Feature: AvP MP Demo Impressions
“Game Over Man, Game Over!!” That’s one thing you will not be having to say of the finished game judging by the demo released to day on the XBL Marketplace. If you are a fan of the Predator or Aliens franchise then I recommend you download the demo now and prepare for a slice of nostalgic heaven made real by those kind folks at Rebellion
How does it play?
Easy question – harder to answer. Whilst the demo is of course beta code, with the release date imminent the only thing that’s going to change at this stage is the effectiveness of weapons etc if one species is dominating the other too much. That said on the whole the game is very well realised into the AvP world and no class on Death Match dominates to much. In an 8 player match, only two predators can be chosen as they are the more powerful species the other six players must be a mixture of Aliens and Marines.
Being the Predator takes some skill, with three settings to your visual spectrum, you have to pick between infrared to see humans, a night vision type to see the cold blooded Aliens, and a third where you can kinda see both but in a tunnel vision way. Switching rapidly between them all in an environment where everyone is hunting everyone else is hard and getting a long killstreak seems to be nigh on impossible. The Predator can heal at the expense of energy that would normally power the secondary weapon, but not while cloaked. Quick kills can be performed if you can sneak up on an enemy and are bloody and brutal.
Being an Alien you may need to to take a few motion sickness tablets before playing as these guys will travel anywhere, at breakneck speed if you want them to. This makes them hard to shoot at but also hard to control. Quick kills are also available if you take an opponent from behind or above and like the predator you can perform quick and heavy Melee attacks. Whilst the majority will dislike this class due to the control difficulty I can imagine that if mastered this will be the best species to be, purely due to it’s speed and camouflage to the environment.
If you want to have waking nightmares however I recommend the Marine. I have never been so scared playing multiplayer on any game, I mean I didn’t know what to do – run, hide, keep my finger on the trigger and hope I hit something? Fleeting shadows look like Aliens, static discharge may be a predators cloaking device switching off so he can eviscerate me and to top it all off if I see a fellow marine I can’t say “Hi” as he’s going to blow my head off with his shotgun. The motion detector just serves to heighten my terror as all of a sudden they are freaking everywhere, shoot! SHOOT SHOOT ARgh!!
To be fair it’s only one mode with one map but if you are a fan, you should love the experience, the taste of what Rebellion will provide with the finished article. Personally I was looking forward to the single player experience and didn’t hold out much hope for the multiplayer aspect. After tasting the demo I am now excited as to see the other modes, hoping we see some ingenuity from the developers instead of the usual, with three different species they do not really have too much choice but regardless, they should be interesting at the least
Playing as the Alien is like strapping yourself into a human gyroscope XD
Being the Predator makes you feel like your the movie, and your only challenge is someone who hasn’t succumbed to nausea playing as the alien, but then this is mainly because they are low to the ground.
Also I have to agree with the Marine, playing as them is like the scene from Die Hard with a Vengence where basically you wear a sandwich board saying please kill me now.
But you know… they mostly come out at night… mostly. XD
I have to agree with all that you said, playing as a marine I nearly crapped my pants in a good way, but I really need to play each of the campaigns before I head online again as I don’t learn well under pressure and unfortunately I’m more like Lt Gorman than Ripley when it hits the fan
I waited weeks for it, waited about an hour for the download and install, then found out two hours later that it’s actually a patience game called “need 7 more players”. This is why I sold my copy of “Nazi Zombies”. I’ll pass.
Was I the only one disappointed in the quality of the graphics? In an age of Dead Space and F.E.A.R. games, shouldn’t everything be a little less boxy and more rounded?
I really didn’t like the controls for the Alien in terms of switching surfaces, although maybe I’ll get used to it with practice.
Definitely agree with your comments about playing as a Marine. That’s the best part of the demo, and very evocative of the Alien franchise movies. Spotting the Aliens up on the ceilings just about drove me bonkers!
Alien is easily my favorite class, and I got the hang of it pretty quick (though nobody can never truly get it 100%, right?). I learned that you can jump from surface to surface if you’re close enough, which is much better than just walking there.
One thing that I wish all classes could do is not take 30 goddamn seconds to do a kill move! Dying because I took the time to play with the guts of my beheaded enemy counts for 90% of my deaths. -_-
This game has a lot of potential. As one of my friends said about the dem, today, “It doesn’t suck.” With a few more tweaks (mainly to the graphics) and it should be a good game. The Aliens have been and I’m sure will be, my go to race. They’re just fun. Looking forward to some team multi-player, and hoards of Aliens chasing down everyone else.
I used to playa game called tremulous and tehre was a species of aliens that could crawl on the wall, through this i found playing as the aliens quite fun and easy with limetless potentiol. This demo is fun, but a bit unpolished and jumpy, but a blast to play