons, dynamic battles (in some places just a mad pace, a real meat grinder) and imagine what it turns out masterpiece.

What I liked about the game

• Very impressive level design. Na Pali is a beautiful place to explore, especially were there is lots of vegetation and waterfalls. There are levels were you can explore space ships, native villages and ancient temples. The game still looks good today.
• Interesting story.
• Awesome soundtrack, especially at the beginning.
• Plenty of secrets to be found, some are hidden in quite clever places.
• A great selection of weapons. My favourite weapons were the Stinger and the ASMO.
• As you shoot your way through the levels you will come across things like PDA's, Diary's and over things, you will able to find out what a particular person was doing before they died or find out some useful information.
• Intelligent A.I. Some of the enemies are hard to kill because of there agility.
• The expansion pack has new weapons and enemies.

What I disliked or was disappointed with

• I wish the player had a permanent flashlight, one in which recharges, instead of having to keep finding flares and flashlights throughout the game. I had to fire my gun to light up some areas in the game.
• I didn't find the power ups very useful. I very rarely used them.
• The game can be confusing sometimes. I got stuck a couple of times not knowing were to go or what to do.


Conclusion

I really enjoyed Unreal, like I said very impressive level design. It's a beautiful world to explore. If you like games like quake 2 and half-life I highly recommend you buy this. 81/100

Son, you stepped on the grounds of one the best games ever made in this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ universe.
Sit back. get the visa card, click the add to cart button and checkout.
Grab a cola and play Unreal.
Music that is crafted very carefully, with the beyond golden hands of Alexander Brandon, with the unique lightning effects that you rarely see now in games (Exept an exeption for Cube and Cube 2:Sauerbraten, those are really great), epic level design that is better in some bases than nows level design, powerful weapons and different environments make a beyond epic-mega-super-ultra-penta awesome atmosphere that is can only, but only, belong to Unreal.
For an example when you escape the Vortex rikers, and you see HyLevels Falls right in front of your eyes, which is amazing.
The gameplay featured brand new elements like dodging/faking death. etc... and is old school. which is good,
The amount of replay-abillity is very high, as you can play co op or DM, or many other gamemodes, and thats also because the UnrealEditor is very open. you can make weapons to maps to player skins and many more...
Unreal is a must play, must have.
I obviously give it a 10/10

Epic's best single player game. Criminally underrated. Criminally so.

The use of music; large expansive levels, colors and sparse narrative give the game a meditative flavor; which is ironic considering how they went on to make gears of war.

This is the original. This is the one and only Unreal. This started one of the greatest franchises that also led to the now ever-increasing-in-popularity Unreal 3 engine. It's superb, not like newer games where they spoon-feed you tutorials that last an eternity and have pointless auto-aim features. It's just you and your gun against EVERYTHING. IT'S AWESOME.

Truly majestic FPS whose epic single player campaign remain in many ways unique to this day.

Unreal is a fantastic, atmospheric journey through beautifully realised alien world, one filled with a sense of mystery and wonder. It is also a genuine visual and aural feast, and a game that presents level and specific sort of challenge that simply isn't seen anymore.

As is fitting for game's adventurous feel, its levels tend to be huge and exploration-heavy, and often require reading of various clues and careful scrutiny of one's environment in order to proceed. They are always expertly crafted and pleasing to the eye, be they ancient temples and moody ruins with their exquisite architecture, dark spaceship interiors or, especially, Na Pali's unforgettable outdoor locales. Many of Unreal's environments look genuinely beautiful to this day, which is no small feat.

Another expertly crafted element is the soundtrack, which simply cannot be praised enough. Whether the tracks are subtle and evocative, perfectly fitting for game's slower and exploratory sections, or fast and pumping ones that enhance many of game's intense gunfights, they are always excellent and memorable.

Now, game's gunfight are perhaps its most unusual part, one that will make it or break it for most players. Unreal opted for something quite different from the norm: while it has its share of simpler enemies that are focused on simply attacking the player while moving in his general direction (say, some of Na Pali's native fauna), major part of the game is exact opposite from mowing thru hordes of uninteligent meat. Unreal's most dangerous enemies are sparsely placed through its spacious maps, they are agile, hard hitting, constantly in motion and surprisingly intelligent (they will dodge your projectiles, run to cover, fake death etc). Surviving your encounters with these ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥s requires fast reflexes, awareness of your immediate surroundings and understanding the nuances of game's varied and creative (and highly satisfying, if one allows it to be) weapon arsenal.

This is a must play, and for a particular kind of player that can fully appreciate it, Unreal remains truly one of a kind game: one that was unique back in the day, and one that is even more special today.

Unreal is an FPS from 98' that lives up to it's name, one of the most aesthetically pleasing games to date which spawned the fantastic Unreal Tournament 99, which is still hands down the master of arena shooters thanks to Unreals flawless engine, extremely talented mappers and great mechanics.. This is one of those games that you NEED to experience before you kick the bucket as it's pretty much the pinnacle of FPS before the massive decline.

The story is pretty simple, you're an inmate who's prisoner transport ship crash landed on an alien planet and you'll need to explore lengthy, non-linear levels to progress, you can learn some of the games interesting lore by reading messages left on the dead bodies of humans, reading diaries and scripture on walls, similar to that in Metroid Prime where you learn all the lore from scanning objects and alien text on walls.

The graphics are incredible, especially being that it was originally released in 98', which was one of the best years for gaming in my opinion. The sound is superb, the weapons sound deadly and powerful. The atmosphere is relentlessly amazing through-out largely thanks to the sound effects, music, scenery, amazing lighting effects and all round amazingly designed levels which see you exploring large layouts, filled with many paths and many hidden secrets while fighting bad-♥♥♥ enemies that fake their death, dodge your attacks and have different behavioural attributes.

The weapons in Unreal are varied and each behaves in a very unique way, my personal favourite being the Flak Cannon which sends shards of flak at your opponents, shredding them to pieces and has an alternate fire of a grenade that explodes on impact.

I honestly envy you if you haven't played this yet, I'd kill to be able to see everything in this game for the first time again, it's an experience made by true masters who took so many obscure factors into consideration that its scary, this is one solid shooter you don't want to miss out on.

I'm not really sure why the original Unreal has basically fallen into obscurity at this point but it really, really curbstomps the ♥♥♥♥ out of Quake 1 and 2's singleplayer. The only real gripes I had with the game were some level design confusion.

If you're a fan of the Unreal Tournament games, this is well worth playing.
Be sure to patch the game before playing: http://oldunreal.com/downloads.html