Totally Unreal

building, you get to blast your way down 30 cubicle-filled stories, fighting against tough adversaries like the fearsome Fat Office Manager Menacer and the Flame-throwing Facsimilator. Believe me, this would be a top seller among all the white collar-working minions).

The graphical display of UTGOTYE is amazing. While the graphics of Unreal Gold would be impressive on their own right, the difference between the visuals in that title and UTGOTYE is very apparent. That’s not a slight against Unreal Gold; it’s just that UTGOTYE contains some unbelievably colorful and crisp graphics. From the levels to the characters and weapons, everything is gorgeous. That’s in stark difference to what became normal in older FPS titles that preceded UTGOTYE like Doom I and II, Quake I and II, Duke Nukem, and SkyNET: poorly lit, blandly colored levels and production-line characters and creatures that started to look the same after a while.

The online play is where you can really separate these two titles. Playing UTGOTYE over GameSpy is the ultimate in ease and accessibility. Click on "join game" once you get into the game’s launch point and let your system take over from there to set you up in a kill-or-be-killed clash 30 seconds later.

There were very few latency issues during game-play with my 56K modem, which really made fragging fellow UTGOTYE gamers a rapturous happening. Bloody flesh, guts and insults sent flying at high speed is a FPS fan’s online dream become reality. Online FPS engagements aren’t much better than UTGOTYE.

Unreal Gold is almost the opposite gaming adventure of UTGOTYE and shines as a single-player game that actually has an acceptable back-story and lets you take control of a rare-for-FPS-game female heroine. While it has the same top level of game elements, it is without question better suited as a single-player undergoing. For me, trying to play online was a total disaster of Daikatana-like proportions. It took forever to load levels. At one of my many failed attempts to play Unreal Gold online, I waited for 30 minutes watching levels build before the loading crashed and brought me to where I started, having my PC desktop staring back at me.

Instead of sucking in all the pretty visual elements of the Unreal world, you’ll want to pay attention to your surroundings. Things can get a little scary at points when you turn a corner and unexpectedly run into one of the game’s frightening creatures of destruction. I was cruising along in one of the mineshafts late at night and jumped out of my chair a bit when I turned down a corridor only to be unexpectedly attacked by seven or so raptor-looking denizens, the Pack Hunters. They promptly chowed down on me like I was some kind of hero sandwich and sent me to a swift death.

Totally immersing you is the 3D alien world of NaPali and the prison starship that has transported you there. Each level is different from the previous one, so you’ll want to continue the game just to see what the next level looks like. And the famous Unreal weapons like the Flak Cannon, Rocket Launcher and Combat Assault Rifle gives you a great array of battle-ready armaments for you combating pleasure.

The Return to NaPali expansion pack adds some new multi-player (not that you can get online and play this as easily as UTGOTYE anyway) and weapon options to Unreal Gold. But nothing that really stands out as an impressive upgrade and in fact was somewhat of a disappointment to Unreal fans when it first came out.

You just can’t beat the deal here. Unreal Gold is definitely better suited for single-player action, while Unreal Tournament is a total blast online. If you don’t have the original version of either game, pick up Totally Unreal in your local software store’s bargain bin. Anybody new to the Unreal cosmos looking for some good FPS action (until Unreal II, Quake 4 and Doom 3 are released upon the gaming world) can’t go wrong with this.

- Lee Cieniawa