Aliens vs. Predator Catch-All

Which is annoying as hell. One the one game I played as a marine and more than once I will encounter two aliens/predators jumping on me trying to beat each other to the kill. I also got ganked by both aliens and predators at the same time.
It's a small satisfaction that I did manage to get a few of them while they were fighting each other.

haven't had time or inclination to try the demo yet. I loved AVP2 back in the day and was hoping this would be basically that with updated graphics. Sounds like I'll be dissapointed.

Tamren wrote:

One hilarious thing I have noticed is that there is a lot of "race loyalty". IE predators will not attack each other, aliens will ignore each other and so on.

Race loyalty? You mean Marines are intentionally not shooting other Marines? It's DEATHMATCH for cripes sake! Hmm, no wonder I finished so high despite sucking. I shot everyone!

I once turned a corner and blasted another marine with my pulse rifle. Then I stopped because I ran out of ammo. He just ran past me and didn't fire back!

This is just sad. I hope they take some feedback and turn this into some sort of passable game.

What's the word on the single-player experience? Or was this demo multi-only?

Deathmatch multi only.

Tamren wrote:

One hilarious thing I have noticed is that there is a lot of "race loyalty". IE predators will not attack each other, aliens will ignore each other and so on.

I think this is because people are looking for a little more depth than standard deathmatch, even if it's only team deathmatch. I've also found marines working together, watching each others' backs. The game's ALIENS vs. Predator, after all. Not ALIENS and Predator Free For All Violence Hour.

Steam refunded my pre-order, no problems. It's a little sad. I'm glad they were so willing and able to help me and all, but I really wanted this game to be good. AvP2 has a special place in my heart.

This was of some benefit to me:

Melee moves explained

It's a little weird to believe that it is possible for the Marine to "block" the Alien and Predator's melee attacks, but c'est la vie.

As well, the graphics in the above video are far superior to what we are seeing on the 360 demo (they are showing a 360 controller in the demonstration) which I believe means one of the three things:

1. They are using the PC version, but demonstrating how to do the moves on the 360 controller.
2. Kuddles is quite correct that they are doctoring up any PR material, misrepresenting the final product.
3. The demo code is indeed quite old, and Rebellion has made some improvements on it.

I'd guess 1).

The demo also mentions tat it s DX9. The final game is DX11 so pc graphics should improve.

The graphics are fine, great even, but they are lipstick on a pig as far as I care.

I could not find anyone to play online with for the demo.

Online demos are a terrible idea.

Did some more play. I kept getting into games with the same set of people. So either there are games ending/starting all the time or there are only enough people to fill one game in the entire world. Tried my hand at melee again. I think I have it figured out but there are a lot of better people than me on.

Light attack: Basic swipe. All melee hits are very damaging, you only need about 3-4 of these to take someone down.
Block: Block deflects light attacks.
Heavy attack: This one is confusing because if you use it with no one around the alien for instance does this quick tail stab. But when you have a target in front of you this actually has a "wind-up" time. Heavy attacks break through block. They also seem to stun enemies, marines will stumble and stop firing for instance.
Counterattack: Blocking an enemy will make them fumble, counterattacking with light or heavy seems to knock them down. If you follow up with light attacks this tends to be an easy kill, or just open fire if you happen to be a marine.
Stealth kill: This is the one where you get behind someone and grab them. Its kind of stupid because its not all all "stealthy" if people know you are there and you just strafe behind them. Leaves you vulnerable for about 4 seconds. Grabbing someone who is grabbing someone else does not save the original victim.
Trophy kill: I don't get it. This is a grab done against someone who is already down? I think? I triggered it once but I don't understand what I did to make it happen.
Alien Focus mode: I still don't fully understand this. Having this on will highlight enemies when they get close to you. If you make an attack this will cause you to make a charging leap-strike at that enemy.

The most frustrating thing about the alien for me at the moment is the jumping. In AVP 2 you could jump off any high surface and land on any particular patch of ground below you. Your success at this relied solely on your ability to judge distance and jumping arc. In the new game you can only "jump to surface" and only if that surface is close enough. There is no way to charge or jump into empty air as a way of getting around.

I'm trying to give this game a fair shake because it could be I am totally biased from nostalgia. This is NOT AVP3, for better or worse. (mostly worse) The problem this game has is that if you don't understand how to play it it sucks balls. And the demo makes no attempt to teach you how to play it.

Tips for playing marine:
- Why walk when you can sprint? There is a cooldown but it is so short as to be meaningless. By the time you stop running and look around for another target the timer will be up.
- Check behind you every 2 seconds. You may be tempted to look perpendicular to a hallway so that you motion tracker covers both direction. This will get you killed. As a marine spotting your enemies at a distance is EVERYTHING.
- Its a motion tracker, not radar. It will not detect stationary enemies, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't work on cloaked preds either.
- Don't bother with melee attack. If you hit the melee attack button, I will slap you. The chances of you blocking an enemy strike, let alone winning a melee fight are so slim you should just spend that time shooting blindly instead. The one exception is beating on someone trapped in a stealth kill. Saves ammo!
- Don't worry about ammo, guns are everywhere. You will find pulse rifles around every corner. Shotguns and rifle grenades around every other corner. There are a couple flamers and sniper rifles around too. In the demo, the smartgun is placed in the only open area big enough to use it, on the ledge.
- When in doubt hold the trigger down. Marine firearms do a crapton of damage. If a predator attacks you head on, there is no way he can avoid (or survive) a whole magazine worth of bullets.
- The sniper rifle is very powerful. Scoped it works great against preds trying to shoot you. Look for the red laser. Unscoped it can be used as a corridor sweeping carbine. One caveat, never use it against a moving alien.
- Shotgun IS your melee attack. Don't waste shots against targets too far away, your ammo is limited and reloading will get you killed. If you can spot your enemy within 15 feet and you can get even half your crosshair over him, hit secondary attack. A blast from both barrels of the shotgun will turn anything into chutney at that range.
- Don't step on acid puddles, aliens leave one every time they die.
- The basic pulse rifle will serve you well at all ranges. In close hold the trigger down and aim for the head. This will lift the muzzle flash a bit, and let you track the feet of your target. At long ranged use bursts and adjust your aim between them. Rifle grenades are an instant kill and easy to use. Great for countering sniping preds and any enemy who is below you.
- The smartgun is very hard to use, it blocks most of your view with a blue tinted window. But within this window the gun will auto track any target at any range. This INCLUDES cloaked predators. So the scouting ability is invaluable. The gun itself is a little underwhelming, it seems to do less damage than the rifle.
- Don't bother with the flamer, it sucks. The flame blocks your view even worse than the pulse rifles muzzle flash and at the range you will be using it the shotgun is far superior.
- Press secondary fire to triburst with the pistol. Don't use single fire its too slow. In fact don't use the pistol AT ALL if you have any choice.
- Hit melee to perform a rifle butt (or similar) attack. I wouldn't reccomend this because you movement speed is so slow that your chances of landing a strike are too small. Hold down the button to block. This will only repel light strikes.
- The marines health is divided into 3 bars. If you are missing even one of them, heal up. Health stims make you vulnerable for a couple seconds, so only use them if the motion tracker is clear.

Tips for killing the marine:
- Lie in wait ahead of him, or sneak up behind him. Never approach a marine from the front if you have other options.
- If you DO want to charge a marine head on, only do so as the Alien. While charging. And zigzagging. On the ceiling.
- Marines are squishy, light attacks will stun them, heavy attacks will knock them on their ass.
- If your screen is filled completely by a muzzle flash you are doing it wrong. Circle strafe is key.
- Focus mode attacks will make you "sticky" to the marine whenever you attack. This is generally a bad idea, if you attack from the front this will keep you in his line of fire.
- Its amazing how often marines will forget to check the ceiling.
- Motion trackers do not tell you if the enemy is above or below you. Take advantage of this.
- If you are cloaked and a marine spots you, attacking him head on while cloaked is the same as charging while uncloaked. Keep moving around him so he loses sight of you.
- Proximity mines on grenade spawns work well. Not every marine will be needing a new gun, or more health. But EVERY marine will try to pick up rifle grenades if he gets the chance.

May post alien and pred tips later.

Tamren, I think you've done more work documenting the game than Rebellion did. You should send them an invoice.

I honestly don't know what to make of this game anymore.

On the one hand, the demo has seriously cooled my interest in the game, and I was of the mind to wait for a drastic price drop before I picked it up.

Then I see this video and think that this is the way AvP is supposed to be done.

I played the demo, it's not as horrible as I thought but it's not that much fun either

I'm on the PC and the graphics look significantly inferior to the gameplay videos. Hopefully this is some super early code they're using

What the heck is this focus button you guys are talking about? Is it the button that predators use to leap, or "R"?

I really hate this muzzle flash on the marine even though I get it's so they don't have an ez-mode time killing melee units.

Also the sensitivity on the mouse control sucks. I cranked it up and it still feels super slow and unresponsive for the marine.

Maybe the game will be good, but I think this is going to be the case of a bad demo - regardless of the actual game quality - killing the game.

I haven't played much of the demo, but it did not seem as bad as I expected (lowered expectations FTW?). Definitely not that great _looking_ and it was deathmatch; not much new or exciting there.

I'm more with Dr._J - that video makes it look like what I was hoping for. There is an interesting environment (of course there would be some sort of entertainment facility on a colony, and what a great set of distracting lights and sounds), the graphics look MUCH better there (probably DX11), and it shows the good ol' hit location and dismemberment features will still be there.

Shoot those legs, Marine! They're a lot easier to kill when dragging themselves on the ground and you might even be able to get away.

Judgment still suspended.

Is it worth trying to organize a GWJ team-deathmatch (honour system) round? I didn't try it but there was a menu item for "invite friends"

Edit: Gah! When did they add in multiplayer support to AVP Classic 2000!? (On steam $4.99 USD)
Here goes yet another re-purchase. Curse you Valve!

Game Informer, king's of the 7 - 10 scale gave this a 5.25.

Just saying.

Burnt Toast wrote:

Shoot those legs, Marine! They're a lot easier to kill when dragging themselves on the ground and you might even be able to get away.

They do have a way of making things cinematic. There's something really cool about playing an alien and taking a blow that sends you sprawling on the ground, and you can see your flailing alien limbs scrambling to get back under you and your tail waving around and stuff. I... admit that I spent about a minute chasing my tail, yes. >_>

Sadly, that alone does not make it a good game. I'll definitely pick it up when it's on sale since everything I've seen points to a solid single-player experience. I'm just not expecting AvP2 anymore, which is really sad.

Tamren wrote:

In order to recharge you need to find those glowing little charge stations.

Is that what those are for? I just ran around breaking them (as an alien).

I'm actually OK with the predator being overpowered. I think he's supposed to be. He's not just a soldier or a drone, he's a hunter from a warrior race. It makes sense that he'd be good at it.

I really think they did themselves a disservice by not including any sort of documentation on how to play the game. I think people would have been less critical of the game if Sega/Rebellion told them how to play it.

LobsterMobster wrote:

Is that what those are for? I just ran around breaking them (as an alien).

Its the little rectangular panel with the glowing blue ring on it. Your probably thinking of lights. Thats what the alien heavy attack is for btw. If you use it out of combat, it makes you do a quick little tailstab. Use it to get rid of lights.

The predator is very powerful. But that is balanced because he is also the most technically demanding class to play. And he doesn't start with all of his tools.

Tamren wrote:
LobsterMobster wrote:

Is that what those are for? I just ran around breaking them (as an alien).

Its the little rectangular panel with the glowing blue ring on it. Your probably thinking of lights. Thats what the alien heavy attack is for btw. If you use it out of combat, it makes you do a quick little tailstab. Use it to get rid of lights.

The predator is very powerful. But that is balanced because he is also the most technically demanding class to play. And he doesn't start with all of his tools.

Yeah, that's not what I'm thinking of. I know what lights are and how to break them. You go up to the blue things as an alien and you can hold E to bite them and break them.

I got to play pred again. I get now why everyone says the pred is overpowered. They actually limit him to 2 players per game which should give you some idea.

How to play pred:
- R to cloak, there is no reason not to leave cloak on all the time. Every time you attack you will need to turn it on again. Cloak does not make you completetly invisible, even when stationary. Its mostly there to make you blend in at long range and prevent marines from gunning you down. At close range a moving pred is easy to spot, and aliens can always detect predators (even through walls) when close by.
- LSHIFT for focus mode, this locks you on target when fighting in melee. It also allows you to leap around. You can only leap to/onto a ledge. So you can leap to the edge of a pit, or leap up from the pit and land on the edge. This has limited range. Focus mode also highlights pickups and charge stations that are nearby.
- The predator has limited energy, all of his abilities except cloaking drain energy from this pool. In order to recharge you need to find those glowing little charge stations. This makes you vulnerable, and some of them are put out in the open. I hate this part because the swirling energy effect is so complicated it makes my computer chug.
- F to change vision modes. Blue is thermal vision and highlights marines. Green is alien vision and makes aliens glowing green and everything else black. There is no "predator" vision this time around, but thermal vision also works against them. It doesn't show cloaked preds, but moving cloaked preds aren't fully covered, and the exposed bits glow brightly under thermal vision.
- H is your heal ability, it costs about 30% of your energy and heals to full.
- Your secondary weapons are your pickups, pressing the key once will bring them up, press the key again to fire them.
- 1 is for plasma caster. Its basically a plasma turret that sits on your shoulder. When you hold the button down and target an enemy it will "lock on" as well as charge up to full power. You can also rapidly spam it as a sort of pistol. Plasma blasts do a lot of splash damage and stun. A fully charged blast is a one hit kill.
- 2 is for the chakram, its just a bouncy razordisk. Its a one hit kill.
- Both the chakram and plasma use the predators signature tri-beam targeting laser. This makes it really obvious where you are.
- 3 is for proximity mine, just hit the button to pull one out, and again to toss. Focus mode lets you see mines. These are probably a one hit kill, but I've never stepped on one, so can't say for sure. There doesn't seem to be a cap on how many you can place, but you are limited by energy.
- 4 is the hunting spear. It throws in a straight line and is also an instant kill. It doesn't need any energy.

The game is starting to get fun because I know how stuff works and I can use everything in a competent fashion. I managed to gun down 3 aliens in a row with the smartgun. I also managed to block a predator and take him out with my pistol!

Now THATS interesting. I had no idea aliens were capable. That really puts a lid on the predators because all of the abilities they get than could be considered "lame" are energy dependant. I'll have to try that. I wonder if they regenerate somehow, or just stay destroyed for the whole match.

I think this game could be a lot of fun coop. Imagine an 18 player goodjer versus match for instance. Thats 3 L4D versus games combined. But the demo is a really poor sell with its deathmatch limitation.

I went and looked up the preorder bonus. Its 3 special skins for your guys in multiplayer. The marine guy is fairly generic. The predator gets this special mask that is styled to look like an alien face. And the alien has blue highlights and a #6 on his forehead.
http://www.joystiq.com/photos/aliens...

They must regenerate, otherwise a single alien could zoom around and break everything, and suddenly the predator is food.

Of course this is the game where you can set up a conga-line of insta-kills, so maybe that's how it works.

It could be a goodjer game rule that you'll melee like a man, and not try to circle strafe into a insta-kill

Anyone reminded of those Jedi Outcast multiplayer sessions where people run backwards to try to backstab everyone? I used to have to kick them everytime they pull that crap

EvilHomer3k wrote:

I really think they did themselves a disservice by not including any sort of documentation on how to play the game. I think people would have been less critical of the game if Sega/Rebellion told them how to play it.

That's what it sounds like. I had a friend who was interested in this, tried the demo once as the predator, and said he didn't like it. Now I have to try and convince him to play with me so I can show him the ropes.