Aliens vs. Predator Comments by Dan Pearson

This game serves only one purpose for me; to keep me busy until Aliens: Colonial Marines is released. I hate the whole predator concept. Crap movies, crap monster. It's like mixing Mr Bean with Mr Bond (and yes, I know the two actors have met in a Bond movie, and look how that turned out!). There are more iconic sounds, visuals and atmosphere in Alien lore. Plus the Alien series feels somehow more realistic. I'm biased, I've just found any movie with Predators in poorly written, acted or directed.

Quite looking forward to this! Hopefully it can invoke the fear of the first one. Multiplayer should be pretty exciting too!

One of the things that AVP 1 on PC had over AVP 2 was better level design when playing as the Alien. In AvP 1 the rooms (from memory anyway) had quite high ceilings, lots of dark patches, there were many more lights you could knock out, which really empowered the player to take their time as the alien and set up kills from above, without being seen. It was an amazing feeling because you really felt like you had all the aces and plenty of options in any given area. I remember playing the demo as the Alien before the full game came out, and even that demo area could be replayed loads of different ways, taking your time, trying different ways of killing the humans.

In AvP 2 I remember thinking that the design of the levels for the Alien really cut down on those options. Many lights were behind barriers or in fittings meaning that you couldnt break them...the ceilings tended to be lower meaning when crawling across them you would get seen much more easily and in general it tended to break down much more quickly into "shit, i've been seen already, charge straight down the corridor before i get gunned down".

The atmosphere in AvP 1 was great too. Haunting choral music for the alien campaign, the entire first level of the Marine campaign having no aliens at all, just pure build-up, and in general the lighting they used was fantastic. Seemed much better than the Lithtech engine used for AvP 2.

kanga - last tiime I checked, the cinema doesn't come with a pause button, which forces you to go at the filmmaker's pace. Which is one reason why a good film at the flicks will always be a better experience than at home. The point that they're getting at is that since quicksave got implemented, game designs have compensated, generally resulting in quick death overkill and too much checkpointing, and bl**dy self regenerating health. A save/quit to menu is fine, but save/walk round corner/fight/die/quickload/try again cycle is no fun, and games made to deal with that are also no fun.

A save/quit to menu is fine, but save/walk round corner/fight/die/quickload/try again cycle is no fun, and games made to deal with that are also no fun.

Speak for yourself - I like to save anywhere I can. There's little I hate more in gaming than having to replay sections. But then I do have enough self-restraint not to ruin games for myself by saving at every corner.

There's plenty of games with quicksave that didn't "suffer" or have the fun ruined by quicksave at all - I'd go so far and say that if a game needs the meta-mechanic of a missing save function to make it more exciting, something's wrong with it in the first place. It's a crutch at best.

AvP 1 on the PC rocked. To be honest, they could just update the graphics and I'd gladly buy the same game. I played the singleplayer as a marine - the beeping on the scanner was absurdly intense, as was the music. No other game has made my palms sweat quite as much or my heart beat quite as fast.

I remember watching the E3 demo walkthrough. I was, and still am, a little bit worried about the future of this title. Still, it's early on, and I hope to any and all divine entities in existence that it will be good.

@homerbert
"Is there any reason the "No save" crowd wouldn't just have a bit of self restraint and not use the quicksave button? Woulnd't that be better than demanding that everyone like to play the game the way they like to play it."

is their a gamer alive with the self-discipline to refrain from quicksave were it available in tough games like AvP (pre patch) or Goldeneye 64 (on 00 agent mode)? those games were brutally hard, but were all the better for it. Goldeneye 64, 00 Agent mode would be absolutely trivial with quick save, and what about shmups? or racing games? if you need to take a break then pause!

i think the FPS genre has unfortunatley been lumbered with quicksave as some kind of necessity, when it totally isn't. if the difficulty level spikes, or the levels are too long, then the problem is bad game design, not a lack of quicksave.

Milton Keynes FTW!

Game looks cool too...

I managed to complete the game (including bonus levels) on director's cut pre-patch, but I don't think I've ever played a game longer or harder in order to achieve it! The marine levels and the last predator level (the one with the waterfall) were the nastiest.

I must admit the fun level was dimmed a lot by ~50th attempt at a level, especially as part of being successful relied on luck - some runthroughs had significantly less enemies attacking than others at tricky points - but the sense of achievement at the end was still immense. Even so I think the main reason I didn't install the patch was because I didn't have a net connection at my student accommodation - unthinkable nowadays I'd guess!

Including a director's-cut difficulty level with no saves but keeping savegames in the lower difficulties seems like common sense to me!

I want this game.

"There's plenty of games with quicksave that didn't "suffer" or have the fun ruined by quicksave at all - I'd go so far and say that if a game needs the meta-mechanic of a missing save function to make it more exciting, something's wrong with it in the first place. It's a crutch at best."

I think the jury's still out on whether it's the missing quicksave or the present quicksave that would fit the definition of meta-mechanic the best, though. :)

--

By the way, the comments system doesn't seem to work. perfectly reasonable opinions being given -1s because people disagree.

That minus button isn't meant to be pushed when you disagree, people, it's meant to be pushed when someone does not contribute to a topic in a meaningful and grown-up manner.

It ain't that hard.

Argh they've put in another Vasquez like character? What is it with the AVP franchise and ripping off characters FROM THEIR OWN SERIES!

They even ripped off Ripley twice with the first AVP film and again in the second (this time complete with Newt rip-off too). The originals of these characters exist in the same universe! Be original and come up with some new characters or just use the ones that already exist in this universe that has been created for you!

Other than that - game looks great.

MP Mode where one player is the Predator with all the fancy toys and the rest of the players as a squad of marines would be very nice. Can just imagine sitting up high and dropping down to chop them up one by one.

Multiplayer in AvP2 was brilliant, especially survivor mode! Everyone starts the round as a marine, in a pure deathmatch setting. The first player to die respawns as an alien, and from that point on it's marines versus aliens. Each marine that dies respawns as an alien - until there's just one poor marine left, running around trying to fend off a horde of aliens and change their underwear as a result... One of my favourite multiplayer gaming experiences, ever.

Oh and I hope they don't nerf the Predator - they're meant to be uber-killers. The little touches to AvP2 multiplayer, like the Predator's eyes flashing when it changed vision mode (even when cloaked), were really well done.

I loved the first two.

I also fear Alien deeply.

/shudder

Looking forward to this very much. The first AVP was an amazing experience, and the sound design was top notch. Off the top of my head, I can only think of Dead Space coming close with regard to using sound to scare the willies out of you as well as this game did. Oh, System Shock 2 as well of course.

"...did nothing to endear me to Geiger's scampering Xenomorphs."

It's Giger, not Geiger. Everyone gets that wrong :p

First two games scared the hell out of me way back when, and those screenshots have me cacking it already. Game over indeed.

Word to the wise: retain a copy of your rose-tinted spectacles regarding the originals (or the first one at least). I recently decided to dig it out and replay it but I was disappointed at how clunky and ugly it all was. Not the terrifically dark and brooding stealth masterpiece that I had lodged in my memory.

At least this is guaranteed to be better than AvP: Extinction. What a half-baked pile of crap!

And just as an aside, aren't we overdue an Live Arcade remake or Capcom's AvP arcade game?

In fact, just thinking about it makes me want to dust off my consolized CPS-2 right now... hmmm... the only question is, hunter or warrior?

I quite agree with you, JensonJet. Actually, I just, awesomely, rescued you from a post count of -8! How great is that?

hm yes the jaguar title was awesome in its days, so was the first pc iteration (2 was graet too, but no random enemy spawns = no scarey). Great that the reviewer knows the material.

And no, I think they should just make it incredibly hard with no quick save optiosn and the random spawns (quicksave can't work with random anyway). I remember the limited save options on the hardest difficulty for avp on the pc. It rocked my world. If people have problems with a game's difficulty they should reduce difficulty to easy. It's really that simple!

@ schachmatt
Yes I only owned AVP1 and I played it so much I was able to clear each level without any saving. I was helpful remembering what badies were where.
Anyone remember the Predator unlockable "falling through space" thing where you had to use the grapple as the level rotated?

"chitinous murder-beasts that impregnate people with their foul spawn"

sounds like a saturday night out in Belfast with the lads...
:)

I used to love lunch time AVP in the office back in the day.
favourite mode was where you start with 1 alien and the rest marines and then you a last man standing match to be the last non-alien :P
some priceless gameplay moments