Unreal first playthrough, part 1 (OldUnreal 227j)
3Finally, we get to observe that one rock texture seen in half of the Quake maps ever created, in its original habitat!
Growing up, I somehow ended up with a CD for Return to Na Pali but never the original Unreal. Later I finally acquired Unreal Gold on Steam... but I still never played more than an entire level into either the base game or its expansion. Given how many Quake maps I've played that have been influenced in some way by Unreal, I'm long overdue to play it.
Part of why I never got very far into Unreal is the maps felt rather open and non-linear. Now that I have plenty of large, sprawling, and detailed Quake maps under my belt (to the point where I laughed at a Dread Templar review that complained the maps were too large), I figured I might have a better chance at not feeling overwhelmed by the openness of some of Unreal's early environments.
I didn't seem to be at all intimidated by the early outdoor maps this time around, so I'd count that as a success. If anything, I've been surprised how downright simple, and even empty, a lot of the more open areas feel, both in terms of enemies and overall level details. Granted, I'm only playing on Medium difficulty as I wasn't sure what to expect, so I don't know if there are greater numbers of enemies on hard/unreal difficulties, but it seems like Unreal is far more biased towards enemies that make themselves difficult targets, hit hard, and/or are extremely tanky, rather than relying more heavily on numbers as I'm used to with id's franchises.
While I'm not sure I'm a fan of the way Unreal balances enemies, I do find it interesting how the game sometimes encourages exploration (for example, in Harobed Village). I have managed to get a bit lost/confused a couple of times, but not in the types of areas I expected to. I'm certainly interested enough to see how the rest of the game pans out.
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