Preview of new AvP game

[Spawn_Retard]

This game is a xbox title that i love. i gave it a go PC and hated it. Why? The keyboard is just slow and most of the default key layouts just dont make sense.

After tinkering with a coustom layout for over several games i just got frustrated on how actions didnt feel natural from the button i assigned them.


I'm in no way a xbox fanatic, but i do own one, and i did put something like 5-7 hours into the demo because it was just that fun, when you compare to the PC demo, i played it 3 times.


What i see is most peoples attitude to the gameplay is that they dont agree with how easy it is to be silently killed. I guess i gave the game itself more of a chance because i wanted it to be good, but when you understand that you need to play like the species that you are playing as, and not just some other generic first person shooter where you rely on what you can see infront of you.

For example i hate when people bash the game because they were beaten badly as all three species because they had no clue how to use them. A predator has three main vision modes that you need to use wisely because if you dont, you have worse vision than a marine. Same applies for the marine, dont continuesly use your headlight or you look like a small christmas tree, and always keep an eye on your motion tracker.


The single campaign does address this, as each campaign goes through a tutorial of each species.

It's also common to see high ranked and low ranked players not even attempted the campaign and you wonder why they have gripes with it.

TL;DR its pretty complex game that you need play the tutorial to understand fully, also the campign is mega short, and felt like 90% of the dev's teams effort was spent on the marine campaign

For someone who likes the series : 7-8/10
For someone who does not like the movies series or games : 5/10

[Spawn_Retard]

This game is a xbox title that i love. i gave it a go PC and hated it. Why? The keyboard is just slow and most of the default key layouts just dont make sense.

After tinkering with a coustom layout for over several games i just got frustrated on how actions didnt feel natural from the button i assigned them.


I'm in no way a xbox fanatic, but i do own one, and i did put something like 5-7 hours into the demo because it was just that fun, when you compare to the PC demo, i played it 3 times.


What i see is most peoples attitude to the gameplay is that they dont agree with how easy it is to be silently killed. I guess i gave the game itself more of a chance because i wanted it to be good, but when you understand that you need to play like the species that you are playing as, and not just some other generic first person shooter where you rely on what you can see infront of you.

For example i hate when people bash the game because they were beaten badly as all three species because they had no clue how to use them. A predator has three main vision modes that you need to use wisely because if you dont, you have worse vision than a marine. Same applies for the marine, dont continuesly use your headlight or you look like a small christmas tree, and always keep an eye on your motion tracker.


The single campaign does address this, as each campaign goes through a tutorial of each species.

It's also common to see high ranked and low ranked players not even attempted the campaign and you wonder why they have gripes with it.

TL;DR its pretty complex game that you need play the tutorial to understand fully, also the campign is mega short, and felt like 90% of the dev's teams effort was spent on the marine campaign

For someone who likes the series : 7-8/10
For someone who does not like the movies series or games : 5/10



Posting again because I love how this forum hides posts.

Sort it out. Jesus.

[Gota]

Didnt have any issues with keybinds at all..
Game is ok but is pretty much a graphical face lift and not much more.

[Master-Athmos]

Ok I finished the Marine campaign and if you don't mind the ending it was pretty good. I hopped over to the Predator now but I think I might quit at this point. The entire concept around him is stupid imo - it starts with not always being able to regenerate the power and especially ends with the stupid battle concept...

Seriously what were they thinking to implement this stupid first person beat em up? Either I don't get the idea behind it or it's plain stupid. It's more like you're constantly watching a premade video sequence where you have to click at the right spot. You're of course locked to that target and thanks to the intense head-bobbing and maybe even additional motion-blur you don't see shit of what's going on around you. Fighting aliens also is pretty boring - just interrupt their strong attack with a light punch and after hitting them for two times don't continue as they'll always block and counter but block for yourself. Then repeat as said - plain stupid...

Trophy kills also pretty much are useless crap. They just take ages and probably are the most stupid thing you can do. With aliens around it doesn't seem that bad as their AI tends to not get close asap after all and so you probably won't get hit more than once. For Marines that's different as they'll all start shooting. I hoped for a fast & clean stealth kill when approaching marines from behind which aren't alarmed yet but you just get to see the same animation over and over again...

I guess they really fucked up this game for me...

[Pxtl]

Did anybody else out there play AvsP 1? How does it measure up vs that? I'm not hearing things I like about the melee-combat system.

[Spawn_Retard]

Did anybody else out there play AvsP 1? How does it measure up vs that? I'm not hearing things I like about the melee-combat system.

the melee system in the first one was basic and worked really well, in the new one they over complicated the issue by trying to give more than just one attack, being more realistic to the race you are playinnng.

In short, no its kinda bad imo, and jarring on the eye when you see a alien go from prone to standing up in one glitchy animation rather than it looking fluid

[Master-Athmos]

It's like this now:

When using your blades (yes now each arm has one) a left click does a simple & fast attack pretty much what the former AVP games had when left clicking. A right click does some sort of a charged up attack. Unlike the former games you don't charge your attack but it's one attack with a long animation. So you cannot abort the charge up and simply hit the enemy but you have to wait for the animation to complete (which feels like it takes 3 seconds). I haven't found a real use for it yet - it might be good as a first strike where you can make incoming aliens running into it but apart from that I found it to be pretty useless...

The new thing is that when you hold both mouse buttons you sort of cross your blades and can block enemy punches that way. Only charged attacks can break a block and as the aliens also have a pretty long animation for that it's easy to simply quit blocking and do a light left click punch which cancelles the charged attack...

The big problem now is that you don't stay free with your view and your controls. Once you get into close combat - i.e. once you begin to hit the enemy sort of an auto control takes over. You keep focused on that single enemy and automatically e.g. do a step forward after hitting your enemy which goes a step backwards due to a "hurt animation". Of course there also has to be fancy headbobbing and so it's like you're watching a premade shaky cam animation. Once that starts I tend to lose sight on all other enemies around (as if those damn aliens sometimes aren't hard to spot anyway) and I also have a hard time at seeing what the alien does leading to me somtimes missing to block...

I actually have no real concept for those melee combats yet. Simply spamming left clicks doesn't work as the aliens only can get hit two times and then block themselves and start punching back. So I usually just hit them for two times, immediately block and well start hitting again. I have no clue if that's the way to go as I read that you can do sort of a combo where you get a charged right click attack pretty much for free without that endless chargeup animation. I don't know how to achieve that though as everything after my 2nd hit gets blocked...

[Spawn_Retard]

sounds like your not giving the game actual time, and realising the combos you need to do.

counters are extremly usefull against noobs because all they do is spam light attack.

heavy attack has its uses as its unblockable and usally leads to a grab move.

This is epic for marine users who block anything that comes to close.


However it does take time to charge up and thus making it easy for someone to shoot you straight on.


The game relies on a rock paper scissor system where anticapating your enemies every move is vital to get kill streaks and overall be awesome at the game.

[Master-Athmos]

heavy attack has its uses as its unblockable and usally leads to a grab move.

I got the impression they can get aborted when you get hit by a light attack? Is that different for the Predator? At least when fighting the aliens and they start to do that heavy bite attack I simply can do a light attack and their attack gets aborted. As the animation is extremely obvious and takes very long you even have lots of time to give up an eventual blocking pose of yours and simply hit the enemy...

Using that strong attack against marines often is suicide anyway as when they have a shotgun and use the secondary firing mode which puts out two shots at once you're next to instant dead anyway...

[Master-Athmos]

So I hear the PC users won't get the new mappack for free but have to buy it as DLC? Wow - lot's of bugs, missing features and imbalances in the multiplayer mode and they already start a nonsense like this so it's going to be getting kicked from the server once it plays one of the new maps...

I guess there even won't be servers which just play the "old maps" as even with dedicated servers you just get stupid console like options which actually means next to no options whatsoever...

They really try to ruin their playerbase in every way possible...

[Spawn_Retard]

torrent the maps ftw

[1v0ry_k1ng]

this game is ace multiplayer on the xbox. it just feels completely kickass to get some mates in a party with voice coms and crank into a species deathmatch as marines. everything is terrifiying- you hear someone scream over the voicecom, and flash your lights around to see a predator tear out a marines spine then leap out of sight into the darkness. you all huddle into a corner- blibs are suddenly all over the motion tracker.
'they are almost on top of us- we should be able to see the motion blurs by now!'
too late, we realise they must be aliens and look up; aliens boil down off the roof and dismember everyone. I scream horribly into the mic and roll around on the floor as an aliens little mouth busts into my skull; cool story bro

these games were always about the multiplayer, singleplayer is just a tutorial. once you get good, species deathmatch with people you know is an experience like no other.

[Master-Athmos]

and flash your lights around to see a predator tear out a marines spine then leap out of sight into the darkness

Don't use the flashlights except for the rare extremely dark parts of a level. Also if you let a pred or even alien do a stealth kill and let it get away with that you have to be pretty blindfolded...

You actually also would be lucky when getting to a Predator who is going into close combat because usually when being in a group and playing against a decent one you suddenly see a red laser and bang bang at least two got killed by the disc. The Predator then sprints / hops away leaving you pretty much helpless. Especially on Temple it's like impossible to play a nice match of Pred Hunt when not having 15 marines around. I once met sort of a pro player and it was just awful although even partially funny as that map is made so perfectly well for the Predator...

In terms of general gameplay on the PC: Well we now got some dedicated servers which still are advertised like beta versions and behave like that. There are about zero options and you very often get connection issues dropping you from the game. It's just sad. Apart from that multiplayer in general lacks certain totally basic things like after joining a match being able to choose your race at first. When joining a running game you just get auto put to a team and I can tell you I suck as alien...

In general when getting into it multiplayer still is fun although I enjoyed AVP2 more for several reasons. First there are too few maps which also often are too small for 4v4v4 or more games. That sucks for a game with only a rather short singleplayer campaign and actually centered around the multiplayer part. It also surprised me that they released the game with those huge imbalances. The Predator is too strong and the alien is too weak unless it's able to use the laughingly overpowered tail spam while crawling on walls / ceilings. Marines are sort of ok and just would need some tiny changes...

My general complaints / needed changes look like this:

• Predator disc needs to target like in AVP2 and getting it back has to consume energy - the current guided, no cost, one hit kill thing is ridiculous
• Predator mines also are a tad too strong and should be made more visible - you don't have the time to check every piece of ground for those things - you have to watch for cloaked Predators or Aliens which are hard enough to spot at a distance
• During sprinting the cloak needs to be less effective - as the Pred runs faster the cloaking should be less effective. Currently it's about impossible as a marine to spot a Pred while sprinting.
• Aliens need some kind of jump like in AVP2 again. They are too weak and most of the kills they actually get work due to stealth kills (by e.g. just running around a person and grabbing him from behind which totally is possible when playing on PC - at least for Marines which sort of get blind due to the Pulse Rifle flash and the lower right part of the screen being "blocked" by the weapon model)
• Marine smartgun just should target things when they actually move, maybe should get a little more damage - you just have 100 rounds anyway, no second weapon and cannot sprint while using it
• Marine scoped gun should show cloaked Preds in any distance but not show stuff through walls - the field of view is small enough in zoomed mode anyway which recently makes it useless
• Marine flamethrower - it needs to get useful for anything. You're far better off using the Pistol than this piece of crap. It even doesn't really set things on fire for a long period like in AVP2 also taking some sight away for the enemy. Secondary fire mode has the same level of fail as it makes the ground burn for like 4 seconds and that's it.
• Alien wall tail attack mustn't stun. It's madness as any target you hit with that is dead due to the long stun.
• As a general thing I really would like to be able to turn off the stealth kills. They are just silly like as Marine I see something coming from behind, turn around, see an Alien doing an animation and may even be able to fire one pulse rifle shot but then get stealth killed as it got activated when the Alien still was like 6-8 meters away. It's plain stupid and in a ranked game simply is spammed because it gives you XP and one kill - no one cares if you'll die afterwards due to the long animation. As an alternative maybe only give the kill when the animation ends and let another playing killing the Alien / Pred abort the stealth kill.
• Fix the goddamn heavy attacks. Especially for the Predator it's bullshit. He can activate it from 6-8 meters away and will slide around according to the player. Plus once the animation is started it's a 100% safe hit. No matter if an Alien ran away or like a stone door closed on Pyramid. The hit bends around corners, goes through walls, simply is glitched. It often also occurs when you should have killed the Pred before he finishes leading to e.g. a Marine and a Pred killing each other.

My 2 cents...

[Spawn_Retard]

Sorry i didnt read your massive wall of text, but really, this game is 4190842109804109x better on xbox.


Edit:

I read your post, and theres so much that isn't correct in the post and i cba quoting all of it though

[Master-Athmos]

Actually most of what I've said is common sense and you'll find most of the things being bitched about in the Sega or whatever forum. The balance problems don't make it unplayable but in the end give the Predator the by far most advantages (many distance one hit -> kill weapons often without any energy use, cannot be thrown down, most health, strongest melee, fastest sprint while not as endurant as for the alien). The alien's only friend is the darkness or just a bit of luck having a Pred with the wrong view mode - when your opponent knows its enemy and tries to stay away from walls if possible the alien is pretty inferior: Close combat with a Pred isn't a good idea as he's stronger and it's also not a very good idea when playing against a good marine because he also can block you and punch back throwing you down meaning your death as he probably even could kill you with the pistol until you got up again...

[Pxtl]

So wait, is the pred supposed to be balanced with the other 2 classes in this? A major feature of AvsP1 was that there was no pretext of them being equal - the life of a Pred was 2 or 3 times more valuable than a human or an alien.

[Master-Athmos]

Yeah there's meant to be sort of a balance which gives any species a chance to kill another one sort of depending on the situation and the environment though...

The problem is though that the Pred has the most health, the fastest sprint, the strongest melee while also having a set of ranged one hit one kill weapons with many of them having infinite ammo and just a short "reload time" plus he cannot get thrown down by heavy attacks, jump attacks or explosions...

That makes a Pred sort of a hard enemy for a Marine once he got some weaponry (a Pred in close combat isn't too bad as even as Marine you have some nice melee skills so you just need a successful block a punch in the Preds face with your weapon and you've pretty much won the fight). For an alien things aren't that easy as it has to go into close combat where it doesn't have stronger skills than the Pred. Its only chance is to be crawling on the walls or the ceiling as it can do a long ranged tail whip when doing so which stuns any target for a rather long time and saving you the kill if you hit. The only other advantage is to use your sprint, get behind the enemy and initiate a stealth kill granting you a 100% save kill even if you get killed while the animation started. Due to some generous timing here it still counts when an enemy actually managed to turn around...