WARNING
This post makes comparisons between PC and console play, but try to read it objectively as I am clearly not trolling or flaming either platform. I am simply acknowledging a few things--not implying any experience is superior or inferior. They are just different experiences--so different they must be handled with an independent perspective, and that is part of the point of this post.
WARNING
So while these screens do look great and all, all that fluff will be pointless if they don't consider the peculiarities of the PC experience in terms of input methods and user control. For instance, to name just a few off the top of my head:
The PC has plenty of extra buttons for the all-around standard crouch function that's expected to be in every PC FPS, and no doubt every PC gamer is going scour the control configuration for a few minutes and then ultimately end up utterly dumbfounded when they find their answer to the "Where do I map the crouch function in AvP3?" question on google. I don't know how many of you are PC gamers, but it's so awkward and limiting not having a crouch function in a PC fps. Our hands have been so thoroughly trained to automatically configure themselves with the pinky resting on the Ctrl or Shift button that it will be almost disorienting when depressing the key results in no crouch (more confusing when it results in another function). But the main problem is that it will be immensely frustating lacking the capacity for something as mundane as simply crouching behind something to hide (and I don't believe an AVP map maker could even intentionally design a good map where there is no opportunity for this), or approach the enemy under low cover. I'm not sure if console gamers feel the same way, but--on this forum at least--the general console-crowd defense of Rebellion's decision to omit it makes me think it's not as big of a deal on that platform. It surely is a very big deal on the PC. Different platforms have different demands.
"Automatic melee attack tracking" at close range will hurt the PC version. If you look at the MP videos for the console play, the player simply needs to be within a certain range of and angle from the enemy and press the melee attack button, and the game automatically tracks (ie a very significant suggestion to the player's aim) the enemy for the attack--ala a Call of Duty knife attack. The PC already has the mouse to accomplish this, and its manual execution is considered a necessary challenge. Without challenge and variability like this, the game quickly becomes routine; it is being "played for us" by the computer. On a console controller, I imagine it doesn't feel this way, based on console gamers' reactions.
Trophy kills really don't belong in the PC version either. A person with a mouse can quite deftly aim at an enemy's head in the midst of jumping and pouncing all around at high speeds, and (1), with an alien, attempt a headbite (which, depending on the trajectory of the pharyngeal jaws, may or may not have been successful in AvP2) or (2), as a predator, perform a spine rip (if from behind). Likewise for impaling an enemy with an Alien's tail or a Predator's wrist blade. These could all be very dynamic attacks that blend seemlessly with the other attacks, but, as they are now, they're too static; the gameplay comes to an abrupt halt while the animation sequence plays out (and it will look the same way every time, mind you).
The problem is you can't expect the average or even somewhat experienced person with a gamepad to, for instance, aim at one's head in the midst of all the haywire of an AvP game (But I do acknowledge that some of you console guys are pretty good with those joysticks and could pull it off), so you need to simplify the process: you do what God of War--a series I love--does and generalize it to a button or few that presents the user with a challenge, but does not directly engage them in the process of the animation. Now do I expect Rebellion to completely change the PC gameplay and reimplement these dynamically? Absolutely not. At most I would expect the manual Alien headbite which has been standard in every AvP game (and the corpse head-bite doesn't count), and something for the Predator. But having these static animation sequences is not putting the PC controls to good use.
I must stress that I am not saying "Ha Ha! Look at how much more deft we are with our mice and keyboards!", but more of "I understand it's like this because that's how it should work on a gamepad, but that method works pretty poorly on the PC"
If considerations to the PC aren't made in the above respects and many others, it's just a little bit prettier of a console game on a PC, and both PC and console gamers know that (1) it's very rare that console gameplay works, one-to-one, on PCs and (2) it's very rare that PC gameplay works on consoles. Take a game with as many variables as AvP, and this is even more of the case. These aren't "elitist" statements or something--just acknowledgements that PC gaming and console gaming are both very different experiences. As it appears right now, the console gamers are getting gameplay designed for consoles, and the PC gamers are getting gameplay that is very far from what works well on a PC (Yes, we haven't actually seen gameplay on PC yet, but this in itself generally means that either (1) any peculiarities of the PC gameplay are not something they expect PC gamers to be excited about or (2) they have a big surprise. The former is much more likely). The problem is the game must be designed to suit each of them independently (at least in terms of basic consideration for the very different control schemes). Simply adding mouse and keyboard support remapped the console-input functions is in no way whatsoever a consideration of the PC platform.
So, yeah, those screens look great, and it's interesting to see them giving the PC version some DX11 support, but they could have hired a game-logic programmer as opposed to a PC graphics programmer and changed a few things in the PC gameplay to develop something more suitable (and we would have been much happier).
Even though PC gamers may boast about the pretty graphics on their platform, we really do care about gameplay quality over everything else; that's something console gamers and PC gamers can always agree on. But the means to obtaining good gameplay on each respective platform are very different.
(Note: The point of this post is not to justify whether or not it would make sense for Rebellion to put more development time into a PC version; the PC market for this game is substantially smaller than the console market, so I'm assuming Sega wouldn't even permit them to do so if they had desired. You can, in part, consider this a general explanation for why PC gamers have been pretty ticked off lately by the current trends in gaming, and--using AvP3 as an example--why they tend to target the consoles for blame.).
And sorry for the huge paragraphs.
