Ya, I think the engine, the game is incredible, and they obviously worked really hard on it. With the small additions to the game over all, it's very "solid feeling".
I do get the EAX crashes, pain in the butt.
But I will still say sucked, not in a rude way, but in a complete disappointment way. It's not of the expectation mentioned so much, it's of the original Unreal, coming from Vaporware, really expanding on FPS possibilities, and creativeness. That Unreal changed the "same ole boring fps" into something more exploring, and fun etc. Unreal2 (kinda like a car)really had alot of engine power, but the model and design(story) engineering went way back dated, no progress forward with the effort put behind the engine.