A overall fun action game, which seamlessly blends platforming, FPS, and fighting game qualities.

User Rating: 8.4 | Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict XBOX
By Prosthetix | Review Date:
As a fan of most of the previous Unreal Tornuament titles leading into Unreal Championship, I was expecting the repetive arena combat that I've come to expect from the series. I was pleasantly suprised to find that Unreal Championship was a completely redesigned experience. Most noteably was the implantation of a melee system into the game. This is a fairly easy to use device, but it is incredubly hard to master. Also in Unreal Championship is the ability to target an enemy. The targeting only serves to keep the enemy on your screen, all aiming and movement orientations will stay the same. Suprisingly deep is the best way to describe the melee system. You have the normal attack, which will do average damage, and the heavy attack, which is slower but more powerful. Nothing new. But, also inculded is the ability to jump in the air and use melee to hurl yourself foward, hurting enemies as you collide. All of the above attacks are completed via the right trigger. But, should you pull the left trigger, you can deflect bullets, lasers, rockets, what have you. And, with practice, you can tap the left trigger at the right time to reflect the shot back at the owner. And believe me, there is nothing more satisfying that hitting a sniper with his own shot, or seeing a player attempt to dodge thier own rocket's guidance system.
Pull the left and right trigger simultaneously to activate your weapon's energy shield, capible of absorbing energy and melee attacks, although explosives will still do some damage.
Couple that with the ability to double jump, and to spring off of walls and other vertical surfaces, and you have a controlled chaos of swords, rockets, lasers, and, of course, dismembered body parts (staying true to the Unreal Tournament dynasty).
An extreme change from previous unreal games is the weapon system. A player can only carry his/her standard pistols, a energy weapon, and an explosive in the entire match, and weapons are chosen previous to combat. This leads to becoming attached to a single set of weapons, while knowing practically nothing about the others. Of course, a veteran player will be versed in all sets, as to exploit the weaknesses of the reaper's toys.
Weapons are varied very widely, from the saw-blade launching Ripjack, to the lifeform launching Biorifile. The latter is a very interesting idea; a gun that fires sentient blobs that hop toward a target. It can be charged to launch a larger, more damaging blob.
And my favorite, the amazing (for lack of a better word) "trimary" fire. Giving you a third style of devestation, this is an innovative item indeed. As an example, the rocket launcher fires a single rocket with a tug of right trigger. Hold left trigger and you can load three rockets, and as the final warhead is loaded, they launch. But, while still holding left trigger, if you were to tap right trigger, the three rockets split into six spiraling rockets, allowing much more area to be covered, but the same amount of ammo to be used.
There are many more little cookies to do in this game, like the ability to use the pistol's secondary fire to stun your opponent, then using a melee weapon to do a Mortal Kombat style fatility, ordered button tapping and all.
And on the topic of Mortal Kombat, let me just add that due to the Midway ownership, there is a secret character who is guarenteed to "shock" you.

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