Quote from: Gren_86 on Jan 26, 2013, 09:41:28 AM
Aren't you guys overlooking a major component, like multiplayer 
No, I'm aware of that, but single-player and multi-player are
completely different experiences. One is atmospheric, with specific quests generated ahead of time. Some, even on a puzzle-basis. Something which is meant to put you
in the role of the character. Multi-player, on the other hand, tends to a case of spawning somewhere, everyone going, "LOL" and then rushing off blindly in all directions and doing whatever they want.
And that makes it messy and feel like you're sharing the experience with a bunch of drug junkies on a sugar high, not with a
competent squad of fellow soldiers who know how to handle individual combat tactics like the
team they are.
Sometimes, you might, on very rare occasions, find people who bother to co-operate, but even on titles like '
Battlefield 3', which uses mechanics specifically designed to urge you to co-ordinate efforts together, hardly anyone bothers to.
Which, honestly, is fine if you're just doing it for a laugh and
want to die in the first thirty seconds. And, believe me, most of the time, I run into nothing
but Leeroy Jenkins clones, even in stuff like '
Mass Effect 3', where you're forced into a team mentality. Guys who you can hear over the speakers are laughing their heads off
because they managed to blow up not only themselves, but everyone else, as if it's some kind of challenge they
need to do.
To me, that's no fun. I want the experience to be immersive - and that goes
triple when you're meant to be an Alien. Watching people gallop around like a group of insect-donkeys on acid? No, thank you. That's not what Aliens are meant to do.
Even weirder is how that mentality seems to infect everyone else who plays the damned thing... The times I've got kicked from an AVP 2010 game, just because I refuse to run head-first into a group of Marines with smart guns and grenade launchers and, instead, do what an Alien
would do; stealthily creep around to out-flank them or lure them in with motion tracker returns to make them investigate, one by one...
That got me kicked, all because I don't feel an impulsive need to leap around like a butterfly on crack and let them get their kicks by sh00t1ng d4 al13nz.
Besides which, there are certain mechanics which can't be put in multiplayer. For instance, there was a cheat called 'John Woo Mode' on the 1999 AVP titles, which meant that, as an Alien, whenever you were near to danger, even if you couldn't see it, it phased quickly down into slow-motion (the reason why it pisses me off when people claim '
Max Payne' was the first to do bullet-time, when it wasn't). Sure, it was a cheat, but it had the bizarre effect of letting you play in the Alien's mentality a lot easier; you could see where the sentry guns were firing from and time your leaps across the corridor and up to the ceiling in ways you just can't when you've got human reflexes and perception. By the time you got rid of the threat, you realised that the way you managed to strike and avoid getting hit was
exactly like the things do on screen!
I'm not saying threat-based slow-motion
should be implemented, of course (although, as I say, it worked out superbly for the Alien). Just that it's an example of something you physically can't put in multi-player environments (if for no other reason than it would alert Marine players that an Alien's near them, whenever their own screen slowed down like treacle). There are almost certainly quite a number of others, too.
Third-person is actually something I think would suit things like Aliens and Predators a lot more than Marines. I've said before that I think any third AVP title would benefit from switching to a form of '
Arkham City' mechanic, where you get to see your character doing all those acrobatic kill-moves (and this, in itself, could be toggled on and off as a gameplay option).
QuoteBut I do agree that it shouldn't be another generic shooter for both SP and MP.
I agree. I hope it's not, because it would be nice to have a properly atmospheric '
Alien'-themed game out there. I'm just saying that, by painting itself into the corner of restricting the player into being purely a human being with a gun, it's forcing itself to go up against the giants of that genre. The likes of the COD titles don't have anything which could compete with a single-player Alien campaign and that would be a
huge selling point.
Not that this will affect the the reviews, of course. But I do think that it will affect
sales - and, therefore, chances of sequels. Especially with non-fans. It needs to appeal to them or it's not going to get the numbers to be the huge success it wants to.
If someone who's not a fan of '
Aliens' picks it up to review and it doesn't appeal to them? If it's just a '
Doom' clone with smart guns and dropships? It'll get average scores.
As I say, I hope it's more than that. It's just that this could be avoided if they'd tried to give it the one thing those other titles could not compete against.
