After a nearly exact 15 year wait, Predator is returning to main stream gaming platforms with Illfonic’s Predator: Hunting Grounds! First announced back in May 2019, Predator: Hunting Grounds puts players in the boots of either the Predator or Fireteam members in an asymmetrical multiplayer experience that is framed around the very story formula of the original Predator!
“Predator: Hunting Grounds is an immersive asymmetrical shooter set in remote areas, where the Predator stalks the most challenging prey. Play as a member of an elite Fireteam and complete paramilitary operations before the Predator finds you. Or, play as the Predator to hunt the most worthy prey, choosing from your vast array of deadly alien tech to collect your trophies, one by one.”
Predator: Hunting Grounds is available to purchase on the Epic Store (for PC) or on the PlayStation Store! Alien vs. Predator Galaxy and Illfonic have also teamed up to give members of the Alien vs. Predator Galaxy community a chance to win one of two codes for Hunting Grounds on the PS4!
Though we don’t yet know what’s in store for us, we’ll be seeing Predator: Hunting Grounds first content update towards the end of May. Previously speaking about post-release support, Illfonic’s Charles Brungardt wrote in the PlayStation Blog:
“Speaking of planned updates, we view the launch of Predator: Hunting Grounds as just the beginning. What that means to us, at IllFonic, is that we can continue to drop new content post launch. We do have a roadmap in place for this already. In fact, you will see the first content update — which will be a free one — go live a little over a month from now. And there will be more content updates after that. These will include many great surprises. This is part of why our community forums are so special to us. We are listening and taking your feedback to heart, whether it be found bugs or comments on the game.”
If you don’t already (why not?!) head on over to the Alien vs. Predator Galaxy YouTube Channel where you’ll be able to check out our livestreams of Predator: Hunting Ground! We’ll also be reviewing the game on our podcast in early May so keep an eye out for that one! We also have a PlayStation Community where you can hook up with fellow AvP Galaxy community members to get your Predator: Hunting Grounds fix!
Make sure you stick with Alien vs. Predator Galaxy for the latest news on Predator: Hunting Grounds! You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube to get the latest on your social media walls. You can also join in with fellow Alien and Predator fans on our forums!
They can destroy the ammo crates too!
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Definitely need more practice before getting wrecked online though.
I guess that helps, though given that they're spread out all over the map and you don't now which one they're going to use you'd pretty much have to play enough to know where they all are then go around destroying them all before attacking the fire team, which would mean you'd also have to waste a lot of time you don't really have to begin with.
I don't think the cloak looks anything like it does in the movies though. I never liked how it looked when we first saw it in the convention videos last year, and having played the game now for the last few days I'm convinced that the reason it looks like vertical interference rather than the bending, heat-type effect from the films is just to make the Predator that much easier to see for the fire team.
The Wraith's cloaking effect in Dead by Daylight is basically a spot-on perfectly accurate Predator cloak. It looks exactly like the effect in the movies and is impossible to spot if he's standing still but more of a visible distortion in the air when he's moving fast. That's what I wish we had here, something that's good enough to allow you to actually position yourself up in the trees to try and scan and stalk and lay traps, not get spotted before you can ever get anywhere close and blasted back down to the ground.
The cloak works super great but you need to know the following:
-Be Close to a wall so the light warp don't over exceed (bend and produce a very visible outline)
-Don't move (it'll slowly fade the predator to the player view).
Best it to be crouched because it combine both aspect (stillness and closeness to the ground).
I had many games where I was literally in the middle of the squad and they couldn't see me for a full minute playing the objective.
If you have a berzerker and initiate the first strike and they're all grouped, it's an easy win
(Plus you may get them scared on the mic because no one saw anything coming until it happened right in the middle of them thinking they were safe).
The worse case for the cloak is:
-Moving (your cloak is at maximum opacity)
-Standing (you cover much bigger area and are more likely to be spotted).
-In the trees because what's behind you visually is probably 100 meters away awfully bending the light warp behind.
I think the problem is more related to the "spot" ability.
I can spam the spot key in a direction of a tree where the predator sound came from and eventually, just by randomly pressing, I can spot the Predator and this become an absolute nightmare for the player.
I think this mechanic should go. You shouldn't be able to have the Predator outlined in Red (and especially through wall) once spotted.
Also be careful of the skins you use. I've seen countless people use Red Mark for the Predator. They look cool but, are so easy to spot.
I have done game where the cloak ability wasn't really necessary because I could blend with the foliage around me and I am very hard to spot even when uncloaked.
I think overall the cloak looks just like the movie (with this layers of lines, beautiful! Just like in the original first two movies that no other movie ever nailed after) but what needs to be tweak is the mechanic around the spotting ability.
I'm also enclined to have the Predator remain cloaked while using melee but uncloaked while using energy based weapons, that and reduce the Berzerker health cos right now it's pure nonsense this thing can take on 4 people with a stick.
I also unlocked the Berserker, the combistick and the motion sensors last night, and man is that a great combination though! Just as with the trial the combistick is unquestionably the best melee weapon, taking about 4 hits to down people as opposed to 6 or more, and with more range than any of the others too. Plus you can throw it to either down or massively injure a player, so unless and until they buff the others once you unlock that there's no reason to use anything else.
The Berserker itself is obviously great because he can survive long enough when running in to make a claim to not immediately go into second wind or even have the majority of his health taken off if you play it right. You can still get shredded if everyone is firing on you, but he at least doesn't feel as squishy as the Hunter.
He has his downsides in that he's noticeably slower than anyone else, but even his lack of energy reserves isn't a huge problem since you should be focusing mostly on melee with him anyway. Me, Hicks, Ridgetop and Voodoo got smoked by two or three Berserkers in a row last night, so now that it's getting to the point where people are starting to unlock him I'd definitely expect to see a lot more people just running in for a four-man melee spam, unfortunately.
And the motion sensors are great for keeping track of the fire team and essentially acting as a replacement for needing to go up in the trees and scan them with your thermal vision to keep track of them. Once you've found which compound they're at, throw two or three sensors out and they'll send out blue pulse bubbles that have very good range and mark any fire team member who steps into them with a big red "kill" icon, allowing you to keep track of their movements much more easily.
Combine those with bear traps and you can much more easily tell when people have been caught in them and take advantage of that.
It's sad that it feels like you have to grind halfway through the progression until you unlock the one loadout that feels viable, but now that I do have it I can't see myself often using much else until they improve either the damage of the elder sword and war axe or make the cloak better and less visible (see the Wraith from Dead by Daylight if you want a perfect example of a movie-accurate Predator cloak in a video game) so that alternative options are just as good.
I did have trouble during the trial but I have been able to find them now. Just use the heat vision and move around. Also look around with the camera. Sooner or later someone will shoot and you see it.
Thanks for the tip!
edit: I've tried with melee perks and long range perks. A fireteam that sticks together is just too strong. Predator needs more health and strength.
I really like it.
The Predator has a perk which boosts melee damage strength so if you rush the enemy you can get in some quick kills with it. The Fireteam is conditioned to look up since the Predator primarily uses the trees to travel so rushing someone on the ground or getting in a swipe while they're running away is always good.
Just ran a match doing that and I really like it. Also anybody notice the Predator's laughter going 150% at the end? What I mean is I can't tell if it was someones mic or the Predator because the laugh went from a laugh to "AAAAUGGGHHHHH" right at the explosion and I've never been prouder of this thing overacting. Currently it seems pretty common for the Predator to nuke everybody but I think I have my favorite self-destruct now.
haha same here
Since they delayed the amount of time until you can use of the target scan at the beginning of a match now, if everyone on the fire team muds up as soon as it begins then by the time your scan is available you won't get that red dot.
It has to be the full team since if even one person isn't covered in mud you'll get that big red dot showing you where they are, but if a team knows what they're doing it can often take longer to find them as a result.
Still getting used to the plasmacaster but I find that during the fire-fights it's best to actually send some low powered shots rather than a full charge because they can't take cover typically from you and the A.I. Even if you miss they're still getting shot and running through stims and healthpacks so it really is best to stay on them during those situations even if it is tempting to get the free kills on the A.I.
yeah i use that but then I lose them occasionally.
Have you tried doing a target isolation? That shows a red circle/blob on your screen of where the direction that the fire team is located.
Starting a private match if anyone wants to join.
Gotcha - thanks for the tip!
The shoulder. Hold it to charge it to max before you aim at them. Then put the dots on them just before you release. Instantly puts the down.
The shoulder variety or the hand-held version? I find it pretty ineffective unless players are standing still (which besides the AI, they don't).
Agreed - I consistently have to wait around 15 minutes to get matched with players.
We're now livestreaming for a couple of hours.
It craps out on PS4 as well
You can definitely still do it though, as pointless as it is.
Really? My tutorial didn't teach me the slide at all, and I did it twice (because I was d*cking around the first time so I ran out of time). Weird...
Yeah I noticed that.
Also they removed the crouch slide from the tutorial. I'm not even certain you can still do it in-game.
Just remember to keep that trigger held the whole way down or else you'll do what I did sometimes and cancel the slam halfway into the jump after mistakenly thinking you've held the trigger down long enough to have it locked in.
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Yeah you're right that it wasn't available, I'm just comparing it to the wrist blades. It seems to take about the same amount of hits to down someone (possibly even one or two more), yet drains your stamina super fast so you're lucky to be able to do that before becoming exhausted, at which point yo can't really use it properly anymore.
Plus it has way more animation priority that can sometimes leave you swinging wildly at nothing if you're not close enough, and you have to manually equip it every time you land, unlike the wrist blades which can be used with the plasma caster equipped, so you can use them immediately after coming down from the trees, which you can't do with the sword.
It just seems worse in every way than the wrist blades to the point where I'm not even sure why it's there.
The freezing sucks. Glad I didn't experience that.
Now is it me or did many of the animations look better? From AI to simply firing our weapons, it appeared more polished.
Ack! My willingness to get inebriated during game play is my kryptonite! Can you explore those wooden walks and enter huts?
I wonder if you'll end up being right about Dutch being just on those OWLF recordings.