Fan Reviews

[Corporal Hicks]

Am just saying how people decide their opinion on the game regardless of whether they've actually played it or not.

[Puks]

Well, sorry I'm not a yank and couldn't play the game yet. 

[YutaniDitch]

Well, I think I am half way through the Marine and Predator SP campaign so far ( haven't even started the Alien campaign, which is weird, being an Alien fan and all...! What can I say, the Pred has all the cool toys, and so has the Marine...! )...

... and is it just me, or is this game in serious need of a patch? I mean, the hiccups in graphics forcing me to restart the checkpoint, I attributed to lack of graphics' drivers, but it seems it's generalised...

Well, this can be solved easily enough with a patch anyways!

My beef is with a harder than usual curve of difficulty regarding the Predator controls and the sheer number of keys you need to have him jump or shoot the plasmacaster... It has also the repetitivity problem, because it can become quite boring killing the humans... Regarding the hunting Aliens, what was in Rebellion's mind when they left out the Alien vision mode so long? I am a longways into the Pred game and haven't got the Alien vision mode yet! What the hell!?

The Marine campaign is moody, but the lack of mobility versus the excessive mobility of the Aliens makes the 'stop them before they're close' next to impossible... And they totally screwed the facehuggers thrills of the first game, I mean, they take some energy off, but they are so easily brushed off... I mean, they were supposed to be Game over, man, game over!

Long story short, it had its good moments (I love the visuals) but it DOES look a bit rushed and clearly, a patch or several are needed!

I also wanted to say that the Predator interface occupies too much of the screen, whereas in the first games, there was only a side bar for the energy and another for the health and that was it! Also, despite the gorgeous graphics of the Heat vision mode, it was actually messing up the playability  and, funny enough, I never had to use it as the humans were all to easily noticeable with the flashlights and all!   

The Predator Alien VM one, as I said, is still a blur to me! Haven't found it yet and I have battled a legion of Aliens already! 

I liked it enough, being a fan and loving all Predator and Alien, but, speaking also as a fan, it could and should have been much better! I mean, given the timeframe between AVP2 and AVP, it makes the mistakes that much harder to swallow...

I think Rebellion should immediately make a patch to deal and solve the more blatant technical issues, which are abhorrent and embarassing, and either make MP maps more diverse or at least make the editing tools available to the fans so they can start right away making more and better maps!

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So. this is my review of the first half of the game, though:

I give it 6.5 out of 10  , because graphics aren't all and even those have too many hiccups to allow for a smooth gameplay. There was still work to be done and there are way too many problems regarding the gameplay itself which affects the playability of it (everyone, Marine and Predator, feel way too heavy to manoeuver adequately when facing the far more agile Aliens, which I can get it, but make the Marine having to waste full clips to kill jus one Alien and the Predator having to do a boxing match with the Aliens, which some of us disliked in AVPR when the Predator and the Predalien started a boxing match on the hospital's rooftop) ...

Breaking down the usual review elements:

GAMEPLAY - 5 out of 10 - Even though there are many and various problems, I could still enjoy it and the gameplay was still sufficient
GRAPHICS - 8 out of 10
SOUND - I don't know if it was my sound card or a general issue to all players, but some of the voices went awol shortly after the beginning of the game.
If this is a glitch of the game, I give it 6 out of 10 as the Sound FX were good enough.
STORY -  5 out of 10 - Passable
TECHNICAL ISSUES - 75% - This is the percentage of problems I encountered while playing it, even though some of them I attributed to possible drivers issues, even though a PATCH could fix many, if not all of them
LASTING EFFECT - 60% - In spite of all the faults, the fact that this game has three distinct campaigns (the Alien, the Predator and the Marine) and the fact that the game has MP potential even though the gameplay is unnecessarily heavy given the the clumsy control system of the Predator and Marine (and, as I am told, the Alien) resulting in the heaviness in the characters' manoeuvrability.

___________________________________________________________________

[redxavier]

Played two Marine missions and I have to say how much I detest how beefed up the aliens are on Hard mode. I hope their ridiculous ability to stand up to about 30 pulse rifle rounds each before going down is just Rebellion's old school approach to harder difficulty levels, otherwise they've seriously gimped the pulse rifle.

It still only takes about a dozen solid hits. The way Aliens move about  is the real reason you're spending so much ammo on them.

Plus, it's nicely canonical in a sense.

Canonical according to what? The Aliens speed has been significantly increased compared to how they move in the movies. Granted their mobility was limited due to technical limitations of the special effects, but Rebellion have opted to turn all Aliens into the runner type from Alien 3. And aliens standing up to a about 20 pulse rifle rounds at point blank? That's not the least bit canonical. Ripley eliminates about half a dozen or so aliens with not more than 6 bullets each.

[Puks]

Agreed. Instead of making it "shoot a few rounds to kill it BEFORE it gets to you" it's "waste a clip and bitchslap it to death WHEN it gets to you".

[MadassAlex]

Canonical according to what? The Aliens speed has been significantly increased compared to how they move in the movies. Granted their mobility was limited due to technical limitations of the special effects, but Rebellion have opted to turn all Aliens into the runner type from Alien 3.

The motion tracker in Alien showed that the Alien moved with significant speed - much faster than Dallas could, despite the cramped conditions. Alien: Resurrection also displayed the Aliens as very, very fast. Only Aliens had the Aliens move at a consistently slow pace... and that was for the tension of the movie, justified in that they were trying to move silently.

And aliens standing up to a about 20 pulse rifle rounds at point blank? That's not the least bit canonical. Ripley eliminates about half a dozen or so aliens with not more than 6 bullets each.

And in other shots, pulse rifle rounds just bounced off them. Either way, they take 10-12 solid rounds to dispatch at most - if you're using up 30, it's because some are missing or you're filling their limbs with rounds. I do that a lot. But solid bursts still take them down quite consistently.

[psychonaut25]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrGzCKIcAH4

[Vakarian]

My god MP is good but its SOOOO easy to kill some people in MP as a alien all you need to do is heavy attack (Tail) hold in X and splat he's f**ked i got most of my kills this way by running straight to the marines and rose up the top...Predator though is really hard for me its like a boxing match with the aliiens to kill them man but that plasma cannon sure does work like a bitch after countering a xeno...not ready to give a full review yet but this stuff is pretty promising going to go play campaigns now so yeah

Peace Out 

Btw does anyone know what headbitting some of the buttons on multiplayer does it like causes everything to flash and stuff does it kill the lights or something?

[duckforceone]

downloaded the game on a limited line, and i'm now playing it...

so far it's great for the mood.... i most often find myself standing around just enjoying the views and the atmosphere... can't wait to see more and try out the multiplayer modes...

can't wait to delve deeper into this game... love it...

only gripes i have :
Graphics errors, there are a few here and there
What's up with the audiologs. No one in the avp universe recorded small personal audio logs to lie around...
Pulse rifles vs aliens - what is up with this? i can live with the aliens being super fast and hard to target, but needing to auto fire for 30-50 rounds just to kill a single one? means most fights end in close combat with almost every alien i meet. That's not canon at all... they should be fast, but that's the only survivability they should have against a marine. Speed. 1-3 shots should just explode it... they are after all light armor piercing rounds.

[Puks]

EPIC! 

Never thought I'd say this, but Hitler is right. 

[psychonaut25]

He won't buy a console

[redxavier]

Granted I'm exaggerating but it's still way too many bullets. It just makes the pulse rifle look weak. It's essentially the pistol with a bigger magazine - and it was only ever the pistol rounds that bounced off the aliens.

As for the speed of the aliens in the movies:
Dallas was moving very slowly in the tunnels, he had a flamethrower weighing him down and was practically crawling. Compare that to the tunnel sequence in Aliens where the humans can actually run and they don't get overtaken. And very rarely in Aliens are they moving silently. Quite the opposite in fact, in Ops and the hive post-torching of eggs for instance they are in attack mode. Resurrection is interesting because when the creatures are CGI they move about 5 times faster, otherwise they are their usual weighty selves. Same in AvP (CGI) vs AvPR (practical).

Anyway the point is that as the marine you're spending way too much time with aliens in your face, ludicrously blocking and butting them with your rifle (how canonical is that!?), because some idiot somewhere thought the pulse rifle shouldn't be the explosive rounds firing alien-killer that it was in the movies. Even more silly is how aliens can survive direct grenade launcher rounds.

There are far better ways to balance the SP gameplay against aliens than to make each alien a super-alien.

[Vakarian]

What's up with the audiologs. No one in the avp universe recorded small personal audio logs to lie around...

There were logs in Avp 2 but they werent audio logs they were text logs

and i would rather listen to the logs rather than sitting there reading a log and getting faceraped by an alien   

[MadassAlex]

Granted I'm exaggerating but it's still way too many bullets. It just makes the pulse rifle look weak. It's essentially the pistol with a bigger magazine - and it was only ever the pistol rounds that bounced off the aliens.

There's a few shots in the Operations battle, before the vents, where the bullet-bounce is applied to the Aliens.

As for the speed of the aliens in the movies:
Dallas was moving very slowly in the tunnels, he had a flamethrower weighing him down and was practically crawling. Compare that to the tunnel sequence in Aliens where the humans can actually run and they don't get overtaken. And very rarely in Aliens are they moving silently. Quite the opposite in fact, in Ops and the hive post-torching of eggs for instance they are in attack mode. Resurrection is interesting because when the creatures are CGI they move about 5 times faster, otherwise they are their usual weighty selves. Same in AvP (CGI) vs AvPR (practical).

... because the concept of the Alien supports them being incredibly speedy? I'd imagine that a creature that has the strength to break down steel doors can propel itself very quickly. It's like how in Predator, despite the fact that the Predator itself never does anything with its arms that counts as super-strength, we consider it superhuman in strength because its other abilities imply or necessitate that being the case.

Anyway the point is that as the marine you're spending way too much time with aliens in your face, ludicrously blocking and butting them with your rifle (how canonical is that!?), because some idiot somewhere thought the pulse rifle shouldn't be the explosive rounds firing alien-killer that it was in the movies. Even more silly is how aliens can survive direct grenade launcher rounds.

Dunno if you were keeping up with current events, pal, but everyone got their asses kicked. As far as SP goes, the blocking/countering makes a lot more sense, because you seldom knock them over, instead just buying a second to take an extra shot.

The pulse rifle was never really an effective Alien-killer. No weapon really is, and that's part of the point of Weyland desiring the Aliens so much. He wants to harness their resilience.

There are far better ways to balance the SP gameplay against aliens than to make each alien a super-alien.

Aliens are super. That is one of the general concepts underlying their existence. Your average military punter isn't meant to stand a chance.

[Puks]

It's like how in Predator, despite the fact that the Predator itself never does anything with its arms that counts as super-strength,

What? Throwing ARNIE around like a rag doll is not evidence of super strength?

As far as SP goes, the blocking/countering makes a lot more sense

It makes no sense at all. As you said, aliens are super strong creatures capable of taring through steel doors, why would a human stop their attacks with a pulse rifle (or even better - with a pathetic little pistol)?

I like my aliens fast and strong as hell, but not resistant to explosive armour piercing rounds.