Welcome to the Unreal Ops Devastation Review! I have decided, like all things we do here, to be a little different. This is my first attempt at writing up a game review. Rather than being a be all-end all review, I thought this should be more of an overview of the game. One thing I have noticed about some gaming sites is that they take out all of the fun of playing because they tell you too much. I am going to try and change that with this review. I am going to cover the basics of the game such as gameplay, graphics, and storyline. I am not going to spoil the ending or get into how I would have created the game.

The game was created by Digitalo and uses the Unreal Warfare engine. Here is the storyline of the game from the game's website:

"On a future devastated Earth, powerful, corrupt corporations control remaining technology and rule what's left of society. Pacification Squads, a brutal private police force, maintain order for the corporate syndicate.

The only hope for freedom is a small group of Resistance fighters made up of gang leaders, mercenaries and ex-military operatives. As the Resistance leader you must assemble your army and travel the globe, restoring peace and sanity in a very dangerous world."

Now I know some of you are going to think this game sounds like the 12 Monkeys movie or the Fallout game. That may be true, but this neo-Apocalyptic theme hasn't really been done to death. After you fire up the game for the first time you will see that the whole look is definitely gray and moody. However, it does show off the kick ass color possibilities of the Unreal Engine.


As you can see by the screenshot above that even though the colors are dark the visual effects in the game are very good indeed. The flame effects in Devastation are some of the best I have seen in ANY game to date. The skyboxes are typical Unreal in fact they look pretty realistic. While your chasing EVE, the lab tech, you will notice that even though the game features Counter-Strike style weapons you move infinitely better. I know that people can't double jump in real life but you can sure as hell do more movement than most 'realistic' shooters let you do. The movement felt just about right compared to real life. That meant I knew I was going to like this game.

Probably the second thing you will notice about this game is the environments and how well you can interact with them. The attention to detail is pretty amazing in the game. If you come by fire you will take damage and if you are on a slippery surface you will slide (see pic below).


You can pick up items and throw them this includes being able to break bottles. You'll notice that the Karma engine really is starting to mature. In the screenie below we have a mop bucket that you can push or shoot around.


I definitely like the direction that games are going into as far as the environments surrounding the characters. While I understand that these kind of details add to the length of development time. It is definitely worth the wait to enhance the game. I want to show you one more example of the graphics before we get into weapons. Below is a screen shot of the fog interacting with a light. While you can't shoot through the fog like you could in Unreal Championship it still looks very damn realistic.



Let's move on to the weapons of the game.