gunsmoke on 22/2/2010 at 17:20
Quote Posted by Nameless Voice
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.
Dude. Mothra is DEAD FUCKING ON with this one. I went across the street to my mouth-breathing, WoW-nerd neighbor's house earlier today. He saw me walking the dog, mentioned he got the game and said the I HAD to see this train-wreck for myself. We were both looking forward to it, and had talked about it occasionally over the past few months.
Ho-lee-shit.
This is shit. My favorite movie of all-time is 'Aliens'. The movie is shat upon, and nothing less, in my eyes. Mothra basically hit upon all of my main complaints, so I won't regurgitate his points, but do take my warning:
CAVEAT EMPTORjune gloom on 22/2/2010 at 17:29
I never thought they'd make an AvP less likeable than the first one but what do you know
Volitions Advocate on 22/2/2010 at 18:24
I think this one might be split down the middle.
I'm having great fun with it. And have experienced no lag whatsoever, this is probably the smoothest running game out of the box I've played in awhile. Comparing it to Call of Pripyat which I'm also playing and enjoying thoroughly, and with that game I have most details between half and 75%, and unable to get it out of DX9 mode, yet even with an HD 5870 it runs around 20 fps with more than 3 or 4 npcs on screen, not to mention the stalls and glitches that we've gotten used to on X-ray. The engine still isn't optimised much since SOC..
but like I said, on AVP I've got everything running maxed in DX11 mode and with Vsync enabled It sits solidly at my monitors refresh rate and never deviates, and I've only got a Q6600. I haven't had a single glitch or artifact. I really like this engine. They've also got some of the best shadows I've seen, actually look real and aren't just a pixellated mess in an otherwise hi-res and detailed world. (i'm looking at you borderlands/any game on UE3)
swaaye on 22/2/2010 at 20:21
Yeah as usual opinions vary greatly.
I'm in the camp that says this game got panned and deserved it. It's pretty awful overall aside from production values and shine. It's definitely a corridor shooter and that makes it even more ridiculous that the hand holding is probably the most thorough in any game ever. The controls suck as well, especially for the Predator. I haven't tried Alien yet.
Scary? Not unless you are new to the world because every "scare" in this game has been predictable.
Visually it reminds me of Quake 4 and Prey. It's definitely not some state of the art graphics display regardless of it having that tacked on DX11 Enhanced Features menu. That's a hype bandwagon grab there IMO. This game is clearly designed to work with the limitations of all the platforms it's on in every way from graphics to controls.
I know some console guys that think this game is the shit though. Nobody has ever played AVP2 it seems. WTF happened to that game anyway? It's not remotely perfect, but it has some amazing levels and is better than this new game I think. :D
Quote Posted by Volitions Advocate
IComparing it to Call of Pripyat which I'm also playing and enjoying thoroughly, and with that game I have most details between half and 75%, and unable to get it out of DX9 mode, yet even with an HD 5870 it runs around 20 fps with more than 3 or 4 npcs on screen, not to mention the stalls and glitches that we've gotten used to on X-ray.
What resolution? I'm running CoP at 1360x768 on my TV with my 8800GTX and run DX10 "maximum" quality (no AA tho). The game does seem to have a memory leak of some sort because speed drops over time. When I first load it up it is butter smooth, maybe 40-50 fps or something. But I've seen it degrade to about 5fps.
What an awesome game though huh?
Phatose on 22/2/2010 at 21:14
Well, it's certainly interesting that I'm not the only one who got both but has been playing CoP a hell of a lot more.
AvP, while not genuinely awful, is mediocre. It's highly disappointing because I can see that the game had lots of potential, it just didn't actually want to make anything of that potential.
Aliens move, hide, and play like Xenos from the Aliens flicks. They're slower then in the previous games, but in all honesty this is far more accurate to Aliens then the games were - and as the Xeno's are clearly Camerons, I'm OK with this. The alien campaign, however, is overly short and disinteresting.
Predator and Marine unfortunately, don't fare quite as well. Marines are still stuck meleeing everything, and unless they established the new guy was actually Arnold Schwarzenegger, it's nonsensical. I could accept it as being for mood if it was a rare event, but I've ended up having to melee half of all enemies.
The pred *should* be able to kill humans in close combat no prob, but xenos are a different story. A finisher which causes a visible fountain of acid blood to shoot out at you should not be something you shrug off, pred or not.
Visual are a mixed bag. The aliens move very convincingly, and the preds do for the most part too. Level visual though, are very mixed. The Aliens inspired colony and hive portions are interesting and fairly well done. The predator inspired jungle levels, however, look especially sparse, especially given the natural comparison to Crysis that the latter games cloaked jungle predator with laser red dot pistols can give off. The AvP inspired temple levels....well, I didn't like it then either.
Audio.....poor. If you're an alien predator doing awful things to people, they should scream bloody murder. The audio, unfortunately, is far more 'loudly masturbating' then 'having head ripped off by alien nightmare murder lord.' And since this is a game fundamentally about being murdered by awful things from space, screwing that up is as major a mess up as the audio could have.
And the dialogue....look, I understand that a Movie tied game is going to be heavily derivative, but way too much of the dialogue that is flat out copied from the movies, versus inspired by them. Come to think of that, that goes for the level design as well. Levels feel far more like a mashup of AvP then anything with a coherent design.
Weapons are a mixed bag. The marine's signature pulse rifle and smartgun feel very weak. The flamethrower is more a suicide device, since a flaming alien who explodes does so with acid blood which actually does hurt you. The shotgun and sniper feel stupidly lethal though. The pred's caster feels reasonably lethal. The disc does not, and the combistick is really just a god damned javelin.
Part of me wants to blame this on the console focus, but in all honesty this game's main problem is it's utter lack of ambition. AvP just doesn't actually aspire to be great. It's content with mediocre, and that's what we get.
swaaye on 22/2/2010 at 21:51
I agree with that. Good write up. It isn't a bad game, but it is mediocre and uninspired in just about every way. It has a disappointingly "safe" feeling to a lot of it.
All of the AVP games heavily use cliches from the movies though. I'm sure the idea is to make the player feel gleeful if he recognizes their brilliant ability to copy movie elements, but for me it just adds cheese. Adding a temple location to the game that reminds one of the god awful AVP movies wasn't a great idea.....
The comparison between this game's "jungle" and what Crysis does is....well I'm at a loss for words. Crysis is in its own class.
Nameless Voice on 22/2/2010 at 22:21
Quote Posted by Phatose
And the dialogue....look, I understand that a Movie tied game is going to be heavily derivative, but way too much of the dialogue that is flat out copied from the movies, versus inspired by them.
Uuuurgh, this is one of the things that really put me off AvP 2. Keep the dialogue from the films in the films where it belongs. Invent your own!
Volitions Advocate on 23/2/2010 at 01:20
The carry over of one liners from the movies into AVP2 (the movie) really pissed me off so I'm with you guys on this one.
I'd say the best experience of the game for me was the beginning level of the alien and the first 2 levels of the Marine.
I'll say I agree with Phatose on this one. But it didn't stop me from having FUN playing it. Having said that. We'd better get some more to play with DLC. I'm assuming we'll have to pay for it though....
I want an SDK... I really do like the engine.
june gloom on 23/2/2010 at 01:52
Maybe it's been a while since I played AvP2 but I don't remember there being more than maybe one line taken from Aliens. Are we outraged about this or something?
Volitions Advocate on 23/2/2010 at 02:26
Quote Posted by dethtoll
Maybe it's been a while since I played AvP2 but I don't remember there being more than maybe one line taken from Aliens. Are we outraged about this or something?
I meant the lines from the aliens and predator movies being used in the movie avp2, not the game.
