Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict

Unreal Championship 2 adds a new third-person gameplay and a complex hand-to-hand fighting system. But will series fans accept the changes?

Unreal Championship fizzled on the Xbox because its particular breed of lightning-fast FPS action didn't translate well to limited home controllers. So in an effort to cater to Xbox players, the designers of Unreal Championship 2 broadened the gameplay scope to emphasize hand-to-hand combat. Problem is, they created a whole new batch of problems in the process.

Flak in the Saddle
Unreal Championship 2 comes from a world-class graphics pedigree, and fittingly, it depicts some of the most excruciatingly detailed visuals ever seen on the Xbox. But while Unreal Championship 2 is amazing on a technical level, it's short on creativity and personality. The characters are an unlikable mob of generic alien warriors, robots, and Goth chicks clad in garish, glowing costumes. Even Mortal Kombat's Raiden (in a guest appearance) can't spice things up. What gives? Meanwhile, the environments flaunt plenty of sharp details, but instantly succumb to the dullest cliches of the genre. You'll trudge through industrial facilities, Egyptian temples, and neon-adorned space dungeons. They're pretty, but boring, boring, boring.

In a sharp departure from the PC titles, Unreal Championship 2's soundscape is just one big din: a mish-mash of electro-metal tunes, clanking noises, and the occasional boom, scream, or yelp. Past Unreal titles have showcased heavy-hitting audio, but Unreal Championship 2's sound falls way short. What happened?

Keepin' It Unreal
Unreal Championship 2 makes some fairly earth-shaking changes to the series' core gameplay, with mixed results. First and foremost is the new third-person camera view, which proves to be a primarily cosmetic change; players can swap back to a traditional first-person view at any time. But the emphasis on melee combat is a far more controversial decision. Unreal Championship 2's melee scheme heaps an alarming number of commands onto the Xbox controller--which, for a game as blindingly fast as Unreal Championship 2, is bound to cause confusion. The melee system is more satisfying than you might expect, but it's no replacement for the classic UT style.

Despite these spirited complaints, Unreal Championship 2 makes an excellent companion to Halo 2, particularly for Xbox Live addicts. Even though the game isn't what series veterans would expect, that's not necessarily a bad thing--familiarity, after all, breeds contempt. In the end, Unreal Championship 2 deserves big props for exploring intriguing new gameplay possibilities, but here's hoping the next installment comes down a bit closer to Earth.

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