Impressions: Aliens Vs Predator
"It has no relationship to the movies," we were told at a recent Sega event. Thank goodness: gamers would be outraged if the Aliens Vs Predator franchise were to be tainted by the recent films. Another good sign: Rebellion, developers of the fan-loved 1999 PC game, are at the helm of this current-gen reboot.
Like its predecessors, AvP will offer three unique game experiences based on each of the warring species: Aliens, Predators and puny, delicious humans. We were able to see two of the game modes: one scenario with the gun-toting marines and another as the stealthy Predators.
In spite wielding powerful automatic rifles, playing as a marine is a terrifying experience. Light is hard to come by in this universe, meaning players will have to rely upon sound and the HUD's radar. Aliens are able to crawl out of any vent and traverse across walls and ceilings, making them rather difficult to spot. Players will have a few tools at their disposal: turrets that can be thrown and deployed anywhere, and an infinite number of flares to throw (although only two can be active at once).
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The experience was scary, but at the same time, incredibly predictable and unoriginal. Things jumping out of shadows is fun for a while, but we're not entirely sure when people get tired of being afraid of the dark. The game has a heavy reliance on scripted events: comrades will get pulled into the ceiling by aliens, or ripped apart by a cloaked Predator. While these moments offer some gory eye candy, we can't help but want to have control during these situations. Give us the illusory hope for saving our teammates instead of dooming them to pre-scripted sequences. If teammates could survive and provide assistance in later levels, wouldn't saving them build greater tension into the gameplay? Wouldn't the added consequence provide players more reason to care, a feeling Left 4 Dead so perfectly imbues?
Whereas playing as a human feels like a survival horror game, the Predator segment feels more like a stealth game. Players have Metroid Prime-esque access to a variety of HUDs, each providing unique information: one mode is good for finding humans, another good for aliens. We were impressed by how easy it was for Predators to roam the environment. An on-screen cursor lets players choose where they want to jump, making it very easy to jump from tree branch to tree branch, looking for marines below.
Remaining cloaked, a Predator has a number of tricks up its sleeve. Predators can throw a human voice to a particular point, luring other humans to that location. It seems a bit too effective right now, with NPCs quickly responding to the call, heading directly to the location selected by the player. It's as if players have direct control over the humans. A strategy demonstrated to us had players placing mines in the grass, then throwing a call into the grass. A stupid marine walks into the grass and promptly explodes.
Turrets are still able to spot Predators, meaning players will have to think of other ways to infiltrate heavily defended camps than to storm them head on. The Predators do have a few projectile weapons, but they're most lethal when coming in for a close kill. As a Predator, players can get a "trophy kill," ripping off the heads off their targets. A nice touch: the Predator will stroke the still-wet spines that drip below the freshly dismembered head. This is something that you'll be able to do in both the single and multiplayer games.
Other than that detail, Sega was tight-lipped about the multiplayer aspect of the game. Right now, even the basics have yet to be determined, with "more than 2, less than 20" players being able to go online. (We're guessing the game will allow for 16 player matches.) We were told that the developers are currently working on balancing the three different factions, and will most likely place limits on the number of players that can be Aliens and Predators. (It wouldn't be much fun if there were 15 aliens and one human, for example.) While the game is still set for a February release, it doesn't appear a beta is in the works. Not yet, anyway.
Alien Vs Predator is unsurprising. The single-player campaigns for the marines and Predators look and feel exactly as one would expect. While the solo adventures may be uninspired, we're still intrigued by the potential of multiplayer. We'd love to see Rebellion successfully recreate the thrills the original PC games were able to provide online. If done well, that alone will be worth the price of admission.
