A perfect example why the "gene-swapping during Alien life-cycle" idea should be left in the trash.
I can see the quality/size/biology of the host affecting the Alien's development to some degree but actual gene swapping is a slippery slope that doesn't need to be traversed imo.
The Gears of War campaigns are very good mindless action especially in co-op and have acted as somewhat of a template for other games to copy this gen - people wont like it but Uncharted also borrows aspects of Gears. I can understand people having doubts about Epic but I just feel this franchise needs a refresh and at this point I would settle for any top tier developer taking over.
There just seems so much wasted potential with this franchise.
Did they at least add gear persistence between missions this time? I remember one of the annoyances of Rebellion's previous AVP being that if you finished a mission with a boatload of ammo and the smart gun, you still started the next mission (which takes off exactly where the previous one left off) with the pulse rifle and nothing else, made me furious.
Ahhhh, good old days. I used to have all these back when I was young. TMNT vs Aliens !!:lol
I love the new game too! Online is very dynamic when you have 3 different species that play differently. I was playing online with a friend and we were both aliens. He jumped into a group of 3 marines and killed 2 quickly and I swept in to kill the 3rd one before that marine killed my friend! Sooo much fun!
Just played some predator hunt, so awesome. Though I was first up as the hunter and spawned right next to about 4 marines, maybe a slight head start is needed or spawn with cloak enabled.
Did they at least add gear persistence between missions this time? I remember one of the annoyances of Rebellion's previous AVP being that if you finished a mission with a boatload of ammo and the smart gun, you still started the next mission (which takes off exactly where the previous one left off) with the pulse rifle and nothing else, made me furious.
Yea that shit is still in this game and pissed me off. You start each chapter with different load outs that ignore your previous state at end of last mission.
Rebellion boss Jason Kingsley: "We're also in discussions with Sega about ongoing support for AvP, and also about a sequel to the game." He added, "I won't say what stage those negotiations are in, butwould love to revisit the franchise. Fox are excited about what we're doing, and we feel we've added value to the franchise."
After the mostly shitty Marine campaign, playing Predator now and greatly enjoying it. The stealth is a bit easy, but it's satisfying to be hunting down fools, you feel so powerful.
That's without Steam sales as well and its been in Steam top sellers list since preorders went up several weeks ago.
I'm sure the 5 copies I ordered last week helped! :lol
Here's the individual formats top 10:
LW
TW Title Format Label Publisher - 1 ALIENS VS PREDATOR XB360 SEGA SEGA
2 2 JUST DANCE WII UBISOFT UBISOFT - 3 ALIENS VS PREDATOR PS3 SEGA SEGA
5 4 NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII WII NINTENDO NINTENDO
1 5 BIOSHOCK 2 XB360 2K GAMES TAKE 2
4 6 WII SPORTS RESORT WII NINTENDO NINTENDO
6 7 WII FIT PLUS WII NINTENDO NINTENDO - 8 ALIENS VS PREDATOR PC SEGA SEGA
8 9 CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE 2 XB360 ACTIVISION ACTIVISION BLIZZARD
18 10 MARIO & SONIC AT OLYMPIC WINTER GAMES WII SEGA SEGA
Gearbox has been working on CM since it's announcement. However, resources were moved to work on Borderlands and some other things while SEGA waited to see how AvP played out sales-wise.
Gearbox has been working on CM since it's announcement. However, resources were moved to work on Borderlands and some other things while SEGA waited to see how AvP played out sales-wise.
... why? We know very little about CM. Frankly CM sounds like a fucking awful idea and is likely going to flop hard to me. Borderlands having sold 3+million so far is going to be taking lot of attention from them.
... why? We know very little about CM. Frankly CM sounds like a fucking awful idea and is likely going to flop hard to me. Borderlands having sold 3+million so far is going to be taking lot of attention from them.
This game is quite mediocre - I'm only really interested in the Single Player modes, honestly - but at least good sales will mean Sega pump money into Colonial Marines. I was worried that the opposite would happen, frankly.
... why? We know very little about CM. Frankly CM sounds like a fucking awful idea and is likely going to flop hard to me. Borderlands having sold 3+million so far is going to be taking lot of attention from them.
wtf? Colonial Marines is Aliens the game made by a competent FPS developer, how in any way does that sound like a "fucking awful idea", to put in your words.
I haven't finished the marine campaign yet, but so far I've had a completely different experience.
I agree that the melee system doesn't make a whole lot of sense within the context of the universe as a whole, but it's there for gameplay reasons: to stop you from from becoming completely overwhelmed when several aliens close in on you at once.
Well, I suppose the problem is that this is the third game in a series, and both of its predecessors did it all infinitely better. It's particularly baffling that this was developed by the same people who made the wonderful original. The original AVP was also far more fast paced and was basically all about overcoming being overwhelmed by aliens. Incredibly, it didn't even do so by having you punch aliens in the head, or by blocking the massive foot-long pointed metal claws of a Predator by holding up a tiny pistol in front of your face with one hand.
I realised early on that the key factor to me not enjoying this game was that combat was totally unsatisfying. In a game about killing things, killing things wasn't any fun at all. Ranged weapons are deliberately gimped (be it by low damage output for the marine, or the pathetic amount of energy charge/general uselessness of the Predator weapons) to encourage melee combat. For the Marines melee feels totally wrong, and for the Predator it's just shallow and repetitive to the point of being utterly boring.
The marine weapons are a mess. The flamethrower is not only useless due to its almost complete lack of any splash damage - that at least made it useful for killing face huggers in previous games - but because (as people have pointed out earlier in the thread) it turns the aliens into lethal flaming suicide bombs. It's a weapon whose use greatly increases the chances that you will die. But it's ok! The sniper rifle has no penalty to using it unscoped, one-shot-kills enemies with half decent aiming, can obviously enough be zoomed in to shoot enemies from afar, AND it reveals cloaked enemies. Overall it makes the pulse rifle, flamethrower and shotgun obsolete. You also get tons of ammo for it. Did anyone test this game?
The level design is particularly wretched. The tension-free scripted encounters and endless bits where you push a switch and are supposed to be surprised when it makes aliens appear bring to mind the similarly grim Doom 3. For those seemingly not in the know, the original AVP had fixed starting positions for the aliens, but they'd frequently stray all over the place and you could never count on rote memorisation. You were never safe and it was terrifying. In this game you are always safe until you press a big switch on a wall or walk into another clearly foreshadowed ambush. The outdoors areas are even worse, barren, empty and pace deflating, and often existing only as places to secrete the pointless collectables.
Then there's the matter of the barrels. Remember those old Doom wads people would make with loads of improbably placed barrels to shoot to blow up enemies? Remember how that mechanic got old about 6 months later and how it was rightly mocked in games that relied on such unimaginative, contrived design? Well, nearly 20 years later, they're back! Thrill as you shoot barrels that are placed along the length of a bridge as aliens run past because the designers couldn't think of a more imaginative way to mix up the stale gameplay! Swoon as you fight in a big boss arena that has barrels inexplicably strewn every few feet in a health and safety nightmare! Why would the characters in the game ever place these things in that way? Immersion - who needs it?
For the ultimate "I can't believe this game was made in 2010" experience, you can't beat the final Marine boss.
Armed with a shotgun, he charges you head on. And you die. Because there's nowhere to hide in the corridor you begin in, and you inexplicably can't duck in AVP anyway, thus making the crates further up useless as cover as well. Even though everything else pointedly can and does crouch behind things. Then you wise up and rush past him to the big statues. And you realise the idea is to run around the statues in a circle chased by him, Benny Hill style, shooting him. Only he can't shoot you back because his AI is so poor it only gets him to fire if there is a clear line of sight, and it doesn't like the clutter of the statue that you yourself can shoot past. You know, like a crude embryonic FPS from 1993 where everything really only worked on a 2D plane. And then when you kill him the ancient ruins you're in suddenly start blowing up, for no reason other than that is what happens when you kill the last boss in a videogame. From 1993.
Truly abysmal.
There's even more I could write about, but this game just assaulted me with stuff that genuinely had me stunned at how lazy and dated it all was. The Marine campaign seems to be particularly bad for this with ok bits followed by jaw-droppingly shambolic parts, whereas the unremarkable Predator campaign aims low and is content to stick there (I don't have to point out how bizarre and broken the "stealth" parts of the Predator's game are, do I?). I haven't gritted my teeth and tried the Alien one yet. I'm sure it's amazing!
As a change of pace, here are the things I think AVP3's single player DID do well:
Best representation of the Smartgun in an AVP game yet.
Actually really quite clever Alien AI - as someone else pointed out they really do avoid your light and sneak up on you. Shame you then have to punch them in the face when they flank you, but hey-ho.
The Predator long jump aiming thingy would have been great in AVP2's vastly superior Pred campaign.
Err..
Oh, and stick me down as another person who had all the odd stuttering problems, it's fine 99% of the time, and then in the remaining 1% the game drops below 1fps in some really strange places.
I haven't bought a FPS for myself in a very, very long time. I've played friends copies of MW and Bioshock here and there.
Me and a friend both bought AVP, and he's a huge FPS fan. Now, why the hell can't we be in a group, and participate in the other 4 mode types in ranked matches? Is this some sort of bug, or is this the "old school" design Rebellion took with AVP?
Is there a good method into assuring you can lock into a ranked match in DM, Predator Hunt, or Infestation, but with a friend?
IMO there is a real disconnect between people who love AVP as a "throwback" FPS and gamers who expect more in terms of gameplay given this is 2010. I fall in line with the former...but i'm aware that the shortcomings this game has (marine AI, jerky animation, lack of crouch or sights, ect.) can REALLY turn off someone looking for a more robust experience. Bottom line though, I had more fun with AVP (marine mission especially) than I've had in a while.
IMO there is a real disconnect between people who love AVP as a "throwback" FPS and gamers who expect more in terms of gameplay given this is 2010. I fall in line with the former...but i'm aware that the shortcomings this game has (marine AI, jerky animation, lack of crouch or sights, ect.) can REALLY turn off someone looking for a more robust experience. Bottom line though, I had more fun with AVP (marine mission especially) than I've had in a while.
But I dont think it totally works as a throwback anyway, even though I'd be happy with that. The marine campaign is particuarly disappointing. Where it was my clear favourite in both AvP and AvP2, here it is my least favourite. The scares are much more predictable, melee combat and defence is out of place for a marine, and the feeling the aliens could strike at any time and are lurking in the shadows simply doesnt exist.
Everything is thrown in your face, and the game makes it really clear when you're in an 'arena' situation and then 'safe' to progress to the next area.
I like some improvements this game has made, but there's been a lot of steps backwards. Again especially in the marine campaign, which in my opinion fails at capturing the gameplay of the first two games.
But I dont think it totally works as a throwback anyway, even though I'd be happy with that. The marine campaign is particuarly disappointing. Where it was my clear favourite in both AvP and AvP2, here it is my least favourite. The scares are much more predictable, melee combat and defence is out of place for a marine, and the feeling the aliens could strike at any time and are lurking in the shadows simply doesnt exist.
Everything is thrown in your face, and the game makes it really clear when you're in an 'arena' situation and then 'safe' to progress to the next area.
I like some improvements this game has made, but there's been a lot of steps backwards. Again especially in the marine campaign, which in my opinion fails at capturing the gameplay of the first two games.
I felt the exact opposite...the original AVP's marine mission was nothing more than aliens coming in straight lines at you waiting to be mowed down (and I LOVED that game). The path the aliens take is more varied, and aside from the odd glitch they use the walls infintely better. I felt like I was in constant danger my first time playing as a marine...especially in the corridors and rooms of the earlier stages. As far as melee, it's their to give you a chance against 4 or 5 aliens that otherwise will kill you (especially on Hard). I dunno, I just feel the game is true to the first one and takes everything great about it and improves it.
For the ultimate "I can't believe this game was made in 2010" experience, you can't beat the final Marine boss.
Armed with a shotgun, he charges you head on. And you die. Because there's nowhere to hide in the corridor you begin in, and you inexplicably can't duck in AVP anyway, thus making the crates further up useless as cover as well. Even though everything else pointedly can and does crouch behind things. Then you wise up and rush past him to the big statues. And you realise the idea is to run around the statues in a circle chased by him, Benny Hill style, shooting him. Only he can't shoot you back because his AI is so poor it only gets him to fire if there is a clear line of sight, and it doesn't like the clutter of the statue that you yourself can shoot past. You know, like a crude embryonic FPS from 1993 where everything really only worked on a 2D plane. And then when you kill him the ancient ruins you're in suddenly start blowing up, for no reason other than that is what happens when you kill the last boss in a videogame. From 1993.
I felt the exact opposite...the original AVP's marine mission was nothing more than aliens coming in straight lines at you waiting to be mowed down (and I LOVED that game). The path the aliens take is more varied, and aside from the odd glitch they use the walls infintely better. I felt like I was in constant danger my first time playing as a marine...especially in the corridors and rooms of the earlier stages. As far as melee, it's their to give you a chance against 4 or 5 aliens that otherwise will kill you (especially on Hard). I dunno, I just feel the game is true to the first one and takes everything great about it and improves it.
Different strokes for different folks I guess. I'm okay with increased melee depth for something like the Pred, but I hate how the Marine can defend. It completely destroys the feeling of being overwhelmed, made worse by the predictable scares.
In my opinion the Marine should be about being equipped to quickly mow down aliens, but being stalked and overwhelmed. About keeping the aliens as far as way as possible, and your heart beating faster as they get closer, due to how quickly they can cut you down.
For me this is totally lost with AvP3 thanks to being able to defend against melee attacks, knock aliens down, and the overall less threatening vibe they give. Its just not scary for me, which is a bummer as a vast majority of horror games never scare me and I've always liked the AvP franchise because they do.
As for the stuttering; if your game is stuttering try lowing the texture detail. Yeah, your computer might meet the specs, but the engine is ass and doesnt seem to handle texture management very well. Lower the texture detail. It work look much worse and stuttering could disappear completely, like it did for me.
I really wish Rebellion could have at least created facsimiles to Arnold/Paxton/Biehn/Weathers/Ventura etc for the Marine models. With names that were little winks to those characters.
I hate how ever marine looks exactly the same, except for skin color.
I just got the game last night, and --- is the single player suposed to be that hard? I only played the predator storyline, and what the hell? I slaughter people in multiplayer, but .. in the second level, when you activate the self destruction mode of the dead predator; and you get swarmed by aliens -- are you suposed to fight off the aliens or you are suposed to be running away from them?
I kept engaging them in hand to hand combat but I eventually get randomly killed. I got killed like 10 times in a row :lol and just said fuck it and went in mp mode, where i kicked asses.
I'm blocking and stabbing and suddenly i get killed by a random alien. Errm..
also: is it me or the blades are incredibly oversized? They were not that long in Predator and Pred 2. It looks kinda comical
I just got the game last night, and --- is the single player suposed to be that hard? I only played the predator storyline, and what the hell? I slaughter people in multiplayer, but .. in the second level, when you activate the self destruction mode of the dead predator; and you get swarmed by aliens -- are you suposed to fight off the aliens or you are suposed to be running away from them?
I kept engaging them in hand to hand combat but I eventually get randomly killed. I got killed like 10 times in a row :lol and just said fuck it and went in mp mode, where i kicked asses.
I slaughter people in multiplayer, but .. in the second level, when you activate the self destruction mode of the dead predator; and you get swarmed by aliens -- are you suposed to fight off the aliens or you are suposed to be running away from them?
I play on Normal! :lol Oh well, I'll try running away; i guess thats what you suposed to do anyway since the you can hear the countdown beeper anyway. I hope also that the game isnt about fighting waves and waves of the same alien model in single player because its gonna get stale real fast. The predator storyline should be more stalking the other species and suddenly striking using tools; not non stop hand to hand combat.
I really liked the part in the first level where you are in a tree, listening to soldiers talking together. It felt like in the movies. It would be awesome to be able to set up traps line in AVP2 when the predator sets up this laser wire thing and herds the aliens into walking into them (i do remember that he throws one into one too). I Know im like 20 minutes in the game, but thats what I am expecting.. I'll play more tonight after work
I play on Normal! :lol Oh well, I'll try running away; i guess thats what you suposed to do anyway since the you can hear the countdown beeper anyway. I hope also that the game isnt about fighting waves and waves of the same alien model in single player because its gonna get stale real fast. The predator storyline should be more stalking the other species and suddenly striking using tools; not non stop hand to hand combat.
I really liked the part in the first level where you are in a tree, listening to soldiers talking together. It felt like in the movies. It would be awesome to be able to set up traps line in AVP2 when the predator sets up this laser wire thing and herds the aliens into walking into them (i do remember that he throws one into one too). I Know im like 20 minutes in the game, but thats what I am expecting.. I'll play more tonight after work
I think he's talking about the jungle.If so they're actually really easy,once you engage one the others won't attack you to aggressively,if at all.Hold block until they go for a heavy attack,punch em twice in the face,rinse repeat.I just burned through that section on nightmare last night(which isn't a nightmare at all,its just hard mode with no checkpoints)
