Multiplayer based around different classes battling has been a successful formula. Whether it be as Strog or Humans in Quake wars to the Spy vs Mercenary setup of Splinter Cell. Completely unique skillsets competiting to try and make the fight on their terms. Each side exciting and engaging to play. So, three races must surely be a formula to a kick ass multiplayer experience in Aliens Vs Predator?
No; it’s shit.
No more review, it just is.
Stop scrolling, you’re not going to get a decent write up. Just move on and know this demo was shit.
Ok, you want details? Fine you sadist. Firstly and most importantly how the game controls; controlling humans feel like a clunky console game, predators are the same except they have many overpowered tricks and aliens…ugh, the aliens. Remember how fearsome they were in Ridley Scott’s memorable film? Or how in the recent hash up film Aliens vs Predator they would rip apart even a predator at close quarters? Well after playing this demo just put your head next to a powerful telephone mast and hope it erases any tarnishing of the Alien good name.
Controlling them feels like you’re a spider with advanced parkinsons disease, jerkily moving around and the camera shaking about horribly. Their main strength is supposed to be close combat and been able to move along walls as opposed to a horizontal battlefield. This is rendered pretty moot in a multiplayer match where the humans have motion trackers and the predators have advanced vision modes to be easily able to see you on the poorly designed map.
Now, killing predators as an alien. Crawl along the ceiling to them? Good plan, except they’ll blast their cannon in your vicinity and the blast radius knocks you off the ceiling. Engage them on the ground? They can lay mines that insta-kill you and shoot a boomerang at great range that also insta-kills you. Finally get them up close? Surely the Alien has super powerful meele? Nope. Like a kitten clawing at a terminator, it takes either two slow charge tail pokes or a crapload of claw attacks to take down a Predator. But if they see you this won’t happen, as their first meele attack sends you dizzy and the screen shakes violently, with you left unable to move or attack. Then so long as the Predator player isn’t a moron they just need to swipe at you a few more times and you’re dead. Surely then the stealth route? Sneak along a ceiling and take them out from above? Ah, if only. You see, bizzarely there’s no attack to kill them from above. All you can do is tail poke, which after the first one the predator will most likely jump back and use one of his one shot attacks to blast you. The only insta kill attack an alien has is a grab move, which locks the foe in place no matter their health and one shots them. But to perform such a move you need to be on the ground and behind your foe, waiting for the randomly occuring “E to Grab” to pop up.
So yes, the Alien is shit and the others aren’t much fun to play as. The map and models are ugly, with strange consoles littered about said that you do something to, but doesn’t seem to have any impact on the gameplay. A good example of multiplayer there chaps! I have no idea if the team deathmatch will actually be good when the game comes out, with co-ordinated strikes and objectives maybe this is what the game was lacking. Which just makes me wonder why Rebellion released this subpar deathmatch mode. As it is, I know this demo has put people off from buying the full thing even if the rest turns out to be incredible.
Fuck. Sounds like they turned the original xenomorph motherfucker into a zerg.
Ooh, harsh. I found it shallow, and I do agree with the feeling of sluggishness — people say turning off vysnc helps, but I play my games triple-buffered. And it’s worth mentioning that predators don’t start with the plasma caster, and otherwise they’re restricted to melee. And the motion tracker only tracks 180 degrees in front of you, leaving your back exposed. Apparently there is some kind of block/stun/counter system in place, the game just doesn’t tell you anything about it. And the map design is a bit too old-fashioned, it reminds me of a boxy Quake map, only with Alien infestation textures.
Maybe species deathmatch will be better. Rebellion has done wonderful things in patching up the original AvP (multiplayer, widescreen, etc), so maybe the new AvP team will treat its baby just as well.
Thanks, that clears a little bit up but it was still a very lacklustre demo. So was the point of those little panel things you could bite as an alien to give other races better weapons?
I stress again though, deathmatch is such a strange choice to show off multiplayer. I started off following a fellow alien around to try and stalk a predator together and was really surprised when he turned around and killed me. I thought he was just an annoying tker till it turned out he got a point for it.
I’ll try and share your hope that the new team have treated this baby better in other regards for the final release day and will patch it up.
I completely agree that vanilla deathmatch is a terrible way to show off a game like AvP. And I was confused about the control panels (hold E to…what, exactly?) as well. And I’ve never seen the counter system in action, I just saw in another comment thread that it does actually exist.
I think the thing that bothered me the most was the the console-ish auto-aim on melee — it reminds me of melee in Halo 2/3 where you instantly slide a few feet across the floor and shank the other player, no aiming necessary. Maybe I’m paranoid, but it screams of dumbing down for the analog stick to me.
In other news, I really have no idea what I think about Rebellion as a developer. Rogue Warrior was supposed to be godawful, yet they’ve patched up AvP Classic 2000 HD Remix Alpha rather beautifully. Weird.
The Predator uses the consoles to recharge it’s energy, the Alien can break them to deny them this.
Burn.
Yeah, poor Rebellion.
I can’t figure out for the death of me why they ignored the many, many wonderful things in AvP2 and decided to go with this piece of dung that’s obviously a console port and is designed to cater to the masses that saw the AvP movies and knew nothing of the games.