Xenith on 22/2/2010 at 10:26
I did some reading about the game's optimization and it seems most OS x64 users seem to get a lot of ingame pausing and stuttering, though it seems it might be a combination of x64 and Nvidia cards that trigger them. I'm waiting for a patch to see if it fixes things; last I heard they were working on it.
Malf on 22/2/2010 at 10:34
Quote Posted by Xenith
I did some reading about the game's optimization and it seems most OS x64 users seem to get a lot of ingame pausing and stuttering, though it seems it might be a combination of x64 and Nvidia cards that trigger them. I'm waiting for a patch to see if it fixes things; last I heard they were working on it.
In addition to that, DX11 mode completely locks up my machine, while DX9 mode runs almost flawlessly, albeit with the occasional stutter. This is on a Phenom II 940 Black Edition with a GeForce 275, running Vista 64 with 4GB RAM.
I've not played it a huge amount to be honest, as I started playing it at nightmare difficulty before realising that there are no checkpoints at all on this difficulty. I may end up dropping the difficulty for convenience's sake, as repeating whole levels over and over holds little appeal.
mothra on 22/2/2010 at 10:34
yeah, I'm on x64 and it lags like it's dial-up (in single player). well, even a patch can't help the major desigin decisions they took and - in my eyes - ruin the experience no matter what platform you are on.
nicked on 22/2/2010 at 10:37
Well I'm having a hell of a lot of fun with the marine campaign. It's a pure throwback old-skool corridor shooter - the kind of game I love the most. Just done the boss fight against the Pred in the arena - fantastic!
It is what it is - and that's basically Aliens versus Predator 2 with better graphics. Looking forward to the alien and predator campaigns even more - Predator was always my favourite from the old games.
mothra on 22/2/2010 at 10:50
it's more AvP1 with better graphics. AvP2 had different alien/predator classes, more varied gameplay but less terror. I'd actually would like to play an oldschool shooter but this aint one, in old shooters you could shoot things good and quickly and "easily". skill you needed was attention and steady aim and the right weapon for the right job. this game does not want you to shoot things, it wants you to press buttons and look at HUD pop-ups and perform on-screen prompts or hold a button or whatever. It wants you to give the impression of angst and terror by making you the most uneffective and stupid marine there is. also, a marine fighting in mellee with an alien - COME ON, how more stupid can it get, always bothered me and thought a reboot won't make that mistake.
and don't get your hopes up. alien/pred are considerably shorter and (imo) even more boring than marine.
Volitions Advocate on 22/2/2010 at 15:58
The "hold 'x' to...." dialogues grate on me a bit.
As for the marine melee thing I think it has a plausible defense.
Obviously by this point the Aliens are common knowledge, at least to the corps, and if you watch the movies you've mostly had completely unprepared civvies taking the hit from them. Now you've got an army of football player sized marines, who have had training to deal with xenomorphs and are more suited to using their body mass to damage things. I think a big enough person could knock a xeno off balance for a second or two.
Quote:
skill you needed was attention and steady aim and the right weapon for the right job
I don't see this missing from this game at all. especially with the pred and alien, because you're not just a traveling radial arm saw anymore. You have to choose your targets even with them.
And the marine you especially need a steady aim, the aliens are far smarter now than they ever were before, and they use every surface they can to attack you.
But i agree on the canned animations. I don't like them, and I dont like that you can't interrupt them especially when you're being attacked while you're sitting there like an idiot admiring the spine you just added to your trophy wall.
I thought the Pred campaign was long enough. not quite as long as the marine, but a helluva lot longer than the alien (the alien had 5 stages while the other two had 6, and all 5 were much shorter)
The one thing I think they failed on, is the interwoven story. AVP2 had a really interesting way that they wove it all together, I think they tried on here, and all they managed to do here was make every species play the same maps, in whatever order / direction.
I say wait for some DLC, it must be coming because there is a dedicated menu option in the main menu for it. I just hope it is more than only skins or something.
I also hear that there is an SDK in the works for the PC side, I'll have to find a proper link to confirm but I'm working on it. Even though there is a huge console base, I think they'll still work on an SDK, because that's what gave avp2 its longevity. Plus I've got some cool ideas for a good fan-campaign.
EDIT::
oh! and some small details:
Re: using Camerons design instead of Giger's original. Most of the aliens are the Cameron design with the ribbed heads and what not, but later when you get to the acid spitters, they've all got domed heads like the original Gigeralien. so they're both in the mix.
And I don't mind the fact that they're using the AVP movies as canon in the story... The movies themselves may have been shite, but core story moments still added meat to the elements of the story.
My neat idea for a fan-campaign
was to have a group of people (similar to Call and her group of 'droids or something) go to Fury 161 to recover the body of the Bishop Android to repair it and use it to infiltrate Weyland Yutani, Replace one of the Karl Bishop androids.Phatose on 22/2/2010 at 15:58
By comparison, the marine is far less stupid then the pred. The marine may be able to toss a xeno off way too easily, but nearly every one of the pred's xeno trophy kills should result in a world class acid bath and a dead pred.
Nameless Voice on 22/2/2010 at 16:37
Quote Posted by mothra
only annoyance in how it tries to hinder you playing the game.
Yay, now it sounds like another Dead Space.
I'm still torn on this one, at times it sounds like something I'd like and at others it doesn't.
Volitions Advocate on 22/2/2010 at 16:53
need a gameplay vid? something other than the dev's playing? I could probably whip one up.
MustardCat on 22/2/2010 at 17:11
Mediocre FPS, wait for it to go on sale. Some bit's are fun but overall just not worth $50.
