If you ever told me I could get angry at hearing the Predator theme, I would have never believed you until I played this game.
This thing stuck on a loop is so anti climatic! There are great soundtrack and great use of great soundtracks.
Apparently they thought putting the Predator Font and the theme would be enough to feel predatorish.
I did not have fun and to be frank I had the feeling of A:CM all over again.
I think both are the same game honestly, they are so comparable like you could have me play A:CM on a custom Predator Hunting Grounds map or Predator Hunting Grounds Marine game in an A:CM maps and I wouldn't know what game it is really!
Clunky mechanic, bad bullet feedback, terrible animations, no understanding of what's the universe they get in aside the nice skins.
There are even laughable moments like the AI death sounds. It's almost as if they did a recording with the cheapest Zoom of someone saying "ahhhh"
Graphics are outdated by more than 10 years. At first the cinematic of the beginning was "wow that's nice" and then came the game and it was ugly. I can understand you need optimization for the multiplayer code but even different assets felt the same. It's the same type of shading everywhere, the same color pattern, the same rocks, the same lighting no matter the maps the same river the same ruins. A:I had a similar impact which is Ironic because in a way A:I as much more re-used assets but each location feel "singular". When I was in the Sheriff Office it felt so, when I was the med lab it felt so, when I was in the core it felt so. There's no mood that really comes out, I guess the only place I had a good feeling was the village next to the large lake which felt kind of different and had more interesting setup for both teams.
To some degrees it feels exactly on par with AVP2010 and A:CM graphically. And it's really not a compliment, I just think AVP2010 looked more coherent and had (by a tiny margin) more variety in the designs.
Another thing A:CM was super well known for was its bug.
They are back in PHG again. How many time did I have a diamond stick on front of my vision, or the possibility to pickup infinite diamond or a diamond that would just not be picked. So many possibilities of bug for the tiniest of the details, I let you imagine how are the big ones.
The Predator jumps are unpredictable, sometimes they just won't work in some areas but if you move by a tiny pixel it suddenly does. The reason? I don't know but it sure had me surprised when I did a quick attack was doing a retreat and... nope... a bit on the left... still not. On the right oh yeah! Jump!
There's this super funny one:
-Have your team get to da choppa and evacuate.
-Kill the Predator
-Be Alone for a full minute shooting AI while the chopper leave, it won't trigger the end, only keeping the Predator body safe will.
What's cringy is your team who escaped can't do a thing, they are in the chopper.
This game made me realize how much I hate games which don't know what they are (FPS or RPG?)
This XP and unlocking stuff is nonsense.
And as every game it is plagued by unbalance:
-Don't have the combistick? I'm afraid you'll have to spam the plasmacaster and hope for the best as a Predator. Don't go to the ground or you're likely dead.
-Have the combistick? Easily go 3v1. So if you manage just to have one distracted it's super easy but don't go to the tree, it's useless and they can spot you.
Once you have access to the combistick the game becomes very unbalance. I can't count how many games I ended in less than a minutes (or how many Predator I saw end the game going Berzerker + combi in 4v1 and killing us all).
The only counter is nade. Nade everything! There's not much left of Predator in the end. These were the worse game and became the most common as everyone XP grew.
I don't feel the game deliver.
It has me scratch my head so much as to why I can't be in this map with 12 Marines and 2-3 Predator just doing Team deathmatch or Survivor or any mods previous games were known for.
The fact you have to come back to the lobby, that if only one player leave the game is screwed by imbalance and that the accomplishments are so outside your capacities have me mad.
I don't like seeing that guy or these two guys going in a direction and a guy alone go into the objectives. It's so contradictory but it shows something: Open World leaves you do whatever you want. So why would everyone play the objective? The outcome then become known and it start to be very annoying to go back to the lobby for another 2 minutes before another game can pickup.
I did not feel Predator vibe even once. It would have been a Raptor with lazer in the trees It wouldn't make a difference.
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The biggest failure is I have no sensation of what I'm supposed to do.
There's no mechanic that explains the player motivation.
It would have been so much better framed to have the game at nightime and have the 4 player survive until morning when the Chopper arrives and there's only you, the pigs and the Predator.
The AI distract so much of the attention and the UI is so heavily charged for me to make sense of the world I'm in.
I feel like the Predator is just a skin for a COD game mod called "Giant Zombie Raptor Ant with Lazor".
There's barely verticality for the Predator to play with despite the trees because these acts as a 2 dimensional zone.
It's only interesting to play on the ground using the rooftops, cliffs but there's not much to play with.
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Things I've said in the past and I maintain because I think they are bad mechanics:
-Third Person for Predator (Yeah look how cool my Predator look! Doesn't feel immersive, period.)
-Assisted Jump for Predator, it's probably a "bit" better because it reacts faster than AVP2010 but not by much. I still think it's bad.
-Matchmaking
And things to add to the non-wishlist:
-Open World with AI & Scripted moments
-Billions of skins (Makes me wonder how much time was spent on actually developing the game and not the cosmetics)
Rating:
A:CM/10
