I had this game when it first came out, and last night I bought it on steam. This. Game. Is. FRICKIN AWFUL!!!!!!
The aliens move waaaaay too fast. They are so damn hard to shoot that you often times can't kill them until they're right in front of you clawing your face off. It's near impossible to dispatch a group without having the majority of them surrounding you and clawing the **** out of you. Even on easy. And no, it's not because I'm a "noob" ; I've been gaming with keyboard and mouse since the Half Life 1 came out and I am not bad at all in most online shooters.
Their are quite a few silly arguments that fans of the game use to defend this awful gameplay. "It makes the game more challenging." No. It makes it frustrating. Not being able to hit enemies, because of their speed and the level design, is FRUSTRATING. A good game design balances challenge without taking it too far and frustrating gamers.
"Aliens are supposed to be lightning fast." Did these fools even see Aliens? They weren't that fast. The aliens got all their kills by ambush (or in the case of Vasquez and Gorman, the aliens swarmed them until they ran out of ammo). Nobody was killed because they couldn't hit an alien before it closed distance. The fastest you ever see an alien move in the movie is when one of them is jumping from wall to wall when Ripley finds Newt in the hive, and even that one wasn't moving very fast. And what about the speed of the Marine and Predator? If you play a multiplayer match, they look like they are sliding around on rocket skates! It looks retarded.
"That's just how games were back then. Today's gamers just CAN'T HANDLE this kind of speed." I've been gaming on PC since the original Doom was released, and I'm glad those days are over. The level of detail and realism in modern games would be totally negated if you had realistic looking human characters that zip around on rocket skates. It also makes proficiency in multiplayer less dependent on tactics and teamwork and more on twitch reflexes.
So in a nutshell, the game is frustrating and it does a piss-poor job of creating an experience that captures the feel and action of the movies it's based on.
Lol, if you're thinking about buying this game, save you're money and go download the ISO images (and multiplayer patches) for the awesome sequel at the AvP2: Resurrection facebook page. And give us a like!