"Don't relax just yet, Marines!"
"Don't let ya guard down!"I went back and replayed this a few months ago. Played through the Predator and Alien campaigns again (didn't feel like replaying the Marines one, though I do still remember how slow and sluggish the movement felt for that one, like the Marine was constantly running through waist-high water) and while I still enjoyed them overall, it did remind me of all the things I wish they'd done better.
Small, cramped areas where there should have been a lot more space to play around and stalk your prey in, lots of repeated areas (playing the Alien campaign immediately after the Predator one made me realise that literally about half of each campaign take place in the same places), very few weapons for the Predator and no Alien vision mode for half the game, despite the fact that you've been fighting them from the very start, plus no human enemies to go up against past about the halfway mark (humans are always just more fun to fight as a Predator than Alien imo), two or three generic voice clips repeated ad infinitum etc. And does face-huggering civilians actually do anything? I like the idea, but I kept wondering whether or not I was forgetting what it actually did, or if it was just something that was kind of......there.
The Alien's wall-walking could certainly be a bit finnicky at times, but it was mostly fine.
But there was also a bunch of stuff I still liked. I thought the Predator's jumping mechanic, while a bit slow in a pinch, was a good idea. Nobody wants to be playing an invisible, invincible badass only to keep falling off of trees and rooftops when they screw up their jumps. Using vocal mimicry to trick Marines was cool too, and visually everything looked very nice (though it had more of an AVP movie influence than I would have liked).
I also remember it being "controversial" at the time, but I really liked the executions and trophy kills, and still do. Sure in multiplayer they often led to a "conga line of death" as multiple people got behind one another while they were executing someone only to them be executed themselves etc, but in the single player modes at least I really liked how they worked. They gave the Predator a great feeling of actually collecting trophies and doing some great, cinematic kills as both the Predator and Alien.
It felt like a game that hadn't really taken notice of the advancements in the FPS genre up 'till then though. Even six years ago it felt a little 'behind the curve'. The multiplayer had some good ideas too, but I feel like the map design wasn't good enough to take advantage of them (again, just too small most of the time). I'll have to rely on my memories for that part of it though, since I didn't even check to see if anyone was actually still playing it online (though I suspect the answer would be "not so much").
So yeah, some good, some bad, some stuff I liked and some stuff I didn't. Either way though, it's more than high time we got another AVP game from
someone. Please to make that happen, universe!
