The "playing as a woman" part isn't standard, that just happens to be your chosen character. You can play as a male and there are various skins for both. Through some trickery its also technically possible to play as a Skaarj in singleplayer (normally multiplayer only) but your hitbox is so big you can't escape the ship. I also want to point out you're missing a feature for the rocket launcher. While charging up missiles, if you then hold down alt fire, the rockets will shoot out in a tight circular pattern. It spreads much less than regular charged rockets, and your mom.
I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be female protagonist only for parts of its development, but I guess they decided there's no reason to limit players in that regard.
Your comments on level designers hit a point w/ me as a former level designer (HL engine) from the early 00s. The restrictions really forced us to utilized every ounce of creativity we had to make the best levels the engines we were using could make.
Amazing to think about it but at times too much tech is bad, limited hardware truly forces you to be creative and innovative, if you are talented obviously
Yeah, maybe level designers in modern times get distracted by the assets and tools at their disposal and they forget to start with a simple blockout and polish this before going further.
I loved Unreal back in the day! Especially when starting with games like the original Doom, then Doom II and Heretic, it was incredible how much progress there was in graphics in just a few years. Oh the impact of installing that first 3Dfx card, the way Voodoo 2 outclassed all its competitors… Those were the days…
I was pretty obsessed playing it online. My nic was SuperUnknown and people hating me for using the Asmo because once you mastered it (A lot of patience) you ruled the room lol
In my 20s I was signed off work with depression. I stayed in my bedsit with the curtains closed for days, couldn't face the outside world. I played Unreal from start to finish during that time and it blew me away and took my mind off of all my crap. It was a tonic and I'll never forget how I became something like my usual self while playing that game, even if just for a few fleeting hours. I had never played anything like it before, and 3D was still quite new to me then. What an incredible and vast alien land to lose yourself in.
There's something about that time period for graphics, almost like they are super crisp and yet very simple. I think its a good balance. I mean, you know what your looking at, it still retains a level of realism while reminding you that you are in a game, and its almost oddly clean looking, graphically. I love it!
@@jonbaxter2254 Really damn good! Gems and metals had an awesome look back then! Energy blasts were also great! Nothing super fancy, just bright flashes of light and explosions! Its one of the reasons I love retro type games. I want to play a game and know I'm in a game, I don't want a game that completely mimics the real world. Well, unless the genre calls for it, I guess.
That heavy post-processing done with games today isn't going to age half as well as the classics. Assets used to be bespoke and share a visual language, whereas now it seems like a plugin is used to smear everything together in the uncanny valley.
@@Diablokiller999 Yeah. I just played through FFXV Pocket Edition on my Switch and I LOVED the visual style over the actual game. Would love to see more FF games done in that style. Fewer polygons, more exaggerated character models and colors. Timeless, simple and effective.
Probably my fav FPS from 90'. Not only it looked amazing, but you really had a feeling of being stranded and alone. There wasn't much story there, but if you wanted to sink in this world, you had opportunity to read all those translator messages... it was brilliant. To this day I NEVER experienced FPS with similar atmosphere.
I remember getting my hands on a map design book that was from the quake era. Some of their techniques for making a room look bigger was to have the pillars slightly tapper near the top to give a slight optical illusion without making the room take up too much space. Truly masters of their craft.
I still remember the ads for the 3D cards back in the day. They’d show 16bit vs 32 but screen shots of Unreal. My young mind was blown by the transparencies of the water in the game and how gorgeous it looked. So many great memories
Still exist, but in certain genres, because that's not really viable in realistic shooters. "Boomer shooters" as they are called (doom, ultrakill, serious sam) have that
@@connorsucksatgames2263 actually many realistic shooters have projectiles, Arma, Insurgency 2, even battlefield games and Apex legends, tho thats scifi arcadey style. Projectiles aren't dead, not even close.
@@krustin I'm aware, he said "that players could avoid". If you are able to dodge a bullet in those games regularly when you hear the gun fire, please let me know
Yes Zero, I was stress out every time I played it. Not knowing where the enemy was coming from and getting vertigo every time I crossed a narrow bridge over a cliff.
Unreal is my all-time favourite game. It just oozes atmosphere and the combat is extremely satisfying. Truly one of the greats, one that doesn’t receive the attention it should today, compared to the likes of Doom, Quake or Half-Life (amazing games in their own right, mind you). I even built a retro gaming PC running a 3dfx Voodoo 5, just to play it the way it was intended.
Oh boy, I carry this soundtrack with me everywhere, ever since I exported the tracks myself way back in the day... Alexander Brandon's tracks are just marvelous, and when I play Jazz Jackrabbit 2 I can definitely tell his fingerprints are all over those tracks as well.
I do appreciate how Unreal really doesnt give a crap about your first combat encounter. Like throwing a rapid fire, high damaging, missile launching brute in a tight corridor was quite something...
I played Unreal in 2016. Sadly, because in he 90s i didn't have a PC :C , but when i played Unreal for the first time , i was amazed by the graphics it looks so cool with all the enviroments , the ambience. Everything looks like it can be real in an alien planet. The history of being in a destroyed ship in an alien planet, is so badass. Unreal is one of my fav game, hands down.
This game has more accurate reflections than a AAA game released today, especially on the floors. Also the flak cannon is basically the shotgun from F.E.A.R.
Basically the old mirror effect was a portal, like a camera that looks exactly in the opposite direction of the plane. With directx 9 things are changed but yes, is rare see a good mirror, a good example is Doom 3.
These reflections were done by literally taking the entire scene, mirroring it, and rendering it again "beneath" the reflective surface. This means that a single surface that reflects the scene would double all geometry on the screen, two surfaces would triple it, and so forth. There's a reason no one uses this technique any more.
@@jebbi2570 There's absolutely no reason you couldn't do planar reflections with hardware, including back in those days. Indeed, many games did! Still, there's a good reason that cubemap reflections took over pretty much as soon as hardware supported them.
I mean, there's a free to play Unreal Tournament game on the Epic Game's Store but.. From what I've heard, it's been put on halt as Fortnite is their main focus now.
I hear you. I'm still waiting on Quake 5, Prey 2 (With Tommy and the bounty hunter), Darkness 3, Even just a remaster of Starlancer. That wasn't an FPS mind you but damn that game was good.
I miss games like AVP2, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Halo CE, Red Faction, and FEAR. Getting tired of early 90s styled indie FPS games. Games like Unreal and Half Life really shooked up the FPS genre. Today, mostly online only focused, arena shooters, or giant boring open world time wasters with RPG elements and crafting. Ugh.
Man, I remember secretly trying to hook up my grandpa’s old as fuck Windows 95 PC with with this era of 3D games … ..and running away scared when the damn thing froze and started making a terrifying droning sound, thinking it might explode at any moment.
Dude, my first game was king's quest : eternity mask : it would take 20 to 30 minutes to load a level ! A few years later, i wanted to play it again, damn thing started before I could even grab a drink !
That emptiness is the greatest of signs that you had the absolute best greatest amazing and epic experience! I wish more games gave me this feeling now days...
I can't get over that penultimate level, when you navigate the ship in darkness and those strange mutated, glowing Skarj come out of the shadows - it all feels truly alien. To put another way: I traverse corridors like a lonely human, faraway from anything familiar, and I don't belong there...
I had only 2 of such experiences - completing Unreal+RTNP and completing Iain M Banks Culture series. You have to wait 10 years to partially forget it and then touch it, feel it, dive into it again.
The AI continued being amazing in unreal tournament, where they even knew how to control map pickups, which certainly saved that game for those with slower or lacking internet, and still makes it quite playable today.
I think the key to Unreal's success is pacing, variation and environmental story telling. Few games manages to do this as well as the original Unreal. I like that this game is not always about shooting your way through every single room, and the developers left some areas relatively empty, building the anticipation of what will come next. The sky-box was really beautiful for its time, and I remember just pausing for a moment to have a look at the beautiful sunset. A great game! And by the way, you could use the infinite-ammo blaster together with a car battery to single-shot the titans. :-). I usually just used the blaster (with or without car battery) on the titans to preserve the high quality ammo for more active enemies.
I will never forget that exit from the prison ship. It's something that stays in your mind forever. That feeling of panic and loneliness. Masterpiece of all time.
An overlooked detail but every review of late: This game run nearly perfectly on modern hardware! Nearly no tweaking. Just install the patch after installing the game and your done and ready to kick some alien booty. Unreal engine is one hell of a resilient game engine to say the least.
@@ncshuriken new engines are crafted for consoles which are inferiors to PC MASTER RACE so you usually can expect playable PC game below what is listed as minimum system requirements (my 3rd gen i5 with GTX1050Ti is sufficient for everything released today, before I had older 2nd gen i3 and it was bottleneck for that GFX card)
Not really. The input latency issue is a disaster in this version of Unreal and UnrealTournament, compared to Quake 2 (whether the old version or Yamagi or RTX or whatever). I wish someone would create a new engine for this game just like Yamagi did for Quake 2.
@@lostphysicist Eehh, i don't know about your system or setup, but i experience NO such latency what so ever. my experience is butter smooth and highly responsive. And you can't really compare it to Q2 as it's a vastly different game engine. Sorta like comparing a car with a truck. both vehicles, but still very vastly different. Maybe you just need to fiddle with the settings a bit more. I'm sad, on your behalf, that your experience is tainted in such a way that your experience is neither smooth and enjoyable. I could make a simple recording right now showing that my experience is pretty fantastic when it comes to the controls and responsiveness.
Boggles my mind how Epic mistreats the sole name that put them on the radar and the namesake of their engine. If this doesn't get a proper official remake on UE5 then i don't even know what's going on in their heads.
Money. Money is going on in their heads. UT 4 is an Empty unfinished alpha Demo that they abandoned to milk the cash cow of fortnight. I doubt they will make an UT game in UE5. They will probably roll out a Fortnight 2 in UE 5 instead.
Actually, considering how Epic has treated this series and its fans, they better not show their sorry ass face next to another Unreal series release ever again. They don't deserve the IP anymore. And besides. They'd probably butcher a new release with microtransactions and chain it to their abomination they call a store. No thanks.
So that it can be an Epic-Store exclusive, full of gambling mechanics and Chicom spyware? Nah, the Epic Games we knew is dead, and the thing wearing Epic like a grotesque skinsuit today.. i don't want to see how they would butcher Unreal. I really don't.
The Eightball shoots six rockets, not eight. It can load up to six, and then either fire in a horizontal pattern, or if the alt fire button is held down, in a circular pattern for maximum accuracy. It can also lock on during this. The alt-fire grenades can also be loaded up to six, but the main difference is, dodging enemies can't avoid them. It's probably the most versatile weapon in the game.
I've always considered the U1 / UT99 rocket launcher to be the pinnacle of "alternate fire mode" design. With just two buttons, you have an intuitive way to fire single rockets, spread-pattern rockets, cluster rockets, homing rockets, single grenades, or cluster grenades. The grenade launcher in Unreal 2 is the opposite, if you have more than one or two types of grenade. Just keep mashing the "swap" button until it lands on the one you want to use, and hope you haven't mixed up the ones that sound like they have similar functions but don't.
I remember reading that they initially wanted to do eight rockets (hence Eightball), but it was just way too powerful - and dangerous to the player, too.
Yeah I forgot how many alt fire modes that thing had. Great utility in DM matches too. I remember just spamming those fully loaded grenade rockets and they would bounce all over the place and around corners.
I'm glad you mentioned the killer AI. I have fond memories of fire fights between doorways action movie style when me and my best mate played this when it was new.
Just finished this for the first time in 2022 with the DirectX 11 and complimentary texture mods. It was an amazing game. I keep playing these old games because of the point you made with the level designers back in the day. It managed to immerse me into the game way more than most games do today, because of the lack of hand holding. A part of the exploration experience is to figure shit out yourself. As a result, I found it to be a highly immersive and atmospheric adventure in a depicted alien setting that seemed alien. Soundtrack fucking slaps for sure.
I still remember the first time I saw that intro sequence, and it just blew my mind. I was even more impressed my crappy old computer could actually PLAY the game. The first time you leave the ship and walk into the open space, it was amazing. Games these days are fantastic, but this game really blew up the scene for a while.
@@valentinom.4292 Actually, starting with Unreal 2. It was a such slooooooow game only somewhat related to original game it was disappointing. Engine was great, though.
No mention of the OldUnreal patches, the modding community, or the active online player base? Those things are literally the heart of Unreal in this day and age.
UT has the best enviromental design/sound design of any shooter imo. It gives me goosebumps to this day when I look out into the skybox and hear that soundtrack.
When Unreal came out I played it and decided I needed a 3D accelerator card to see it properly, so I went out and bought a 12MB Voodoo. Next morning I went out and bought another to link them up in SLI mode and I was in heaven. Most expensive game I ever bought and worth every penny.
Eightball fires 6 rockets in Unreal I and Unreal RtNP. and you can press alt-fire while loading rockets to reduce their spread (if 6 rockets are charged, an additional orange shockwave is released upon landing). I guess two additional balls are metaphorically carried by yourself.
From the early 90's (the advent of VGA 256 colour graphics, SVGA, plug and play hardware for sound) right up until the eary 2000's - all the golden era of PC gaming. Hardware companies being pushed by software companies and each other to compete for our money. Reasonable prices. Amazing improvements year on year and 90% of the software developers governed themselves and were led by creative people with vision. Then consoles happened, and the industry was largely bought out by just a handful of media conglomerates with no interest in anything other than profit and they put money men at the helm. GG.
@@annematthews1837 I agree with almost everything you said except for the idea of consoles starting around that time. Consoles, handheld, arcade, VR, all of these things are part of the industry, and none of them started in the 90s. But, yeah, I agree, late 90s to early 2000s was relatively golden compared to today.
@@Daryl42 No what I meant by that was that previously to this, consoles were consoles and PC's were PC's. They didn't exist for the same purpose or in the same space. Consoles back then were far more underpowered than an average gaming PC, were much less expensive and had a totally different style of game developed for them. Hardware on the PC was advancing at an insane rate at that time, the PC was in a totally different league in terms of quality of game and that provided a lot of ingenuity. The Playstation itself, while a capable machine, still stuck to "console" style games, mostly casual, with the odd PC conversion coming over. But then the Dreamcast released and was basically a PC - very capable hardware and had many more cross platform games converted from the PC. After this, at the end of the 90's / beginning of the 2000's, the change happened. Consoles became increasingly popular and, despite being far behind what PC's could do technically, they were heavily marketed and sold exponentially and, as the Industry was rapidly being bought out by just a few powerful conglomerates, suddenly the industry catered almost entirely for consoles with an aim of mass profit, with many of the best developers, publishers AND TALENT being redirected over to consoles, as opposed to PC's and the "pushing the limits" style of developing the PC had brought. Most of the best PC franchises also went over to consoles, and the casualization of games happened. The games themselves, in terms of art, stagnated - and as consoles are always far being PC's, so did advancement in graphics / gameplay / everything else. Today even the big holdouts like Blizzard have succumbed. We live in COD / FIFA land. Remake and Remaster land. If you have shares in the Industry you win. If you're a gamer you lose. If you're a developer with your own amazing ideas - you lose. Even Indie developers coming up who have make some extraordinarilly original games or technical masterpieces on the PC are fucked - because they are offered a cheque to work for the mainstream industry and are assigned as chief model designers for COD 26 or TombRaider 57. It is what it is. Just a shame that, now multiple generations in, this is for 90% of gamers today - normal. As good as it gets. Sadly, it really is.
@@annematthews1837 I think that this is just the market itself creating the world that it collectively wants. In other words, it’s a vote with your wallet situation. FIFA is FIFA because people literally buy into the MTX world. (I’m actually not even sure how FIFA works today.)People don’t want to spend $1,000 on a budget PC when they can have a console for far less. And as for the people that do have PCs, many of them are playing free games. The problem is that the old system worked, but this works better, as far as profits goes. Personally, I have PC and console and I enjoy both equally. And another thing is that I think people figured out how to make complex games work on controller. For example: Halo, Halo Wars, FF11/14, Morrowind, etc.
I wasn't surprised to find out exactly who were working on Unreal's soundtrack. Fun fact: Michiel van Den Bos and Alexander Brandon were also the masterminds behind the genius soundtrack of the first Deus Ex game.
I really miss the interplay between primary and alternate fire. I don't think it's a stretch to say that the shift to ironsights/aim-down-sights gameplay killed alt/secondary fire in first person shooters. Shame.
I love this game! It impressed the hell out of me when it came out. All the reviewers were drooling over Quake 2's graphics which looked kinda' boxy and boring to me. Unreal's graphics (textures, lighting) and sound felt truly next gen in comparison. The game sucked me in and I felt like I was on this big adventure on another planet. I'm waiting for a remake project called "Unreal Redux" by Krull0r who wants to remake and update the game using the final version of the first Unreal Engine. It looks very promising!
The Razorjack, **NOT** the Ripper in UT and later incarnations, was highly underrated. The primary fire's slow blades, that could bounce six times, was incredibly useful for firing into a hallway and making someone just decide to take a different hallway. Its altfire though, was slightly homing razorblades that were nigh impossible to control but if fired into a tight space, would be erratic, unpredictable, and likely fatal to whoever was there. Unreal 1 had stellar multiplayer maps as well. Ariza was absolutely my favorite map. Healpod, a classic. But not everyone remembers DmTerra. a yuuUUUuuuge map, many passages, secrets, and outside at night. The ambience was great, and the sightlines often long. Of course considering how few hitscan weapons Unreal had, this was great.
Camping with biorifle behind teleporter in redeemer room on Deck-16 xD That's what made original UT great, there was so much possible cheese, weapons lacked balance and people considered it part of a gameplay, nobody was trying to fix anything until much later.
@@APopov I seem to remember playing Unreal and after firing the secondary shot, the shot would stay there until someone walked into it(and died), now the secondary shot disperses after a period of time.
I finally played through Unreal gold for the first time a few years ago and it holds up super well, totally agree. Was a long time fan of UT2004 multiplayer, but never went back to play this one until then
That opening level on the ship always scared the absolute fudge out of me. The first time hearing that growl and realizing you had to open the door... Yikes. Which is why it is awesome.
....Same shït i experienced first time playing quake moments before getting bombed on my face. And then those grenades bouncing around to add to the trauma.
I played Unreal at release, bought the box at Walmart, didn’t know if it would run well, loaded it up and was in disbelief at that title screen fly by. Started the campaign and thought “oh it’s like Quake 2” then I emerged from the prison outside and was in disbelief again haha. Absolutely loved it. It’s one of those games I actually go back to every few years and it still looks so polished to me. Those crazy reflective floors! The beautiful sky box and it’s heavenly layers. Somewhere along the way I picked up a really well done texture pack that looks exactly like the original art, just higher res. It gets passed down from hard drive to hard drive… for the last 20 years! Nuts
And now it's December 2023 and Epic has unlisted all Unreal games (alongside other older titles) - you can no longer buy Unreal(1or 2), Unreal Tournament, UT2K3/4 or UT3. They plan on re-releasing UT3 as free to play, but that's not going to absolve them of this crime against the gaming culture and history. Once you release your game it becomes part of the human heritage. Games should not be killed off!
It’s cool to see the origins or this (missed) series. I would love to see a review of Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict. This has always been my favorite shooter. Keep up the great work man!
it was a lovely trick to see back then, yet so simple. and for those who hadn't figured it out: it's basically done by doubling the level and symmetrically sticking the copied geometry on the bottom, with an opaquely transparant layer acting as a fake mirror.
@@Leichenschrei Fair. I'll take that L. not sure what you want to call a "true mirror" though, since the "mirror image" geometry is still being rendered additionally.
@@8bitRAM It did have true mirrors. All geometry had to be rendered twice from different point of view so it was quite heavy and had to be turned off on most PC at the time. There were no 2nd and so on reflections as with ray tracing but reflections were 100% accurate. The same mirror surfaces were used in UT99.
@@APopov Unreal was the first game to use portals although they aren't perfect portals but they work just like that even if they are a sort of enhanced teleporter
YES!! No pointless cutscenes, & dialogs, no filler levels to stretch the playtime artificially, just down to the basic and IMPORTANT things. You are instantly thrown into the immersive world of this game and despite the small filesize of not even 400 MB, you are given a game who's average playtime is wayyyyyy over 10-12 hours if you are experienced. And if that is not enough, you can always install the Addon "Return to Na Pali". Unreal truly is the GOAT and it has aged amazingly well. Even if some of the Voodoo & 3Dfx shaders are sadly not in the Direct 3D version. This game looked AWESOME on 3Dfx cards.The Level design is creative, the weapons badass & the dynamic Soundtrack is AMAZING. This game really was in my opinion 90s FPS gaming at its peak.
Jill of The Jungle here! :D If memory serves, Unreal supported color lighting even in software rendering, where as Quake 2 required a graphics accelerator. That's something that really made Unreal stand out. I remember when I first installed and loaded it up - I did it while on break at work. A coworker watched me go through the Vortex Rikers, and when I stepped out into Nyleve's Falls, they said "Whoah.... Quake what?" FPSs were *not* known for having large outdoor areas back then. And so, that first sight of Nyleve's Falls really was that breathtaking.
Music do excellent job by bringing me two decades back in time. I'm glad this is one of the few remaining games that still give me joy, bless the fan-made campaing creators...
@@Vexillifer Lol, I thought the sound for picking up a key sounded like some R&B singers singing "gi~rl" like they are in love with her and trying to impress her.
@@jonusiescu Then I wish I could trade places with you! I don't think I'll ever forget what a stunning revelation playing that game was the first time around. I later "guided" a friend through it in coop (which worked surprisingly well) and he too was blown away. Now, of course, many (many!) games have since copied its formulae, down to the very mission structure - from Irrational game's own BIOSHOCK to Visceral's DEAD SPACE; truly a case of "many times duplicated but never replicated." And fortunately for you, there are a number of mods to upgrade graphics and models, making what was already a *_design_* masterpiece into something eminently playable today. I wish you many happy hours being immersed in the corridors of the Von Braun, and then ... well, saying any more than that would be telling!
That's some amazing cutting work on the soundtrack scene for Deck16 there! On a related side-note, that music still gives me goose bumps. Time for a UT LAN...
iirc UT2k4's version of Deck 16 was named Deck 17, and had sludge replaced with lava. In UT3 it was just called "Deck". And in Toxikk, which is a pretty good if deserted UT2k4 clone, there was a map based on it named Dekk
@@pierre-mariecaulliez6285 Man, I remember modding the hell out of UT99 back in the day, running around crazy maps using bizzarre weapons like the shrinker and freeze gun from Duke Nukem while Batman style 'POW!' and 'THWAP!'s appear next to peoples heads, only for my enemy to explode into gibs and my character using a Darth Vader skin with a voice pack of Cartman from South Park to respond with 'Aye, kickass' I've still got some of those old mods.
@@Fatman311 hahaha Unreal 4 ever bat thwap and other fun skins and voices. Making heads fly was a hobby in those games, unreal UT blood And my favorite thing with those mods is that many had ultimate weapons who are crazier than the original redeemer. And the biggest nukes came from nali weapons
I got this game as a gift from my grandmother when I was on vacation on her house in 1998. But my computer was in a different city, where I lived with my mother! So I was for 2 weeks just looking at that box, reading every detail, just waiting to be able to play it at home. And it didn't disappoint me! What an amazing game! That flyby intro alone was worth all the wait!
Thank you. When this game released, it lived up to the hype, and was truly, "Unreal." To this day, the atmospheric music and lighting change when stepping from the seemingly standard dark ship out into the light world, still thrills me.
Unreal is fantastic, re-played it last year. Also played the expansion for the first time and found it down right terrible. :Edit: 1:51 You *can* play as a woman, but you can play as a man as well, there is a character selection screen. I think its location changes depending on which version you use.
@@lemonismq4642 The added weapons were redundant to what the base game already offered. New hitscan auto, new rocket launcher, and new grenade launcher. We already had this covered with the Eightball and Minigun, couldn't they come up with *anything else*? They also look generic and completely out of place compared to the rest of the game, and considering the redundancy, I'm betting these were assets they already had. Same goes for the new enemies of course, just no consideration was given to the game's existing art direction. The space marines are also broken on the hardest difficulty level, as Unreal's AI is almost entirely designed around projectiles, but these pricks are hitscan, so you're just fighting aim bots with instantaneous reaction times. I guarantee they never play-tested it on the hardest setting. Oh, and the levels feel like cut content from Unreal, because from what I've read, a lot of it was. Not at all surprised these are the same ass holes that made Unreal 2. Sorry for the wall of text, but that expansion was such a disappointment.
Unreal's developer did an interview in which he specifically stated that he made the character female by default unless you go out of your way to change the skin. He added a female voice in the Return To Nepali expansion because the plan was always to specifically make the main character female to combat the "gamer misogyny" of games like Duke Nukem. The myth of "toxic masculinity" and blaming everything on "sexist gamers" stretches back, but it was always just a myth. Nobody cares about politics if the game is fun. Since gaming was and remains male dominated(contrary to dishonest journalists) guys will subconsciously relate to male characters, but the general male audience was NOT like, "Ew, you like Tomb Raider where you play as a girl? I can't believe you chose Princess Peach in Mario Bros 2 just because she has the best hang time in her jumps... yuck." The myth is so persistent that you now have people over correcting in the form of making way more games that have female leads. This is fine until it crosses over into moralistic political propaganda akin to stuff like The Last Of Us 2 where the developer literally admits making decisions out of spite for men and worships a feminist activist known for making up problems out of thin air.
@@maskedbadass6802 -Feminsm is cancer -Toxic masculinity does not exist(At least not in the form leftists present it) Last of Us 2 is also cancerous. -Player model is set to female by default and I found that unconventional even as a kid, but thought it does not have any meaningful message, was only a kinda random choice.
2:22 When I was a kid, I always pronounced it "Scarj," like "Sarge," but with a K. lol I think they said it out loud in Unreal 2, and *maybe* in the expansion pack to the original game, but I don't remember too well. I have a ton of fond memories when this game was new, and it holds a special place in my heart, but it's not nearly as memorable to me compared to Duke, Doom, or even Tomb Raider. I recently started this game over, and this video is motivating me to give it another full on play-through.
@@APopov That's the one. For some reason I couldn't remember if that was an official expansion or a mod. It's been so long since I played Return to Na Pali.
That theme song was amazing. I remember when I first upgraded from my Diamond Stealth PCI video card to whatever ATi AGP video card was the new hotness back than and seeing that menu sequence play with 4x AA on and being blown away
When i played this back in 1999\2000 i was about 14 years old with my first computer and i really felt teleported to all those temples, aliens spaceships and villages. The ambient sounds, musics, AI and level design were really that good.
0:00 HOOKED !!!! A fairly long campaign, yeah ! People nowadays would be surprised by the amount of value you get out of one game... Compared to current FPS that you can buy in the afternoon and 100%ed before going to bed !
This really makes me wonder if modern gaming really is falling from it's golden age. It really feels like every new release seems to just be getting more and more unfinished, when these games came out the day they were promised, and were a complete experience that came on a CD. it's a real shame, modern publishers could do so much better.
I have the same issue with DVD/blue-rays : I have a version of The Matrix 3 with the movie, audio commentaries, behind the scene reports, and even a freaking minigame (if you play it through a computer) !! On a DVD !! Nowadays, you can barely find a movie DVD with audio commentary ! I don't want to cry conspiracy, but blue-ray really feel like they WANT you to buy it instead...
In the "golden age" you had to earn your place on the top sellers list by making a damn good game. Nowadays, you just have to market the shit out of it because there are a lot more less-experienced gamers that will buy something just because their favorite streamer said few nice words about the game. After that they will "market" the game to their friends (who want to play games with their friends) and you get to a position where quality isn't the measurement of success. Hype is. Thus the fall from grace, to a such level that even a mediocre game is glorified to be something special...
Actually, the 8 ball launcher only fires 6 rockets or grenades even in the original Unreal. The concept design asked for 8, but they changed it later for balancing reasons.
Thank goodness I'm not the only one that noticed that mistake. I still prefer calling it what the Nali do, (The Stick of 6 Fires) It's a lot more fitting.
the flak cannon was my favorite in unreal tournament 2004, I played so much on invasion rpg online servers... that was great. and a lot of pvp for sure.
It's a shame that Epic delisted all the Unreal games off of Steam and GOG. I had a ton of fun with them 20 years ago and would've loved to replay them.
Unreal was the first PC FPS I'd ever played. Id never played a game so colorful and smooth-looking. Also, the build-up to fighting the first Skarj was revolutionary, id never played a game with scripted sequences like this. It was mind-blowing! The atmospheric throughout this game is great.
A few interesting things about the weapons - 1) There are four fire modes for the eightball gun. Single rocket, up to six (not 8) at a time - in a cluster, and up to six (again, not 8) at a time, in a horizontal row, and grenades. You can use the secondary fire to make the eightball a grenade launcher. The grenades bounce around quite randomly though (non-circular collision boxes). Again, you can launch anywhere between 1 and 6 rockets as grenades. 2) The sniper rifle model doesn't have a scope, but allows you to zoom in anyway. Kinda weird. I also thought you could use it as a pike and as a melee weapon when the ammo runs out but you can't. I thought so because there appears to be a bayonet in front of the Rifle. 3) The razorjack secondary fire allows you to guide the projectile and if you're fast enough you can behead yourself with a guided razor blade. 4) The Skaarj grunts have a class hierarchy of some kind - there are the smaller Skaarj scouts which have low HP, and then there are bigger ones that are beefier and will take you down much faster. 5) Return to Na Pali weapons are unique to the marines and you - the Skaarj don't use them. The RTNP rocket launcher also has a guided rocket secondary fire.
I've been discovering recently that that's apparently just a thing that Unreal fans do. That's what I've always done and never knew that anyone else did.
Man it's a shame that the Unreal Tournament revival didnt do well as of recent years, unfortunately the design team and development team of it was forked over to Fortnites further development after its huge success
Unreal Tournament 2004. When they brought back assault maps. The "Convoy" map where you basically spend the entire match trying to jump between vehicles moving at high speed through the desert in a very Mad Max fashion. I still remember the soundtrack for that map.
A few protips for Unreal: - Skarrj do not avoid flak alt-fire nor eightball grenades (version 226, i don't know if the same can be said for 227 patch). - Mercenaries can be killed with the automag quite easily and that's also great for saving other ammo. - When mercenaries turn glowing blue, they become unkillable, you have to hide and wait until the "armor" goes off. - Enemies always toss projectiles in the next predicted location of the player. If you decide to only walk right or left, the enemy will always hit you. - By holding LMB, then RMB together when holding the eightball cannon, it will make you fire your rockets flying in a spiral. Useful for encounters with titans, or a small group of enemies that have no place to dodge.
13:17 The "8-Ball Launcher" shoots up to *six* "8-Balls"; not "eight balls" (rocket propelled grenades). The name is counter-intuitive and they caught flak (pun intended) in the reviews for it at the time.
The "playing as a woman" part isn't standard, that just happens to be your chosen character. You can play as a male and there are various skins for both. Through some trickery its also technically possible to play as a Skaarj in singleplayer (normally multiplayer only) but your hitbox is so big you can't escape the ship.
I also want to point out you're missing a feature for the rocket launcher. While charging up missiles, if you then hold down alt fire, the rockets will shoot out in a tight circular pattern. It spreads much less than regular charged rockets, and your mom.
I screamed that at the screen but he wouldn't listen xD
Same with Quake 2. You can play as a Woman or even a Cyborg.
I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be female protagonist only for parts of its development, but I guess they decided there's no reason to limit players in that regard.
@@TheStonemeister Not really... you just pick your player model in the options menu. It's the same as for bot matches.
Technically the closest thing we have to a canonical character is the female model in the tank top, with the name of Gina, supposedly
Your comments on level designers hit a point w/ me as a former level designer (HL engine) from the early 00s. The restrictions really forced us to utilized every ounce of creativity we had to make the best levels the engines we were using could make.
Amazing to think about it but at times too much tech is bad, limited hardware truly forces you to be creative and innovative, if you are talented obviously
Necessity is the mother of invention
Yeah, maybe level designers in modern times get distracted by the assets and tools at their disposal and they forget to start with a simple blockout and polish this before going further.
Ever since watching gman, my pc gaming backlog has increased immensely.
Not joking. Devs should hire him to sell their games.
I guess bethesda already did that with doom eternal
Seriously, I’ve bought so many games off Steam and GOG because of Gman’s recommendations.
Still waiting for Sin: Reloaded though.
gman is a punk.. Dr. Freeman FOREVER BITCHES!!!! ;)
I missed out on some titles on steam during the sale next year ill be ready
Really appreciate the kind words about the soundtrack, Gman!
The man himself!
@@donizettilorenzo our hero
I'm playing Unreal for the first time since yesterday, and the soundtrack immediately reminded me a lot of Deus Ex... I'm no longer wondering why!
I love you! I still listen to Unreal soundtrack to this day, you 90s and 2000s composers were built different ❤
Mister Brandon, in the flesh.
I loved Unreal back in the day! Especially when starting with games like the original Doom, then Doom II and Heretic, it was incredible how much progress there was in graphics in just a few years. Oh the impact of installing that first 3Dfx card, the way Voodoo 2 outclassed all its competitors… Those were the days…
Played it back then on my Voodoo2, when my Buddy comes around.
30min. open mouth, but no word. ^^
Best comment I've read on YT this year. You brought back memories I had forgotten, and described exactly the way it was for me also.
I was pretty obsessed playing it online. My nic was SuperUnknown and people hating me for using the Asmo because once you mastered it (A lot of patience) you ruled the room lol
Been playing unreal gold since im 8 years old and still play it to this day . Old but gold ;)
Played it since I was about 13 I think myself.
Glad I’m not the only one:)
"Prisoner 849... escaping."
Are there people playing multiplayer on the servers to this day?
@@atomicpunch1990 Sort of. Like ten people.
In my 20s I was signed off work with depression. I stayed in my bedsit with the curtains closed for days, couldn't face the outside world. I played Unreal from start to finish during that time and it blew me away and took my mind off of all my crap. It was a tonic and I'll never forget how I became something like my usual self while playing that game, even if just for a few fleeting hours. I had never played anything like it before, and 3D was still quite new to me then. What an incredible and vast alien land to lose yourself in.
So what happened after that?
@@yaboydolphin I turned into a depressed 45 year old who just finished Spiritfarer. It was good.
Wow, thanks for sharing that. All power to you. God bless.
Dont do drugs for escape, do gaming.
Unreal is so wonderful that it seems made by aliens. I'm glad it eased your depression. It is a true masterpiece.
There's something about that time period for graphics, almost like they are super crisp and yet very simple. I think its a good balance. I mean, you know what your looking at, it still retains a level of realism while reminding you that you are in a game, and its almost oddly clean looking, graphically. I love it!
@@jonbaxter2254 Really damn good! Gems and metals had an awesome look back then! Energy blasts were also great! Nothing super fancy, just bright flashes of light and explosions! Its one of the reasons I love retro type games. I want to play a game and know I'm in a game, I don't want a game that completely mimics the real world. Well, unless the genre calls for it, I guess.
It also has lots of colors unlike other fps from the same era
It looks so sharp because the meshes are simple and don't use much polygons.
Also love this style :3
That heavy post-processing done with games today isn't going to age half as well as the classics. Assets used to be bespoke and share a visual language, whereas now it seems like a plugin is used to smear everything together in the uncanny valley.
@@Diablokiller999 Yeah. I just played through FFXV Pocket Edition on my Switch and I LOVED the visual style over the actual game. Would love to see more FF games done in that style. Fewer polygons, more exaggerated character models and colors. Timeless, simple and effective.
Probably my fav FPS from 90'. Not only it looked amazing, but you really had a feeling of being stranded and alone. There wasn't much story there, but if you wanted to sink in this world, you had opportunity to read all those translator messages... it was brilliant.
To this day I NEVER experienced FPS with similar atmosphere.
I remember getting my hands on a map design book that was from the quake era. Some of their techniques for making a room look bigger was to have the pillars slightly tapper near the top to give a slight optical illusion without making the room take up too much space. Truly masters of their craft.
this isn't anything knew. column/pillar-using cultures have been doing this for thousands of years. see the Greeks
I still remember the ads for the 3D cards back in the day. They’d show 16bit vs 32 but screen shots of Unreal. My young mind was blown by the transparencies of the water in the game and how gorgeous it looked. So many great memories
That Pc Gamer cover that's like "yes that's a real in-game screenshot" :D. SO silly now, but when I got that issue my jaw hit the floor.
Ooops, Next Generation, not PC gamer.
@@AquaShibby3000 I remember that!!! Ah the 90’s were so in your face and gloriously awesome
@@Grandmastergav86 Good memory! And they’re not wrong. It DID run…sort of lol
Which is sort of ironic seeing as it was bundled with the Voodoo 3 which could only do 16bit colours.
Ah yes, back when some bullets had their own physical models that players could avoid
Trepang2 has that
Still exist, but in certain genres, because that's not really viable in realistic shooters. "Boomer shooters" as they are called (doom, ultrakill, serious sam) have that
@@connorsucksatgames2263 actually many realistic shooters have projectiles, Arma, Insurgency 2, even battlefield games and Apex legends, tho thats scifi arcadey style. Projectiles aren't dead, not even close.
@@krustin I'm aware, he said "that players could avoid". If you are able to dodge a bullet in those games regularly when you hear the gun fire, please let me know
@@connorsucksatgames2263 you literally cannot dodge bullets, pretty much all ammo is supersonic so the bullet will hit you before you hear anything.
Watching a youtube video in 2021 about Unreal is like having a glass of ice water on a hot summer day. So refreshing.
Indeed :D
Played Unreal tournament like there was no tomorrow. I have NEVER seen this game.
2022
@@MindBodySoulOk UT was the multiplayer component they decided to release as a standalone game a year later.
Completely agree🤌🏻
Your content feels like longer versions of the early avgn videos, with straight gameplay, a lot of informations and well placed humor.
I love it
Now we need a Gman movie too lol
The First videogame I've ever played, just a fucking masterpiece
Yes Zero, I was stress out every time I played it. Not knowing where the enemy was coming from and getting vertigo every time I crossed a narrow bridge over a cliff.
@@tureytayno3154 well, try it now.
Unreal is my all-time favourite game. It just oozes atmosphere and the combat is extremely satisfying. Truly one of the greats, one that doesn’t receive the attention it should today, compared to the likes of Doom, Quake or Half-Life (amazing games in their own right, mind you). I even built a retro gaming PC running a 3dfx Voodoo 5, just to play it the way it was intended.
Oozes atmosphere huh
One of the best soundtracks ever. Still listen while I play other games.
I still got converts from .utx to .MP3 on my HDD together with UT99 soundtrack... they are EPIC 😂
All Hallows' Sunset, all the time
Oh boy, I carry this soundtrack with me everywhere, ever since I exported the tracks myself way back in the day... Alexander Brandon's tracks are just marvelous, and when I play Jazz Jackrabbit 2 I can definitely tell his fingerprints are all over those tracks as well.
"Surfacing" is king.
I have an Unreal box signed by Alexander Brandon, met him at Magfest once, super cool guy
I just gave you 100 likes, lolz
I do appreciate how Unreal really doesnt give a crap about your first combat encounter. Like throwing a rapid fire, high damaging, missile launching brute in a tight corridor was quite something...
I played Unreal in 2016. Sadly, because in he 90s i didn't have a PC :C , but when i played Unreal for the first time , i was amazed by the graphics it looks so cool with all the enviroments , the ambience. Everything looks like it can be real in an alien planet. The history of being in a destroyed ship in an alien planet, is so badass.
Unreal is one of my fav game, hands down.
This game has more accurate reflections than a AAA game released today, especially on the floors. Also the flak cannon is basically the shotgun from F.E.A.R.
Basically the old mirror effect was a portal, like a camera that looks exactly in the opposite direction of the plane. With directx 9 things are changed but yes, is rare see a good mirror, a good example is Doom 3.
You meant, the shotgun from F.E.A.R. is basically a flak cannon
These reflections were done by literally taking the entire scene, mirroring it, and rendering it again "beneath" the reflective surface. This means that a single surface that reflects the scene would double all geometry on the screen, two surfaces would triple it, and so forth. There's a reason no one uses this technique any more.
@@Keldor314 And they were done using SOFTWARE rendering.
@@jebbi2570 There's absolutely no reason you couldn't do planar reflections with hardware, including back in those days. Indeed, many games did! Still, there's a good reason that cubemap reflections took over pretty much as soon as hardware supported them.
God I wish more of these games made a come back instead of just Doom.
I mean, there's a free to play Unreal Tournament game on the Epic Game's Store but.. From what I've heard, it's been put on halt as Fortnite is their main focus now.
Late 90s and 2000s boomer shooter clones > early 90s boomer shooter clones
I hear you. I'm still waiting on Quake 5, Prey 2 (With Tommy and the bounty hunter), Darkness 3, Even just a remaster of Starlancer. That wasn't an FPS mind you but damn that game was good.
I miss games like AVP2, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Halo CE, Red Faction, and FEAR.
Getting tired of early 90s styled indie FPS games. Games like Unreal and Half Life really shooked up the FPS genre.
Today, mostly online only focused, arena shooters, or giant boring open world time wasters with RPG elements and crafting. Ugh.
there's one indie I stumbled upon on itch.io the other day which seems to be heavily inspired by Unreal, I think it's called Dead Gaem
Man, I remember secretly trying to hook up my grandpa’s old as fuck Windows 95 PC with with this era of 3D games …
..and running away scared when the damn thing froze and started making a terrifying droning sound, thinking it might explode at any moment.
Dude, my first game was king's quest : eternity mask : it would take 20 to 30 minutes to load a level ! A few years later, i wanted to play it again, damn thing started before I could even grab a drink !
@@pierre-mariecaulliez6285 Mask Of Eternity is such an underrated gem.
95 should've still been able to run it. It was definitely the PC itself that was the issue. Lol
@@ninjabiatch101 Oh it was the pc for sure. Could hardly run the Windows itself .
My god, this soundtrack, visuals, gameplay, emptiness after ending a game. For me it's 10/10 game.
That emptiness is the greatest of signs that you had the absolute best greatest amazing and epic experience!
I wish more games gave me this feeling now days...
I can't get over that penultimate level, when you navigate the ship in darkness and those strange mutated, glowing Skarj come out of the shadows - it all feels truly alien. To put another way: I traverse corridors like a lonely human, faraway from anything familiar, and I don't belong there...
I found all that very boring in Unreal series and preferred HL and Q2. My opinion has not changed in 2021 :)
I had only 2 of such experiences - completing Unreal+RTNP and completing Iain M Banks Culture series. You have to wait 10 years to partially forget it and then touch it, feel it, dive into it again.
I cracked out on the editor it came with - I guess that was the model all along, seeing where the engine stands today.
The AI continued being amazing in unreal tournament, where they even knew how to control map pickups, which certainly saved that game for those with slower or lacking internet, and still makes it quite playable today.
UT2004 and 3 had some amazing AI. I remember when young I used to form imaginary rivarlries with certain bots and even friendships with others.
Quite playable?
I think the key to Unreal's success is pacing, variation and environmental story telling. Few games manages to do this as well as the original Unreal. I like that this game is not always about shooting your way through every single room, and the developers left some areas relatively empty, building the anticipation of what will come next. The sky-box was really beautiful for its time, and I remember just pausing for a moment to have a look at the beautiful sunset. A great game!
And by the way, you could use the infinite-ammo blaster together with a car battery to single-shot the titans. :-). I usually just used the blaster (with or without car battery) on the titans to preserve the high quality ammo for more active enemies.
I will never forget that exit from the prison ship. It's something that stays in your mind forever. That feeling of panic and loneliness. Masterpiece of all time.
An overlooked detail but every review of late: This game run nearly perfectly on modern hardware!
Nearly no tweaking.
Just install the patch after installing the game and your done and ready to kick some alien booty.
Unreal engine is one hell of a resilient game engine to say the least.
True! I'd even say that the fanpatch isn't really needed, but the more convenient menu options and raw mouse input support are a huge bonus.
@@deus_nsf without the patch the game runs way too fast, but the fact that it runs without fuss otherwise is impressive
@@ncshuriken new engines are crafted for consoles which are inferiors to PC MASTER RACE so you usually can expect playable PC game below what is listed as minimum system requirements (my 3rd gen i5 with GTX1050Ti is sufficient for everything released today, before I had older 2nd gen i3 and it was bottleneck for that GFX card)
Not really. The input latency issue is a disaster in this version of Unreal and UnrealTournament, compared to Quake 2 (whether the old version or Yamagi or RTX or whatever). I wish someone would create a new engine for this game just like Yamagi did for Quake 2.
@@lostphysicist Eehh, i don't know about your system or setup, but i experience NO such latency what so ever. my experience is butter smooth and highly responsive. And you can't really compare it to Q2 as it's a vastly different game engine. Sorta like comparing a car with a truck. both vehicles, but still very vastly different.
Maybe you just need to fiddle with the settings a bit more.
I'm sad, on your behalf, that your experience is tainted in such a way that your experience is neither smooth and enjoyable.
I could make a simple recording right now showing that my experience is pretty fantastic when it comes to the controls and responsiveness.
Boggles my mind how Epic mistreats the sole name that put them on the radar and the namesake of their engine.
If this doesn't get a proper official remake on UE5 then i don't even know what's going on in their heads.
Money. Money is going on in their heads. UT 4 is an Empty unfinished alpha Demo that they abandoned to milk the cash cow of fortnight. I doubt they will make an UT game in UE5. They will probably roll out a Fortnight 2 in UE 5 instead.
Actually, considering how Epic has treated this series and its fans, they better not show their sorry ass face next to another Unreal series release ever again. They don't deserve the IP anymore. And besides. They'd probably butcher a new release with microtransactions and chain it to their abomination they call a store. No thanks.
So that it can be an Epic-Store exclusive, full of gambling mechanics and Chicom spyware? Nah, the Epic Games we knew is dead, and the thing wearing Epic like a grotesque skinsuit today.. i don't want to see how they would butcher Unreal. I really don't.
@@Grobut81 "I'd rather see her at the bottom of the ocean than in the hands of Epic Games."
- Commodore Norrington
Unfortunately, there was supposed to be a new Unreal Tournament, then you know what that turned out later on. Rest is history.
The Eightball shoots six rockets, not eight. It can load up to six, and then either fire in a horizontal pattern, or if the alt fire button is held down, in a circular pattern for maximum accuracy. It can also lock on during this. The alt-fire grenades can also be loaded up to six, but the main difference is, dodging enemies can't avoid them. It's probably the most versatile weapon in the game.
This ^^
Those grenades are a godsend against enemies that dodge :)
I've always considered the U1 / UT99 rocket launcher to be the pinnacle of "alternate fire mode" design. With just two buttons, you have an intuitive way to fire single rockets, spread-pattern rockets, cluster rockets, homing rockets, single grenades, or cluster grenades.
The grenade launcher in Unreal 2 is the opposite, if you have more than one or two types of grenade. Just keep mashing the "swap" button until it lands on the one you want to use, and hope you haven't mixed up the ones that sound like they have similar functions but don't.
@@Eiterra The UT99 Rocket Launcher is probably my favourite.
I remember reading that they initially wanted to do eight rockets (hence Eightball), but it was just way too powerful - and dangerous to the player, too.
Yeah I forgot how many alt fire modes that thing had. Great utility in DM matches too. I remember just spamming those fully loaded grenade rockets and they would bounce all over the place and around corners.
I'm glad you mentioned the killer AI. I have fond memories of fire fights between doorways action movie style when me and my best mate played this when it was new.
Just finished this for the first time in 2022 with the DirectX 11 and complimentary texture mods. It was an amazing game. I keep playing these old games because of the point you made with the level designers back in the day. It managed to immerse me into the game way more than most games do today, because of the lack of hand holding. A part of the exploration experience is to figure shit out yourself. As a result, I found it to be a highly immersive and atmospheric adventure in a depicted alien setting that seemed alien. Soundtrack fucking slaps for sure.
It's nice that a newcomer like you can appreciate this game as much as I did back in the days!
I still remember the first time I saw that intro sequence, and it just blew my mind. I was even more impressed my crappy old computer could actually PLAY the game.
The first time you leave the ship and walk into the open space, it was amazing.
Games these days are fantastic, but this game really blew up the scene for a while.
Man, I forgot Unreal used to be a single player shooter rather than a multiplayer arena shooter.
And now it's just an engine, I sure do miss this Era of gaming
Well, it all went to shit after Unreal 2 lol
@@valentinom.4292 Actually, starting with Unreal 2. It was a such slooooooow game only somewhat related to original game it was disappointing. Engine was great, though.
@@APopov I don't know, Unreal 2 looks pretty shit.
@@valentinom.4292 in 2003? It was the best thing since Morrowind.
The early Crystalpunk Dungeon shooty game... back when Cliffy and EPIC games was cool.
Crystalpunk? First time I hear that. Does Dune refers as crystalpunk as well?
I've been playing this since 1998. It's always my go to for a quick amount of fun. Played the campaign from beginning to end at least 20 times now
No mention of the OldUnreal patches, the modding community, or the active online player base? Those things are literally the heart of Unreal in this day and age.
UT has the best enviromental design/sound design of any shooter imo. It gives me goosebumps to this day when I look out into the skybox and hear that soundtrack.
And you haven't even heard it with hardware accelerated 3D audio!
A timeless masterpiece with a timeless soundtrack and an atmosphere that won't let you go.
Ysss
I agree 100%. Unreal is Unreal.
Just revisited this game again after 12 years, immediately cut my own head off with the razorjack
Great times
When Unreal came out I played it and decided I needed a 3D accelerator card to see it properly, so I went out and bought a 12MB Voodoo. Next morning I went out and bought another to link them up in SLI mode and I was in heaven. Most expensive game I ever bought and worth every penny.
Eightball fires 6 rockets in Unreal I and Unreal RtNP. and you can press alt-fire while loading rockets to reduce their spread (if 6 rockets are charged, an additional orange shockwave is released upon landing).
I guess two additional balls are metaphorically carried by yourself.
Late 90's were called the Golden Age of Gaming for a reason. Especially for FPS dorks like us.
From the early 90's (the advent of VGA 256 colour graphics, SVGA, plug and play hardware for sound) right up until the eary 2000's - all the golden era of PC gaming. Hardware companies being pushed by software companies and each other to compete for our money. Reasonable prices. Amazing improvements year on year and 90% of the software developers governed themselves and were led by creative people with vision.
Then consoles happened, and the industry was largely bought out by just a handful of media conglomerates with no interest in anything other than profit and they put money men at the helm.
GG.
@@annematthews1837 I agree with almost everything you said except for the idea of consoles starting around that time. Consoles, handheld, arcade, VR, all of these things are part of the industry, and none of them started in the 90s. But, yeah, I agree, late 90s to early 2000s was relatively golden compared to today.
@@Daryl42 No what I meant by that was that previously to this, consoles were consoles and PC's were PC's. They didn't exist for the same purpose or in the same space. Consoles back then were far more underpowered than an average gaming PC, were much less expensive and had a totally different style of game developed for them. Hardware on the PC was advancing at an insane rate at that time, the PC was in a totally different league in terms of quality of game and that provided a lot of ingenuity.
The Playstation itself, while a capable machine, still stuck to "console" style games, mostly casual, with the odd PC conversion coming over. But then the Dreamcast released and was basically a PC - very capable hardware and had many more cross platform games converted from the PC. After this, at the end of the 90's / beginning of the 2000's, the change happened. Consoles became increasingly popular and, despite being far behind what PC's could do technically, they were heavily marketed and sold exponentially and, as the Industry was rapidly being bought out by just a few powerful conglomerates, suddenly the industry catered almost entirely for consoles with an aim of mass profit, with many of the best developers, publishers AND TALENT being redirected over to consoles, as opposed to PC's and the "pushing the limits" style of developing the PC had brought. Most of the best PC franchises also went over to consoles, and the casualization of games happened. The games themselves, in terms of art, stagnated - and as consoles are always far being PC's, so did advancement in graphics / gameplay / everything else.
Today even the big holdouts like Blizzard have succumbed. We live in COD / FIFA land. Remake and Remaster land. If you have shares in the Industry you win. If you're a gamer you lose. If you're a developer with your own amazing ideas - you lose. Even Indie developers coming up who have make some extraordinarilly original games or technical masterpieces on the PC are fucked - because they are offered a cheque to work for the mainstream industry and are assigned as chief model designers for COD 26 or TombRaider 57.
It is what it is. Just a shame that, now multiple generations in, this is for 90% of gamers today - normal. As good as it gets. Sadly, it really is.
@@annematthews1837 I think that this is just the market itself creating the world that it collectively wants. In other words, it’s a vote with your wallet situation. FIFA is FIFA because people literally buy into the MTX world. (I’m actually not even sure how FIFA works today.)People don’t want to spend $1,000 on a budget PC when they can have a console for far less. And as for the people that do have PCs, many of them are playing free games. The problem is that the old system worked, but this works better, as far as profits goes. Personally, I have PC and console and I enjoy both equally.
And another thing is that I think people figured out how to make complex games work on controller. For example: Halo, Halo Wars, FF11/14, Morrowind, etc.
Nah, that was the doom era, goldeneye was just nintento 64. I didnt enjoy it when i tried to play it with friends, i hated the controls.
That intro is so iconic chills still.
I would love to see a new Unreal, with both a single player campaign and a similar multiplayer to Unreal Tournament.
I wasn't surprised to find out exactly who were working on Unreal's soundtrack.
Fun fact: Michiel van Den Bos and Alexander Brandon were also the masterminds behind the genius soundtrack of the first Deus Ex game.
This was my favorite game for so long. The visuals alone were stunning for the time.
I really miss the interplay between primary and alternate fire. I don't think it's a stretch to say that the shift to ironsights/aim-down-sights gameplay killed alt/secondary fire in first person shooters. Shame.
How did you reply one day ago...
@@kazcav4973 Aye, not many though. There was a hard shift in this approach around 2007-ish.
So, how did you post the comment a day ago?
@@amnesia998 @Nungshimanen T Imchen Ask about this while GMan has the Patreon xD Probably one of the perks here.
I love games with alt fires , there's a few but yea not enough, and it's not like we don't have enough buttons or triggers XD
The music in this game literally changed my life. I mean shared dig? *Chefs kiss* brilliant.
Marisa Tomei and Selma Hayek continue to be goddesses. You're not dead to me anymore.
I love this game! It impressed the hell out of me when it came out.
All the reviewers were drooling over Quake 2's graphics which looked kinda' boxy and boring to me.
Unreal's graphics (textures, lighting) and sound felt truly next gen in comparison. The game sucked me in and I felt like I was on this big adventure on another planet.
I'm waiting for a remake project called "Unreal Redux" by Krull0r who wants to remake and update the game using the final version of the first Unreal Engine. It looks very promising!
The Razorjack, **NOT** the Ripper in UT and later incarnations, was highly underrated.
The primary fire's slow blades, that could bounce six times, was incredibly useful for firing into a hallway and making someone just decide to take a different hallway. Its altfire though, was slightly homing razorblades that were nigh impossible to control but if fired into a tight space, would be erratic, unpredictable, and likely fatal to whoever was there.
Unreal 1 had stellar multiplayer maps as well. Ariza was absolutely my favorite map. Healpod, a classic. But not everyone remembers DmTerra. a yuuUUUuuuge map, many passages, secrets, and outside at night. The ambience was great, and the sightlines often long. Of course considering how few hitscan weapons Unreal had, this was great.
Ah the Bio Rifle, i remember instakilling people with the secondary charge, it was amazing
... If you can stay alive long enough to charge said secondary ;7
@@pierre-mariecaulliez6285 it was harder to hit the shot than to stay alive :P
It was way easier to do this in Unreal Tournament because there GES bio rifle was able to hold charge infinitely long.
Camping with biorifle behind teleporter in redeemer room on Deck-16 xD That's what made original UT great, there was so much possible cheese, weapons lacked balance and people considered it part of a gameplay, nobody was trying to fix anything until much later.
@@APopov I seem to remember playing Unreal and after firing the secondary shot, the shot would stay there until someone walked into it(and died), now the secondary shot disperses after a period of time.
I finally played through Unreal gold for the first time a few years ago and it holds up super well, totally agree. Was a long time fan of UT2004 multiplayer, but never went back to play this one until then
That opening level on the ship always scared the absolute fudge out of me. The first time hearing that growl and realizing you had to open the door... Yikes.
Which is why it is awesome.
....Same shït i experienced first time playing quake moments before getting bombed on my face. And then those grenades bouncing around to add to the trauma.
I played Unreal at release, bought the box at Walmart, didn’t know if it would run well, loaded it up and was in disbelief at that title screen fly by. Started the campaign and thought “oh it’s like Quake 2” then I emerged from the prison outside and was in disbelief again haha. Absolutely loved it. It’s one of those games I actually go back to every few years and it still looks so polished to me. Those crazy reflective floors! The beautiful sky box and it’s heavenly layers. Somewhere along the way I picked up a really well done texture pack that looks exactly like the original art, just higher res. It gets passed down from hard drive to hard drive… for the last 20 years! Nuts
And now it's December 2023 and Epic has unlisted all Unreal games (alongside other older titles) - you can no longer buy Unreal(1or 2), Unreal Tournament, UT2K3/4 or UT3. They plan on re-releasing UT3 as free to play, but that's not going to absolve them of this crime against the gaming culture and history. Once you release your game it becomes part of the human heritage. Games should not be killed off!
You know the news? They're planning remaster.
It’s cool to see the origins or this (missed) series. I would love to see a review of Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict. This has always been my favorite shooter. Keep up the great work man!
Its so sad Unreal Championship 2 was in that awful era of 'PC games are dead.' That game would ahve done amazing on the PC, its so good.
6:26 looks like they already had rtx in the 90s.
it was a lovely trick to see back then, yet so simple.
and for those who hadn't figured it out: it's basically done by doubling the level and symmetrically sticking the copied geometry on the bottom, with an opaquely transparant layer acting as a fake mirror.
@@buzzworddujour false. Unreal Engine 1 had true mirrors. You could literally noclip under the level and see you're wrong.
@@Leichenschrei Fair. I'll take that L. not sure what you want to call a "true mirror" though, since the "mirror image" geometry is still being rendered additionally.
@@8bitRAM It did have true mirrors. All geometry had to be rendered twice from different point of view so it was quite heavy and had to be turned off on most PC at the time. There were no 2nd and so on reflections as with ray tracing but reflections were 100% accurate. The same mirror surfaces were used in UT99.
@@APopov Unreal was the first game to use portals although they aren't perfect portals but they work just like that even if they are a sort of enhanced teleporter
TH-cam asked me to rate this video
Life changing. Informative. Heartwarming.
Not only describes this video but also your mum.
YES!! No pointless cutscenes, & dialogs, no filler levels to stretch the playtime artificially, just down to the basic and IMPORTANT things. You are instantly thrown into the immersive world of this game and despite the small filesize of not even 400 MB, you are given a game who's average playtime is wayyyyyy over 10-12 hours if you are experienced. And if that is not enough, you can always install the Addon "Return to Na Pali". Unreal truly is the GOAT and it has aged amazingly well. Even if some of the Voodoo & 3Dfx shaders are sadly not in the Direct 3D version. This game looked AWESOME on 3Dfx cards.The Level design is creative, the weapons badass & the dynamic Soundtrack is AMAZING. This game really was in my opinion 90s FPS gaming at its peak.
Jill of The Jungle here! :D
If memory serves, Unreal supported color lighting even in software rendering, where as Quake 2 required a graphics accelerator. That's something that really made Unreal stand out.
I remember when I first installed and loaded it up - I did it while on break at work. A coworker watched me go through the Vortex Rikers, and when I stepped out into Nyleve's Falls, they said "Whoah.... Quake what?"
FPSs were *not* known for having large outdoor areas back then. And so, that first sight of Nyleve's Falls really was that breathtaking.
Music do excellent job by bringing me two decades back in time.
I'm glad this is one of the few remaining games that still give me joy, bless the fan-made campaing creators...
I was just thinking earlier that I'd love to see you do an updated review on Unreal. Gman always delivers
You’re so right about the Flak Cannon, absolutely breathtaking sound when it fires!
And about the bots beating the hell out of the players😆😅
I was waiting for a redo of this video. One of my favorite childhood games.
The flies gathering around dead bodies are in Quake 2 but it only happens with one enemy type (the machinegun grunts).
Jill of the Jungle was a good game.
Yea-eah~
is free on gog!!!
Jill awakened something in me as a young lad if ya know what I mean 😏
Except for that damn level with the demons in it. ;3;
@@Vexillifer Lol, I thought the sound for picking up a key sounded like some R&B singers singing "gi~rl" like they are in love with her and trying to impress her.
Grandpa uploaded let's gooo
oof
I've done another playthrough few weeks ago after ~20 years. Still amazing in terms of atmosphere, AI, music and I like gameplay a lot.
It's one of 2 games (SYSTEM SHOCK 2 is the other) which I have never uninstalled.
@@vincelang3779 SS2 is on my list since I saw 10/10 in video games magazine in 1999 and I still haven't played it. I really need to do this soon.
@@jonusiescu Then I wish I could trade places with you! I don't think I'll ever forget what a stunning revelation playing that game was the first time around. I later "guided" a friend through it in coop (which worked surprisingly well) and he too was blown away.
Now, of course, many (many!) games have since copied its formulae, down to the very mission structure - from Irrational game's own BIOSHOCK to Visceral's DEAD SPACE; truly a case of "many times duplicated but never replicated."
And fortunately for you, there are a number of mods to upgrade graphics and models, making what was already a *_design_* masterpiece into something eminently playable today. I wish you many happy hours being immersed in the corridors of the Von Braun, and then ... well, saying any more than that would be telling!
@@vincelang3779 Just like Deus Ex haha
That's some amazing cutting work on the soundtrack scene for Deck16 there! On a related side-note, that music still gives me goose bumps. Time for a UT LAN...
iirc UT2k4's version of Deck 16 was named Deck 17, and had sludge replaced with lava. In UT3 it was just called "Deck". And in Toxikk, which is a pretty good if deserted UT2k4 clone, there was a map based on it named Dekk
Oh man unreal tournament is THE game I have installed on my pc, even after all these years. It's fucking awesome.
"Apologies ! Was that your HEAD !?!"
@@pierre-mariecaulliez6285 Man, I remember modding the hell out of UT99 back in the day, running around crazy maps using bizzarre weapons like the shrinker and freeze gun from Duke Nukem while Batman style 'POW!' and 'THWAP!'s appear next to peoples heads, only for my enemy to explode into gibs and my character using a Darth Vader skin with a voice pack of Cartman from South Park to respond with 'Aye, kickass'
I've still got some of those old mods.
@@Fatman311 hahaha Unreal 4 ever bat thwap and other fun skins and voices.
Making heads fly was a hobby in those games, unreal UT blood
And my favorite thing with those mods is that many had ultimate weapons who are crazier than the original redeemer.
And the biggest nukes came from nali weapons
4:11 I dont remember hearing someone blasting a huge one in the ship:)
skaarj exactly :)
The game had a pretty easy-to-learn map editor that I'd spend hours upon hours just making levels. Good times.
I got this game as a gift from my grandmother when I was on vacation on her house in 1998. But my computer was in a different city, where I lived with my mother!
So I was for 2 weeks just looking at that box, reading every detail, just waiting to be able to play it at home. And it didn't disappoint me! What an amazing game!
That flyby intro alone was worth all the wait!
Thank you. When this game released, it lived up to the hype, and was truly, "Unreal."
To this day, the atmospheric music and lighting change when stepping from the seemingly standard dark ship out into the light world, still thrills me.
Unreal is fantastic, re-played it last year. Also played the expansion for the first time and found it down right terrible.
:Edit: 1:51 You *can* play as a woman, but you can play as a man as well, there is a character selection screen. I think its location changes depending on which version you use.
Indeed.
Hold on, you guys seriously hated the RtNP expansion? It was pretty cool, obv not as cool as the main campaign, but it was close
@@lemonismq4642 The added weapons were redundant to what the base game already offered. New hitscan auto, new rocket launcher, and new grenade launcher. We already had this covered with the Eightball and Minigun, couldn't they come up with *anything else*? They also look generic and completely out of place compared to the rest of the game, and considering the redundancy, I'm betting these were assets they already had. Same goes for the new enemies of course, just no consideration was given to the game's existing art direction. The space marines are also broken on the hardest difficulty level, as Unreal's AI is almost entirely designed around projectiles, but these pricks are hitscan, so you're just fighting aim bots with instantaneous reaction times. I guarantee they never play-tested it on the hardest setting. Oh, and the levels feel like cut content from Unreal, because from what I've read, a lot of it was.
Not at all surprised these are the same ass holes that made Unreal 2.
Sorry for the wall of text, but that expansion was such a disappointment.
Unreal's developer did an interview in which he specifically stated that he made the character female by default unless you go out of your way to change the skin. He added a female voice in the Return To Nepali expansion because the plan was always to specifically make the main character female to combat the "gamer misogyny" of games like Duke Nukem.
The myth of "toxic masculinity" and blaming everything on "sexist gamers" stretches back, but it was always just a myth. Nobody cares about politics if the game is fun. Since gaming was and remains male dominated(contrary to dishonest journalists) guys will subconsciously relate to male characters, but the general male audience was NOT like, "Ew, you like Tomb Raider where you play as a girl? I can't believe you chose Princess Peach in Mario Bros 2 just because she has the best hang time in her jumps... yuck."
The myth is so persistent that you now have people over correcting in the form of making way more games that have female leads. This is fine until it crosses over into moralistic political propaganda akin to stuff like The Last Of Us 2 where the developer literally admits making decisions out of spite for men and worships a feminist activist known for making up problems out of thin air.
@@maskedbadass6802
-Feminsm is cancer
-Toxic masculinity does not exist(At least not in the form leftists present it)
Last of Us 2 is also cancerous.
-Player model is set to female by default and I found that unconventional even as a kid, but thought it does not have any meaningful message, was only a kinda random choice.
2:22 When I was a kid, I always pronounced it "Scarj," like "Sarge," but with a K. lol I think they said it out loud in Unreal 2, and *maybe* in the expansion pack to the original game, but I don't remember too well. I have a ton of fond memories when this game was new, and it holds a special place in my heart, but it's not nearly as memorable to me compared to Duke, Doom, or even Tomb Raider. I recently started this game over, and this video is motivating me to give it another full on play-through.
Unreal expansion pack (Return to Na Pali) had intermissions with voice logs. It clearly says "skaar".
@@APopov That's the one. For some reason I couldn't remember if that was an official expansion or a mod. It's been so long since I played Return to Na Pali.
I was just replaying it. One of the absolute greatest!
That theme song was amazing. I remember when I first upgraded from my Diamond Stealth PCI video card to whatever ATi AGP video card was the new hotness back than and seeing that menu sequence play with 4x AA on and being blown away
When i played this back in 1999\2000 i was about 14 years old with my first computer and i really felt teleported to all those temples, aliens spaceships and villages. The ambient sounds, musics, AI and level design were really that good.
0:00 HOOKED !!!! A fairly long campaign, yeah ! People nowadays would be surprised by the amount of value you get out of one game... Compared to current FPS that you can buy in the afternoon and 100%ed before going to bed !
Unreal will never not be great. It's definitely one of the top FPS games ever made, and in my opinion, the best.
You got it wrong, you should have typed: "I'm Commander Shepard and this is my favourite game of the 90s"
@@AM-hz3bi
Fun fact: Mass Effect has been done on Unreal Engine 3.
This really makes me wonder if modern gaming really is falling from it's golden age. It really feels like every new release seems to just be getting more and more unfinished, when these games came out the day they were promised, and were a complete experience that came on a CD. it's a real shame, modern publishers could do so much better.
I have the same issue with DVD/blue-rays : I have a version of The Matrix 3 with the movie, audio commentaries, behind the scene reports, and even a freaking minigame (if you play it through a computer) !! On a DVD !!
Nowadays, you can barely find a movie DVD with audio commentary ! I don't want to cry conspiracy, but blue-ray really feel like they WANT you to buy it instead...
In the "golden age" you had to earn your place on the top sellers list by making a damn good game.
Nowadays, you just have to market the shit out of it because there are a lot more less-experienced gamers that will buy something just because their favorite streamer said few nice words about the game. After that they will "market" the game to their friends (who want to play games with their friends) and you get to a position where quality isn't the measurement of success. Hype is. Thus the fall from grace, to a such level that even a mediocre game is glorified to be something special...
Lower budget, smaller teams, more passion. Nowadays it's big budget, huge corporations, crunch, money, quantity over quality
@@NoirTenshin and games MUST make their money back for the investors' sake, instead of focusing on being fun for the players'
Mostly the AAA market is this
Love this game. Love, love, LOVE this game. Unparalleled atmosphere. So nostalgic.
I was also one of the OG's that played Unreal and I still dabble with Unreal on occasion. Truly a great game.
Still sleeping but just popping in to say “Hello” and I’m looking forward to watching this later. lol
Bro it's
Are you up yet it’s almost
Wakey wakeeey
its been 7 hours bro, wake up
its been 7 hours bro, wake up
Unreal is one of my favorite games, but it has a special place in my heart as a big part of my YT grift too :^]
and what a YT grift you have king o7
Actually, the 8 ball launcher only fires 6 rockets or grenades even in the original Unreal. The concept design asked for 8, but they changed it later for balancing reasons.
Thank goodness I'm not the only one that noticed that mistake. I still prefer calling it what the Nali do, (The Stick of 6 Fires) It's a lot more fitting.
4:10 - How did I miss this the first watch-thru?
the flak cannon was my favorite in unreal tournament 2004, I played so much on invasion rpg online servers... that was great. and a lot of pvp for sure.
I played this all the way through recently as never finished it, what a great game! Halfway through the DLC woot!
It's a shame that Epic delisted all the Unreal games off of Steam and GOG. I had a ton of fun with them 20 years ago and would've loved to replay them.
There is a reason for it, remasters coming
@@H3llBaron that would be awesome! Guess we’ll wait and see what happens 🤞🏼😬🤞🏼
Yeah with the dx11 renderer and 4k textures, this still holds up really well!
Can confirm ! Sadly the CPU performance is abysmal though... sometimes I drop to 25 FPS... because of the CPU performance.
Unreal was the first PC FPS I'd ever played. Id never played a game so colorful and smooth-looking. Also, the build-up to fighting the first Skarj was revolutionary, id never played a game with scripted sequences like this. It was mind-blowing! The atmospheric throughout this game is great.
A few interesting things about the weapons - 1) There are four fire modes for the eightball gun. Single rocket, up to six (not 8) at a time - in a cluster, and up to six (again, not 8) at a time, in a horizontal row, and grenades. You can use the secondary fire to make the eightball a grenade launcher. The grenades bounce around quite randomly though (non-circular collision boxes). Again, you can launch anywhere between 1 and 6 rockets as grenades. 2) The sniper rifle model doesn't have a scope, but allows you to zoom in anyway. Kinda weird. I also thought you could use it as a pike and as a melee weapon when the ammo runs out but you can't. I thought so because there appears to be a bayonet in front of the Rifle. 3) The razorjack secondary fire allows you to guide the projectile and if you're fast enough you can behead yourself with a guided razor blade. 4) The Skaarj grunts have a class hierarchy of some kind - there are the smaller Skaarj scouts which have low HP, and then there are bigger ones that are beefier and will take you down much faster. 5) Return to Na Pali weapons are unique to the marines and you - the Skaarj don't use them. The RTNP rocket launcher also has a guided rocket secondary fire.
Play once a year every year.
Funny how I had the same tradition
I've been discovering recently that that's apparently just a thing that Unreal fans do. That's what I've always done and never knew that anyone else did.
Man it's a shame that the Unreal Tournament revival didnt do well as of recent years, unfortunately the design team and development team of it was forked over to Fortnites further development after its huge success
i can see ut4 as nothing more then a tech demo at this point.
The UT series _always_ has fantastic music 🥰
Unreal Tournament 2004. When they brought back assault maps.
The "Convoy" map where you basically spend the entire match trying to jump between vehicles moving at high speed through the desert in a very Mad Max fashion.
I still remember the soundtrack for that map.
A few protips for Unreal:
- Skarrj do not avoid flak alt-fire nor eightball grenades (version 226, i don't know if the same can be said for 227 patch).
- Mercenaries can be killed with the automag quite easily and that's also great for saving other ammo.
- When mercenaries turn glowing blue, they become unkillable, you have to hide and wait until the "armor" goes off.
- Enemies always toss projectiles in the next predicted location of the player. If you decide to only walk right or left, the enemy will always hit you.
- By holding LMB, then RMB together when holding the eightball cannon, it will make you fire your rockets flying in a spiral. Useful for encounters with titans, or a small group of enemies that have no place to dodge.
13:17 The "8-Ball Launcher" shoots up to *six* "8-Balls"; not "eight balls" (rocket propelled grenades). The name is counter-intuitive and they caught flak (pun intended) in the reviews for it at the time.