AVP 2010

[Lighthawk]

Newest gamefly game in my possession is the latest edition of the AVP video gaming series. At present I have completed 1/3 of game, having finished the alien campaign.

The awesome:
The "trophy kills". If you sneak up on or knock down an enemy, you will receive a button prompt and be able to auto-kill said enemy in one of many randomly chosen, highly gruesome manners. There is the inner jaw head bite (seen from inside the alien mouth no less), tail skewering, claws through the face, or just hold em down for a facehugger (though where said hugger suddenly appears from is a bit of a head-scratcher).

The good:
Nice graphics, nothing stellar, but good.
Lurking in the shadows to pounce upon your unaware prey is a blast, no doubt about it. The targeting reticule is a small bit of genius: It is T shaped and the vertical line always points to the ground, for when you go crawling up walls and ceilings. It also has a glowing aura around it that gets thicker the deeper the shadows about you are (seeing as you are a creature without sight, dark and light doesn't really mean anything to you, and your view in the game reflects this with everything being nice and easy to "see".)
The story line is okay, though from what I understand, all three campaign's story line interweave, so hopefully it'll get better as I play the other two. I did actually manage to get somewhat attached to my insecticidal-serpentine eyeless god of death, and rather did enjoy seeing him complete his section of the story successfully.

The bad:
Sadly, like so many many of the AVP games, the bad stuff really brings down the over all enjoyment, just enough for you lament over how much cooler the game could have been.
Even with the fancy targeting reticule, it is just too damn easy to get turned around while wall crawling. I stuck to the ground as much as possible.
Speaking of getting turned around, navigating the ducts and sewers...ugh. Endless tunnels that all look exactly the same.
Combat unfortunately sucked. Sneaking and making stealth kills is fun, stand up fighting not at all. This is just one more in a long line of games that tried to make 1st person melee work, and failed. The alien campaign should have been 3rd person, with a game engine like that of Batman Arkham Asylum. That would have been freaking awesome, and gotten around a lot of the navigation issues as well.
The marines were highly irregular in just how aware they were. Sometimes they'd spot you halfway across the map in the deepest shadows, other times you could be chewing their buddy's face off from five feet away and not have them notice. The only certain way not to be seen was to be behind something, which does work fairly well since you can see their outlines through objects, but if you have to cross open ground/walls/ceiling to reach your prey, it's a crap shoot as to whether or not they'll spot you.
Also, considering this is suppose to Alien vs Predator, there really is not a lot of alien fighting predator going on. In fact you only face predators in the very final level, in the very last area. They are the final boss I guess, but it didn't really feel like it. There were two or three of them, you, and a horde of your alien buddies, and you pretty much gang rape the preds. Very weak final battle.
Final bit of suck, once you start a trophy kill, you can't interrupt it, and neither can anything else, but you still lose health if you're getting shot. The kills generally take 5-15 seconds to complete, which is a lot of time for another marine to pump rounds into you while you shove his buddy to the ground and hold him for a facehugger. The majority of my deaths came from being unable to run due to being in the middle of a trophy kill, which is just all kinds of really annoying.

As much fun as I did have with parts of this, over all it was a let down. 5 out of 10.

Next up, the Predators.

[Tsukiyumi]

Funny, I've played every AVP game through as the Space Marines first.

The trophy kill system does sound like crap.

The orientation thing sounds awesome - I never had too much trouble with wall and ceiling crawling in the previous games; something like that would make it downright easy.

[Deepcrush]

You mean the Colonial Marines right...

[Tsukiyumi]

Hell. For some reason, I thought the S in USCM stood for space.

Long day.

[Deepcrush]

United States Colonial Marines

They're part of the USIN, United States Interstellar Navy.

Which is then a part of the **********, whatever the hell the Earth wide government is called per novel...

[Tsukiyumi]

I haven't read any of the novels. I knew USCM meant "United States", but I just wasn't firing on all cylinders that day.

[Deepcrush]

Yeah, they were supposed to be USMC (United States Marine Corps) but the USMC was unhappy with original script (where they were all pussies) and switched it to USCM. Followed by a rewrite of the characters because even the actors hated them and then we ended up with the USCM of Aliens...

[Tyyr]

If they'd gone with a third person view for the alien they could have forgone the reticule during the wall crawls.

[Lighthawk]

Yeah, it would have made things just easier overall.

[Lighthawk]

Alright, Predator missions finished

The awesome: Again, the trophy kills. Sneak up on someone or knock em down, and you can preform a one shot kill with messy results. Ripping off human heads is sickly satisfying, in fact my favorite moment of the entire game so far was punching a hole in a guy's back, grabbing his spine, and ripping his head down through his neck and out the hole. The game even includes two instances where you have to take a certain individual's head in order to by-pass security with his retinal scan (even though I'm pretty sure that wouldn't work, but it's too cool to care). Shifting through the various vision modes is also very nice and adds to the feel of being the predator.

The good: You're a bit less mobile than you were playing the alien, but still very quick, and you can jump like freaking spiderman. The jump system isn't too shabby either, you hold down one button to enter "focus" mode (which also highlights mission objectives and points of interest) which places a jump marker where ever the targeting reticule is. If it's a X, it's too far/high to make the jump, if it is a pillar of circles though hit the jump button to leap to that spot. Several levels involve jumping through the tree tops to sneak up on unsuspecting marines. You can also use your voice recorder to draw individuals away from groups, though it is a frankly silly process the way it plays out. You already have some recordings, you don't get to make your own. You target a marine, press the distract button, and then aim for a spot on the ground somewhere and hit the button again. Generally angry sounding recording plays, and the marine cheerfully goes to investigate (and I must add, your voice synthesizer is a hell of a ventriloquist, you don't have to be anywhere near the distraction point)

The bad: Where to even begin...oh I know, the freaking plasma caster. See the weapon list below.
The ability of the marines to see through your cloak varies widely, just like with the alien lurking in the shadows. And just about EVERYTHING you do other than walk and jump turns it off. I eventually just stopped using the dumb thing (at least until I got the combi stick, see below).
Trophy kills, like with the alien, once you start one, you can't stop till it's done, so make sure nothing is going to bitch slap you while you're pulling one off. Though at least with the predator you are a lot tougher.
You're going to spend most of the game fighting with your wrist claws, and like I said with the alien, this is not the game that makes 1st person melee work well. The system is simple enough at least though: Light attack beats heavy attack by being faster, heavy attack beats block by busting through it, block beats light attack by blocking it and opening up the enemy for a counter strike. But it's still 1st person melee. Once you get some of your better ranged weapons, it's better to just stop using the claws unless you have to.

The weapons
Wrist claws: What you'll be using for most of your kills for the first half of the game, and even after you get your better weapons, you'll use them for 1/2 the aliens you kill just because the buggers are too good at getting into melee. Your claws are always ready to go though, so you don't have to juggle weapons when an alien gets in close. Hell, 90% of the time when a xeno does close, all you need to do is block (they almost always open with a light attack), counter, and trophy kill when the counter knocks them down.

Plasma caster: So awesome, so deadly, so...useless. I get it, this is a weapon that could easily be a game breaker. It's long ranged, accurate, and powerful. So how do they balance it? They don't, they gimp it. You have a power supply for the thing, and the ONLY way to recharge is to, wait for it, steal power from the humans. Yup, you drain energy from their machinery via your wrist computer thingy. Just utterly lame. The might Yautja and their terrible weaponry, dependent on parasiting human tech. And you only get about 3 good shots per charge. You can fire it plain, which is barely enough to knock a human over (weak) or charge it and get the auto-lock with the red dots of death, which is an instant kill, but the marines have an inhuman ability to respond to your targeting lasers and follow them back to you, so shoot fast. I stopped using this pretty quickly, as it runs out of juice too fast and puts my prey on alert too easily.

Plasma mines: Totally worthless. Uses the same energy as your plasma caster to throw mines out that you can then blow up. I suppose if you have the patience to lay out traps and lure prey into them they could work well, but you can just sneak up on your target and kill them far faster than fussing with these things.

Throwing disc: Your first practical ranged weapon. No energy needed, slices humans in half, and can head shot aliens. The down side is the thing doesn't just fly out and fly back. When you throw it your targeting lasers come on and it tracks them, which can be fussy as hell to aim, as it tracks in real time. So you could aim up a shot, throw, and if you move, the disc will change paths in mid-flight. It also tends to rebound for a bit, coming back to the targeted area, making it take a while before you can throw it again. Still, a deadly weapon once you work through the learning curve.

Combi stick (spear): After dealing with everything else, this weapon honestly feels rather cheap. It one shots everything but boss characters, costs nothing to use, and doesn't even break your cloak! The only downsides are the very tiny targeting reticule and slow time to target, which makes it hard to hit moving targets. But as the marines routinely pause in their patrols and the aliens tend to charge straight at you, this is a minimal issue. Once you get this, there is no reason to use anything else, other than your claws for melee ranged aliens.

Finally, a complaint. Halfway through the game, they introduced aliens that can spit acid. I NEVER got to spit acid playing as the alien, bunch of bullshit.

Over all, I liked the alien game better. 4 out of 10. This one too would have been much better 3rd person.

[Lighthawk]

And final bit of the game, the marines.

The awesome: The smart-gun. The very best there is. When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes. See the weapon list below.

The good: The marine section of the game feels much more natural, owing to it being a traditional style 1st person shooter rather than trying to mix melee into your primary attacks. Not that there isn't melee involved, see The Odd below. The story is decent, nothing stellar and none of the characters are all that enduring, but it functions in it's role of providing context as to why you are doing what you're doing.

The bad: The first two levels are really boring. They spend waaay too much time trying to spook you with the dark and gloomy atmosphere, jump scare tactics with breaking machinery, and fake blips on your motion tracker. It took a good ten minutes of wandering before I came across my first alien encounter, by which point the creepy had well worn off and the meeting, which was well staged I'll admit, was just bland. If they had spent just a minute or two on the set up and then had the meeting, it would have been nicely freaky. As it was though, I was so ready to kill the damn thing just for the sake of doing something that I rushed the damn alien in my haste to be able to finally fight something. The rest of the first two levels was much the same, lots of wandering, not nearly enough fighting, and they still managed to be skimpy with the ammo. Thankly that cleared up from the 3rd level on, but damn.
Your motion tracker is mainly there for the atmosphere, it is worthless as a practical sensory tool. Half the time you get readings that end up being nothing, the other half the damn thing is too hard to read clearly and easily, and if you focus on it to try and understand it, you have better than even odds of something nailing you while you're not paying attention.
Also like the alien missions, you barely ever run across a predator. And the first few times you do, you can't even fight him, you HAVE to run away while he blows up the scenery with his plasma caster. And when you do finally face the thing, the battle is a breeze. He jumps around on top of a bunch of tall pillars, stopping to shoot at you occasionally, at which point you can unload into him.

The odd: In addition to using your guns as, well guns, you can also use them as clubs to batter the aliens around with. You have the same mechanics as the alien and predator melee, light and heavy attacks and a block with counter follow up. I am really mixed on this. On the one hand, it is fun to block an alien swipe, smack the beast in the face with your gun stock, and then put a few rounds into it's head while it's stunned on the floor. On the other,it just flies in the face of all common sense as established by every other bit of alien and avp canon. If you were playing a synthetic I could believe it, but there is just no way a bog standard human, even a tough as nails marine, could slug it out with an alien in melee and win.

The weapons
You get to carry up to three weapons at a time, though you always have to have the pistol, and it barely counts as a weapon, so it's like Halo, you can have two guns on you that you switch between depending on the situation.

Pistol: Your back up weapon, which you can't exchange for something else, even though you really wish you could. Only two things keep this weapon from being totally useless. The first is that it has unlimited ammo, so you will always have something to shoot with. The second is that it is the only weapon that isn't overkill against facehuggers, and thus a good choice against them so you can save the ammo of your real weapons for the aliens, which practically laugh off the pistol rounds.

Pulse Rifle: Marginally better than the pistol, but it still takes too long to put an alien down to be very practical, especially when they are rushing you in numbers. The under slung grenade launcher is a different matter entirely though, it makes chunky acidic salsa out of everything near the impact site. Unfortunately you can only carry four grenades at a time, there aren't many ammo drops for it, and you can kill yourself with it at close range, and the aliens are very good at getting in close to you.

Shotgun: The first practical weapon of the game. This will make a mess of anything that gets too close, I never needed more than two shots to put down any non-boss enemy with this. This is one half of the combo that can and will carry you through the majority of the game, the other half of which is...

Scoped Rifle: For when you need to reach out and touch someone. Semi-auto long ranged death. Drops aliens in one shot, and is the weapon of choice for the predator boss fight. It helpfully shows up just as the acidic spitting aliens do, and they are nice sitting ducks for this thing. Not only is it powerful and long ranged, it's scope highlights enemies, even through cover and concealment. The only real downsides to this thing is that your field of view when looking through the scope is small, and it isn't very easy to aim at close range. But if you have a shotgun along with this, you are set. Both weapons preform well at mid range, and they each preform awesomely at their optimal ranges.

Flamethrower: The only weapon even worst than the pistol. Seriously, this thing has no use. It takes way too long to kill aliens, and has the unfortunate side effect of making them explode in a spray of acid. It also fails to slow and/or knock them back like every other weapon does, so they can charge you without impediment. And it has less range than the shotgun. The only thing it does well is kill facehuggers, since the little buggers are hard to target and this baths the area in flames. But seeing you only encounter huggers occasionally and the pistol is a perfectly able anti-hug device that you are always stuck with, there is just no reason to pick this thing up.

Smartgun: The big daddy of marine weaponry. Let me count the ways in which this thing rocks.
1) Full auto fire of doom: This thing is both rapid fire and high damaging. Will pulp an alien with a half second burst, and even the tough combat sythoids will wither under a sustained fire in a second or two.
2) Self targeting: This is the "smart" aspect of "smaartgun". The targeting reticule is a big ass rectangle that covers a good 2/3rds or so of the screen, and the weapon will auto-target any enemy in this area.
3) Enemy detecting sensors: Like the scoped rifle, the smartgun will highlight enemies, even those you normally couldn't see. And unlike the rifle, you don't have to zoom in for this, any enemy inside the huge targeting reticule is highlighted for you.
4) Lots of dakka: Ammo comes in 150 round drums. Dakka dakka dakka dakka!
There are unfortunately, two drawbacks that leave the shotgun/scoped rifle combo a better option than this beast. The first is that the smartgun takes up both primary weapon slots. The second is that it and it's ammo only appear three times in the game, and each of those times has been designed with the weapon in mind. Basically you only get the thing prior to facing huge waves of enemies at once, where you need it's awesome firepower just to survive. Once the zerg rush is over, you're better off ditching the thing and picking back up the shotty/rifle combo, even if you have some smartgun ammo left. Otherwise you'll run out of dakka in a bit and have nothing on hand but your crappy pistol to protect your soft human hide with until you stumble across something better.

I can't believe I'm going to say this, but...the marine campaign was the best. As awesome as some of the alien and predator stuff was, the marine gameplay mechanics were simply better, and that made it more fun to play.

6 of 10. Game over man, game over...

[Deepcrush]

Game is on sale on Steam for 4.99$

[LaughingCheese]

Crud. I bought it full price.

AND BC2 at the same time.

Therefore I shall never buy a game upon release again.

And also I'm trying to shift my hobbies to robotics and such and not just gaming.