Just when I thought the melee stuff would ruin this game, it provides a great new twist on the original formula.
But surprisingly, the third-person mode isn't really that bad. Actually it's rather good. I had to admit, I wasn't really fussed on the first championship, I thought that Unreal didn't really suit the Xbox, but I was still honour-bound to pick up Liandri Conflict because of sheer loyalty to the franchise. And since Unreal has moving increasingly fast into a sort of mythical art deco groove, this daring twist actually enhances the formula of Championship and amps up the adrenaline in a way I didn't honestly think possible. It's one thing to run around with a gun, but on Xbox at least it's quite another to put your gun away and leap off walls with two long elegantly crafted swords in hand. I'm not sure if this feature will work if it's ever brought to a future PC instalment, but on this console it works wonders.
The third-person mode is often a lot more fun than the first-person, which hasn't changed much since the letdown of the original Championship; often I've found myself switching on the "All Melee" mutator and simply playing the game like some kind of futuristic Ninja Gaiden crossed with the X-Men. Also I cringed at the adrenaline-powered functions - the "Heal" and the "Nimble", but these stupid powers are actually decent additions and they adapt well to the battle situation you're in. This actually introduces a tactical element to Unreal, something that sounds really really awkward, but thinking actually makes a change from the stellar no-brained gunfighting.
And even if the third-person mode gave me a hefty sigh of relief, it's not all fantastic. I found the controls to be sometimes bewildering and it's easy to forget what buttons do what in this game, often making you do the wrong action at the wrong time. And sometimes the third-person fighting can feel awfully one-dimensional, as the AI doesn't do much but endlessly slash at you until you explode into a scarlet shower of internal organs and arterial mush. You can do interesting things, yes, but the AI genuinely stays on the ground and chases you until you die. Another stupid thing is that the game encourages you "to bring a knife to a gunfight." Unless you want to learn the hard way, please don't. Because a knife simply doesn't work against a drooling psychopath with a Flak Cannon.
And if Epic hasn't added enough interesting features to an already feature-doused game, there's some new game modes that are quite intriguing. The first of these is Nali Slaughter, where you finally get to splatter those hateful religious four-armed freaks from previous Unreal games - against opponents, with a melee weapon. It's very very enjoyable to make a Nali turn into a soaring blob of mashed gibs after he helplessly runs away from you like a scared chicken. Hahaha you feel so evil when you perform a grossly complicated attack against some innocent priest thing.
Another addition is the decent Overdose, even though I don't fundamentally play this one much - it's about getting to some strange ball before anybody else and putting it into a goal, rather like some demented game of soccer except the opposing team happens to have Ripjacks and razor-edged staffs. Yay.
So Unreal Championship 2's core gameplay engine is quite a departure from the series, and it might have alienated some really devoted hardcores of the franchise, but there's still a lot of familiar content in this game as well. One example is the artistic visual style. It's not that much different from the excellent tech demo 2003, or the opus that is 2004, it's still got that awkward mythical Greco-Roman edge. Some arenas are recycled from previous games as well, one example is the classic "Tempest" from the original Tournament. But to be quite honest, while these graphics work well with the new edge Championship has, they're just nothing on PC versions or even other Xbox shooters like Halo or Far Cry Instincts. Sometimes the graphics are quite poor and uninteresting, but there is the ridiculous variety in the environments that Unreal always has.
And if I'm not wrong, some of the audio is featured in other Unreal games as well, and there's some classic taunts from previous instalments as well, along with some genuinely amusing new ones. And, for the first time, there's an actual single-player plot [cue tsunami of gasps from audience] and the cutscenes and voice-overs in it are quite well good, even if the actual storyline is absolute balls, featuring a humourless slimeball Anubis and his definitely-not-flat-chested ex-girlfriend Selket, who barely has anything to preserve her modesty, as you might have seen by the stellar box art.
And now I've been rattling on for way too long, but the trouble is I'm bored again and ill as hell. I think I've covered everything new, good, bad and ugly on this game, and now I move on to maybe the most important paragraph in the entire review, as I know most people usually skip to the last part of a review to find the final decision of the author. Yes, you impatient people, Unreal Championship 2 is a great game, that could have got superb if Epic hadn't bogged it down with overly complicated melee combat. The third-person perspective is a great twist on the original formula even if it is sometimes way too sophisticated, and requires extremely good finger reflexes. If you want a substantial shooter with some great multiplayer, let me point you in the direction of this. Or Halo 2. Or Far Cry Instincts. Or Timesplitters. Or Rainbow Six 3. Or Halo 2. Wait, have I already said Halo 2? Anyway, I'll say it again. Halo 2. The first Championship. Halo 2... no... yeah, Halo 2...