As I hoped Hunting Grounds is going to be at EGX this month. Planning on heading down to get my mitts on the game.
(https://hips.hearstapps.com/digitalspyuk.cdnds.net/16/11/1457975259-armwrestle.gif?resize=480:*)
Are you planning on trying to record any footage by any chance? Don't forget to ask any devs/reps that might be there the hard questions! We need to know precisely how much XP we'll need to unlock our Jungle Hunter skins and Smart Disc! :D
For real though, that's very cool. Hopefully you'll be able to get a decent amount of time with it and get to see some new stuff we've not heard about before.
As soon as they see the AVPGalaxy shirt, Hicks is getting the VIP treatment.
We will get exclusive info before anyone else.
Pft. Doubt there's going to be anything new learned. I did get my ticket through so am all good to go.
Push that City Map DLC Hicks!
I went yesterday. Spent most of the day in the Hunting Grounds container chatting to the Sony reps, watching people play, played 3 games myself. Gonna get a write-up and a video done. In short, I really enjoyed everything I saw and experienced. Really eager to play more.
Nice, looking forward to hearing your thoughts! Especially how you felt about some of the gameplay specifics, like whether or not the timer feels restrictive and how long it takes before you can respawn your teammates when playing as the fire team.
Not seeing many impressions on Twitter, but the buzz from inside the container was pretty good.
Looks like an album cover. :laugh:
Coming soon.. Mandy Bull and the Predettes!
(https://i.ibb.co/cwP7S58/IMG-20191021-111808.jpg)
Can I just say that whoever that is with the Yellow bio-mask made a good choice in helmets. That helmet looks real nice.
http://www.pushsquare.com/news/2019/10/hands_on_predator_hunting_grounds_has_a_ways_to_go_before_it_realises_potential
They weren't too big on it.
Bummer.
They still have some time to fix it though.
As I understand it, the pre-Alpha version being used for the demos has been moved on from quite a lot. The build has progressed somewhat from this. I agree in regards to the enemy AI, but I can't say I noticed any frame rate issues.
I'm not too worried about it. One lukewarm response among many positives so far? And they didn't even play as the Predator.
Factor in this game doesn't come out before the prequel novel I'm betting, which comes out May 2020 if I remember correctly, so Hunting Grounds is far from a finished product. :)
There was certainly some instances of janky framerate in the gameplay trailer, which seems like an odd decision to go with that footage, but otherwise I don't think it's too fair to judge something like that when you're talking about a pre-alpha build that's not even due out until next year. From what I understand optimisation is one of the last things that gets done in video game development, so it possibly having a not-so-great framerate at this point in time isn't really anything out of the ordinary.
The simplicity of the objectives could go either way as far as being a good or bad thing. Variety is always good, though if they're pretty much all just going to be variations of "go here and hold X for three seconds" then it might end up not really mattering. But on the other hand there are plenty of successful multiplayer games where the objectives for one team or the other are very simple and they're still fun to play, so I feel like that could be something that we only really discover after having the game in our hands for a while.
Still preparing to buy a PS4
Me too brother! :)
My report is up!
https://www.avpgalaxy.net/games/predator-hunting-grounds/eurogamer-expo-2019/
First of three gameplay videos is up too (still needs time to process and crank out the 1080). Will upload the other 2 tomorrow morning.
Quote from: Corporal Hicks on Oct 28, 2019, 09:08:02 PM
My report is up!
https://www.avpgalaxy.net/games/predator-hunting-grounds/eurogamer-expo-2019/
First and three gameplay videos is up too (still needs time to process and crank out the 1080). Will upload the other 2 tomorrow morning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbWLONVD92c
Great article Hicks! Very extensive! The video was fun to watch too, although that Predator was definitely an inexperienced Youngblood! :D. Still, it definitely got me more amped for this game.
And I like what I'm seeing with the Predkour. I personally found the AvP 2010 Predator focus mechanics a bit difficult to manage. Oh that ledge I can't jump on. Oh wait I can, I just needed to position myself closer. Too much stutter, stop and go. But here in Predator HG it just seems so much more fluid and fast. I'm loving this red rail system, at least from afar!
Quote from: Voodoo Magic on Oct 28, 2019, 10:49:15 PM
Great article Hicks! Very extensive! The video was fun to watch too, although that Predator was definitely an inexperienced Youngblood! :D. Still, it definitely got me more amped for this game.
From what I saw, it will take a couple of goes to really get the hang of. Very few players seemed to really just pick the Predator up and do massively well with it. There were a couple, and I did pretty reasonably with it, but the Fireteam was winning most of the Sunday.
From speaking to the Sony reps, there'd been a pretty funny swinging of which sides were dominating. One day had been mostly Predator, another a good mix, and the Sunday was mostly the Fireteam.
QuoteAnd I like what I'm seeing with the Predkour. I personally found the AvP 2010 Predator focus mechanics a bit difficult to manage. Oh that ledge I can't jump on. Oh wait I can, I just needed to position myself closer. Too much stutter, stop and go. But here in Predator HG it just seems so much more fluid and fast. I'm loving this red rail system, at least from afar!
I always got on really well with the focus mechanics in AvP 2010. I found the prompts quite easy to tell you where you could get to, but it was a game I played a lot and learned where I could get to. Predkour is definitely more fluid though.
That's all the footage I got. I didn't want to get in the way too much. Sorry this one is a little shakier, I couldn't get the tripod in a decent position. It's a little more interesting in terms of the footage though.
Are there gonna be any night, rainy, foggy, maybe even snowy maps ?
I don't know, but I'll try to fit that in in our pre-release Q&A.
Thanks for the videos and write-up!
I'm not surprised you didn't get to see the mud mechanic in effect since it's probably not something most people knew about, and even the ones who did I'd imagine you have to go to specific spots on the map to do it and nobody would have known where those were unless they stumbled on them randomly. Very cool that you got to use the self-destruct though!
I almost feel like Stargazer being the bad guys is a holdover from the original version of The Predator, back when Edward James Olmos' character was going to be introduced and order Traeger's death and the US military was going to clearly be shown as being separate from them. As it stands now it feels kinda weird that, as the gameplay trailer implied, they're being explicitly named as the baddies you're going after.
But whatever, I'll just head canon it as being some folks who used for work for them now teaming up with some random guerrillas for whatever reason. :P
As you mentioned, hopefully the Predator's spawn point isn't solely determined by where the fire team decides to spawn, otherwise it'll be eventually become easy for the Predator to tell where they are after playing a few games and learning the locations, so hopefully that's not the case.
The individual fire team members having unique perks is cool too, definitely gives you a good reason to try and have one of each on your team (or at least those two anyway) and not just because they have different weapons. Tagging the Predator and being able to keep track of him for a while s he's zipping around the trees seems like it'd be really useful.
I love some of those little details like putting the skull of a victim on your belt, complete with flapping jaw as you run around, the claw marks on the trees as you climb them and also just the little animations of the Predator swinging round the trunk of the trees or pushing off of it as he moves from branch to branch. Those are all really cool little touches.
And yeah I really like what they've done with the Predator's movement as well. I was also a fan of the 2010 focus jumping but this looks even better and more fluid. It looks like it's going to be really easy to quickly move around the treetops while still being able to keep an eye on your surroundings and your targets. I'm really glad they went in kind of an Assassin's Creed direction with it, I really like it.
And yeah apparently those little "pulse bubbles" are generated by sound. I remember reading in an earlier hands-on that one of the devs mentioned that it can often be better for the fire team to start out silently, taking out enemies by stealth with their melee weapons so that they don't alert the Predator to their whereabouts too early.
I kinda like that you can only see those blips when you're using your thermal vision too, and how that also seems to be the way that you can "scan" the enemies to be able to tell which ones are the real human players and which are the AI. I noticed in the videos that the red markers over the human players only appeared in thermal, then disappeared when the Predator went back to normal vision. That's a cool touch that really encourages the use of the vision mode beyond just making it easier to pick out your targets.
I also noticed in the fire team video that when you shoot an enemy you see to get both XP and "WP", I'm thinking "weapon points?" Perhaps attachment and cosmetics for guns will be levelled up and unlocked individually depending on how much you use them, alongside general overall player XP?
Seeing this though does make me worry that this might literally be the one and only map in the game though. I know Illfonic has previously said there were going to be "variations", I just wonder if that's going to end up meaning "go here to press X instead of here" with nothing about the map itself really changing.
I hope I'm wrong, but given their track record with Friday the 13th and one of the biggest flaws with that game being its lack of maps, it is a worry.
But regardless I'm still super excited for it! Good to see some matches all the way through finally too! I can totally imagine the Predator in that second video shouting "you got lucky!" as that lone player escaped at the end! :laugh:
Quote from: Corporal Hicks on Oct 29, 2019, 08:34:57 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6S_1wfxShk
Quote from: Voodoo Magic on Oct 28, 2019, 10:49:15 PM
And I like what I'm seeing with the Predkour. I personally found the AvP 2010 Predator focus mechanics a bit difficult to manage. Oh that ledge I can't jump on. Oh wait I can, I just needed to position myself closer. Too much stutter, stop and go. But here in Predator HG it just seems so much more fluid and fast. I'm loving this red rail system, at least from afar!
I always got on really well with the focus mechanics in AvP 2010. I found the prompts quite easy to tell you where you could get to, but it was a game I played a lot and learned where I could get to. Predkour is definitely more fluid though.
After you saying you played it a lot, now that I'm thinking this through, I only played campaign AvP 2010, not multiplayer. Maybe if I replayed multiplayer maps and had them down pat including what objects I can jump on to, and from what distance, I'd be more favorable of the focus mechanics overall than I currently stand. Things that make you go hmm.
Quote
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCb_zvZLDd0
That's all the footage I got. I didn't want to get in the way too much. Sorry this one is a little shakier, I couldn't get the tripod in a decent position. It's a little more interesting in terms of the footage though.
Boy do I love the simple things, like the little touch of the bloody skull trophy being attached to the Predator's belt versus disappearing into an invisible pocket!
Yeah, I really loved the skull on the belt too. I didn't notice if you got more for more trophy kills though! :'(
Yeah, I do realize there has to be a limit at some point, but I would love to see multiple trophies accumulate, maybe a couple bloody skull and spines hanging down its back.
Quote from: Corporal Hicks on Oct 29, 2019, 02:04:50 PM
Yeah, I really loved the skull on the belt too. I didn't notice if you got more for more trophy kills though! :'(
Was there a specific way to do a trophy kill rather than a "quick claim"? I remember we've seen a video of what looked to be a trophy kill with the multiple wrist blade stabs before a spine rip, but I don't think we've ever seen anyone do it in any of these longer gameplay videos.
Quote from: Kailem on Oct 29, 2019, 02:13:34 PM
Quote from: Corporal Hicks on Oct 29, 2019, 02:04:50 PM
Yeah, I really loved the skull on the belt too. I didn't notice if you got more for more trophy kills though! :'(
Was there a specific way to do a trophy kill rather than a "quick claim"? I remember we've seen a video of what looked to be a trophy kill with the multiple wrist blade stabs before a spine rip, but I don't think we've ever seen anyone do it in any of these longer gameplay videos.
And maybe NPC trophies are different from Player trophies... the latter being more weighted with importance.
I don't believe you can do the trophy kills on the NPCs. That said, you see different things as the Predator vs the Fireteam. When you're trophy killed as a member of the Fireteam, you see the cutscene. When you're a Predator, you just do you stabby stabs, grab the skull and move on.
Aww, really? That kinda sucks. I was looking forward to having a bunch of customisable trophy kills, like Jason's kills in F13. Now if you can't even see them when you're playing as the Predator there's really no point.
I understand the disappointment, but honestly, given that HG seems to be about giving the Predator it's speed back, I can understand the decision to not interrupt the gameplay ala 2010's trophy kill.
I feel like going the Apex Legends route would be best, give players the option to do a longer trophy kill that's more cinematic and potentially gives you two or three times the XP, but at the cost of leaving you vulnerable to being shot by other human players while you're doing it. That way you could decide whether or not you thought the situation was worth the risk to go for the longer kill, or whether it would be better to do the "quick claim" they have now.
It just seems a bit odd to have it labelled as "quick claim", which implies there's a way to do a longer kill, when it sounds like in reality it's the "only claim".
The game looks fun, thanks for those videos! They were the best look I got into the game so far, and I'll be sure to buy it when it's released. Do we know if it's digital only? Or is it getting a physical release?