Released in 1998 this, not Quake II, was the game that showed what PC graphics could look like. At the time it required a beast of a system to run - usually a 3dfx graphics card (remember those?). Preferably a Voodoo 2 in SLI mode if you were rich. The intro castle flyby was nothing short of amazing.
When you started the game you were in one of the most atmospheric and chilling game intros. You were on a prison ship, apparently had crash landed and something had gone horribly wrong as there were bodies and body parts everywhere. You found a communicator which let you read logs left behind by the survivors and slowly you pieced together the story. You were alone on a strange planet and there was something out there.
The first level was not graphically amazing but it set the tension in unique scripted ways. The door that slowly opened and let you see glimpses of your first skaarj. The bodies and blood everywhere. And then you left the ship and entered Nyleve’s Falls.
That one level alone sold me the game. It’s not much to look at now but at the time it was the most visually stunning thing I’d ever seen on my computer. The terrain, ponds, wildlife, the waterfall, the scar in the earth where the prison ship crashed and the first encounter with hostile lifeforms. I loved jumping off the cliff into the stream way down. I probably have played Nyleve’s more than any other FPS level.
And then later your first real encounter with the skaarj: the lights going out, the growl, the terror.
And then it was all downhill from there. From a great beginning the game’s pacing began to vary. Some levels were sheer brilliant (the Na Pali levels - particularly the Sunspire) and others dragged on and on. Chizra - Nali Water God Temple is still the single-best name for a level in any game I’ve played. I did finish the game and loved it. Certainly not perfect but it was an amazingly atmospheric mixture of science fiction and medieval settings with challenging (at the time) enemies. For a pre-Half-Life shooter it was a godsend.
I fired Unreal up again tonight. It installed with no hitch. I patched it with the v2.26 Final patch. I changed the resolution to 1280x1024, changed the render system from software (remember software rendering for 3D shooters? :P ) to Direct 3D, bumped the graphics to max and I was playing. On Windows XP with the latest drivers and a 6600GT. My frame rate was nearly 200 in the flyby and I can remember desperately tweaking the game trying to squeeze out another frame or two to get it to 20 fps back in 1998.
Anyway, fond memories. I think I’ll go play some more.
Unreal is always installed on my computer. Uneven gameplay, but an amazing atmosphere and a great soundtrack. Based on the intangibles it’s become one of my favorite shooters.
The most striking level design is probably in Sunspire and Bluff Eversmoking, but I am especially fond of Harobed Village, a rather modest level. I like the little Nali village with the church (and the catacombs under the gravestone), as well as the great visual of the Terraniux spacecraft off in the distance as you approach it.
And yeah, Nyleve’s Falls is one of the cardinal moments in gaming, whatever other flaws Unreal 1 had.
I sometimes think the first Unreal game would have made for a better RPG or adventure game because its ambience was amazing, but as a shooter, it left a bit to be desired. But man, I really loved the first few levels and even beyond those, the game still had its moments.
I love the original Unreal while happily admitting to its flaws. I recall waxing nostaglic in a thread posted awhile back here.
While the game overall suffered from something you rarely see today - too much content - it was still a lot of fun to play through. Looking back, I think it’s the cumulative effect of the details that hooked me - the wildlife in the outdoor levels, the unconventional weapons (that most people didn’t seem to like), the sheer grandeur of many places, like the aforementioned Bluff Eversmoking.
I’d like to see Epic do a true sequel to Unreal. While Unreal 2 wasn’t an awful game (I thought it was a fairly standard shooter with some nice touches), it had only a tenuous connection to the first game.
I agree with Shadari that the game perhaps would have worked better as an RPG or adventure. Certainly in terms of straight-up action it didn’t compare favorably to its contemporaries, like Quake 2 (released about six months earlier) but if I was going to install any shooter from that era, it would be the first.
The thing that has always stuck with me about Unreal 1 is the first time you walk out of crashed space ship and see this huge (or so it seemed at the time) open outdoor area. It was amazing to see something so different from what I was used to in the Quake games. I was amazed that it was even capable. And then I saw the waterfall and the water effects. It was amazing.
Maybe I should give it a quick re-install…
I remember liking it in the beginning, but being fatigued by the end.
Oddly enough I ended up pitching an expansion pack for the game to the Unreal guys. It was going to be the main character heading home, then getting caught in a sargasso in space where three different races had become trapped and were in a perpetual state of war. The hitch was that each side used the bodies of the enemy races as power sources for their weapons.
They liked the idea, but we were trying to start up a dev studio, and I don’t think our numbers were good.
Unreal was one of the few shooters that were simply too long. Besides, the silly Skaarj jump-dance to avoid being hit was just plain annoying. Good intro and beautiful environments, though…
I’ve started this game at least 3 times, and never been able to sustain my interest long enough to finish it. It’s still installed, and surprisingly, people are still playing it online.
I’ve got no use for the game after the 1st three levels. Quake 2, had a better plot, or at least more focus, than Unreal 1, and that’s saying somethin’.
The opening level scripted events and shiny surfaces, the magnificently vast outdoor level, (with a waterfall!), and the Skaarj intro are indelible gaming memories though.
It is funny in this day to read about people saying they quit a shooter because it went on too long(I am one of those people too) when we see so many shooters that barely last 6 hours anymore.
I remember my first “thats cool” moment in the game(besides the really big outdoor area). Going into that one room/hallway and being able to see that reflective floor the first time. I don’t think the game was truley doing any real-time reflection but it just looked so damn cool at the time I thought.
Unreal never grabbed me in quite the same way, but I’ll always have mad love for the franchise.
Except for 2003.
And Unreal 2.
And the Championships.
I’ll still put the original Unreal Tournament against any arena-style shooter, for two big reasons:
1 - AS-Bridge is probably the single best map I’ve played in any game, ever. (It was a user map and not a pack-in, but I still logged about a billion hours in the sniper towers trying to take guys out on the cliffs before they reached the shore.)
Wow yeah. That was an amazing map. Did they ever port it to UT2004? I also remember another user AS map that was great - Frostbite maybe? I know it had an ice theme.
I did some digging and found some good links. This site is by a guy who has made OpenGL patches for Unreal and Unreal Tournament which fully update the rendering code. With the patch it runs smooth and you can turn on AA/AF. The patches are found here: http://www.oldunreal.com/omp.shtml
Here’s the site for the mod that lets you play Unreal using the Unreal Tournament engine. It’s called Oldskool Amped. And it works great either with or without the OpenGL patch mentioned earlier.
Played U1 all the way through about a month ago. Low-poly issues not withstanding, it was amazing how the visuals on the game (mainly due to expansive level design) stand up today, especially with 4xAA etc at hi resolution. The description above of “ambient” gameplay hits it right on the head.
It certainly was beautiful but I couldn’t be bothered to finish it and the worst of all the multiplayer code for Unreal 1 sucked balls. By then Quake 2 CTF, LMCTF, and jailbreak had become my online crack fixes.
But man I’ll never forget the first time I walked outside of the crashed ship (Vortex Rikers?) and just stared in amazement of the graphics.
If you’re in the mood for nostalgia but don’t have the time or inclination to replay it, you can download a movie of someone busting through it here http://speeddemosarchive.com/GameList.html
The original UT plays like crap (even on a newer system) with an Nvidia card unless you patch the hell out of it. Once patched, it’s still an extremely playable game. Regular old domination is much more fun that UT2004’s Double Dom.
13 year bump for the 20th anniversary of Unreal (1998)!
Lazy Game Reviews (LGR) created an awesome video looking back at Epic and Digital Extremes first-go at creating a competitive 3D engine and FPS, which is well worth watching! I presume that most people prefer Unreal Tournament (I know I did) to the original, but I still had a great time with Unreal’s campaign. I’ll never forget the first encounter with the Predator-like Skaarj, when all the lights switch off, and you have a shootout in a narrow corridor jam-packed with colored lights as Alexander Brandon’s killer soundtrack roars. Only AVP 2, Condemned, and Resident Evil 2 provided me with comparable jump-scares!
Remember that fly-by menu intro (makes me so nostalgic)?
