Avp game review pc

When You Think about it first-person shooters are pretty darn amazing: all-pervasive, all-conquering, and almost always excellent. There are some duffers, but most are far beyond average compared to when the first. Aliens vs Predator game appeared And it's in this arena of game design excellence that we await the arrival of a new Aliens vs Predator, a full 10 years since Rebellion last had a go at the best movie mash-up since Godzilla went Technicolor on a guy in a gorilla outfit.

Overlooked for the Aliens versus Predator 2 in favour of Monolith the Oxford-based team have every right to consider the franchise as theirs. This is in spite of Hollywood going Phantom Menace on what was a serviceable premise in the time since Rebellion last pitted US Colonial Marines against the galaxy's most persistant stalkers. One way or another we've been working towards making this game for a very long time. However, there's the sense that the team are pleased to be going back to the source material that directly fed the Dark Horse comics, and Rebellion's own early game translations.

But we take inspiration from anywhere that's appropriate really. This latest AvP is set roughly years from now; 30 years on from the events on Fiorina 'Fury' shown in Alien before AvP2 movie and before the comical happenings in Alien Resurrection. Basically, you can be fairly certain that Ellen Ripley won't be making an appearance. This time the setting is Freya's Prospect - a colony not unlike Aliens' Hadley's Hope, which is on a planet bearing a slight resemblance to Predator's Guatemalan jungle setting.

The doomed colonists have stumbled across a cache of alien eggs, each one a home to one of those oh-so insistent and creepy facehuggers. The difference between the site of the eggs in the Aliens movie and this game, is that they are found in the apparent ruins of another alien civilisation - that of the Predators'.

Obviously the colonists are soon host to the acid-blooded uglies, while the silenced airwaves attract the intervention of US Colonial Marines. No doubt this AvP game will develop the theme that greed and profit have always been a bigger threat to humanity than any creature. Regardless of what people recall from previous games in the series, most will be familiar with how the game's cast operates: the aliens have acid for blood, attack with tooth, tail and claw and are utterly relentless in their pursuit of flesh to press their drooling quartz teeth into; Predators skulk in the shadows and rattle their mandibles; while the Marines spit out pulse rounds and quotable lines at the first sign of trouble.

The point is that we all know what each race is capable of, as well as their methods and technology, so where can we expect surprises to come from? In particular lie's proud of the ability of the Predator to use his vision modes and leap around the environment in order to stalk prey and remain stealthy. Having seen this leap mechanic in action it appears to work by you seeking a green go-here area with the crosshair and pressing a button that will zip you across to that spot.

That may not sound all that impressive, but since players playing the Predator will be able to launch onto vertical surfaces as well as the obvious horizontal ones, they'll also have to take into account their profile in relation to their prey, since even when cloaked a Predator isn't truly invisible. We're taking those kinds of steps forward with the alien player as well.

As Jones is quick to add, regardless of what people will expect, and what their experiences are with other games in the series - "crawling on the walls and ceilings and hiding in the dark to pounce on your prey and then kill them in gruesome ways" - isn't an experience you're going to get from Call of Duty. As for the Marine player, it's not about shooting guys behind cover. The xenomorphs may be relentless killing machines, but there are situations where they'll know when to hold back.

Likewise the Predator will likely use surprise and fall back into the shadows if overwhelmed. So although AvP is being designed as an FPS, survival horror and stealth is as much a focus of design as all-out action. The Marine is clearly there to fulfil the action side of things, with his pulse rifle and under-slung grenade launcher, moving up to the smart gun and a trademark shotgun handy for close encounters, obviously.

It's those pesky shadows and his bleeping motion tracker that will help ladle on tire tension. For the aliens, the trick is to make use of all the surfaces, use the shadows, get in close and strike hard and fast. It's important for us to make sure that a single alien is a deadly threat to the player, because they are one of the scariest monsters in the universe, says Jones, highlighting a problem that has blighted many Aliens-themed game in the past "Even when you're up against two or three of them you're really in trouble, so the times when we really ramp it up and throw significant numbers of them at you, you're really going to have to be very tooled-up with weaponry to even stand a glimmer of a chance.

It's going to keep people on their toes and make them terrified. There will be times in y the game when teamwork is an essential part of strategy. Safety in numbers has been the lesson we should all take away from the movies that, and, don't open the damn airlock , and while isn't a squadlevel game other characters you meet and fight alongside - regardless of which species you're playing as - will be there to offer respite from the sense of vulnerability that will play out.

That ties into when you connect very physically with the characters right in front of you. Such physicality is demonstrated by visceral nature of melee combat in the game. Previous games required only blind pummelling of the attack key when up close, whether you were swiping alien claws or a Predator's wrist blades. The new AvP will open up trophy kills if you put a decent sequence of blows together, or are about to make a surprise attack. For the alien it might be the old pierce-and-lift tail manoeuvre, or a diagonal slice that carves a person in two parts.

For the Predator it's the swift removal of the spinal column although having seen it repeated four times in one brief play session, it's already becoming passe. Hie three-way battles that will identify the single-player side of AvP will be mirrored in the multiplayer. Of course Rebellion are in no mood to reveal anything specific about what gameplay modes to expect, only that, according to Jones, there will be a variety, "from the traditional, to ones that really make the most of the different species and the way they interact".

A full co-operative multiplayer campaign is on our wish list, but even just the traditional would do us fine, since it was Rebellion that did much to nail co-operative survival years before Left 4 Dead was even thought of.

Suggestions that Valve's zombie shooter might have stolen AvPs thunder prompts a response that could be telling: "L4D takes the approach of a parody, says Mackman, "it's not a scary game as such. It's tense, but it's not the same kind of game as AvP. Yes it's co-operative, yes it's got a run-through area if you're comparing it to the original AvP but compared to what we're doing with multiplayer We're only saying that fans won't be disappointed.

Regardless of whether L4D is influencing the design of the multiplayer side of AvP, Rebellion are aware that although an endless parade of games have borrowed from AvP over the years, there are games that are paying back that influence in return. However, it's not any one title that is inspiring Rebellion to get this one game just right. More than the template of the classic games in the AvP lineage.

Rebellion are holding up the increasing levels of polish and accessibility that modern action games offer.

Like us, Rebellion are of the opinion that today's FPS games are pretty amazing, and, like us, they want Aliens vs Predator to be counted among the very best.

In Many Ways you already know the score with the new Aliens vs Predator - it's essentially taking the much-loved PC model of years gone by and sprucing it up for the teenagers who weren't around at its beginning.

This in itself is no bad thing, and the fact that it's being developed by Rebellion - the chaps who did the original Jaguar version and subsequent PC follow-up you know, the one that people actually played - gives this game much respectability. Playing as the ugly dread -' locked one is all about vertical gameplay - keeping your balance, and scanning the environment below you for enemy movement.

The tree-top gymnastics are aided by a marker that you place on viable spots that then triggers your Predator to leap there. Another enticing feature though is the ability to record the voices of people you listen in on - then later drawing soldiers out into ambushes by replaying the voices of their dead associates.

It's a ploy that certainly worked on Arnie's gang. As for the Colonial Marines, well you know what to expect: a misty metal-encased base with grids for floors and ceilings and all the pulse rifles, beeping motion trackers and screaming soldiers that Weyland-Yutani can provide. Oh, and the automated turrets from the director's cut of Aliens - the one people judge you over, should you not have seen it There's no doubt here, as you move between wounded Marines soldering doors and shoring up defences against an imminent onslaught that Rebellion have nailed the feeling of tension -although whether it'll be ratcheted up to the levels seen in Monolith's AvP2 is still unknown.

What's definite, however, is that when the aliens do put in an appearance their Al isn't lacking -they're always in different and unexpected spots and they're always noticeably hunting you down. You can pretty much guarantee that most of your Marine chums won't be making it through the night.

This said, if we're being overcautious in extolling AvPs virtues then there's a good reason - the last notable PC game Rebellion developed was Shellshock 2: Blood Trails issue which was truly an abomination: an indelible black mark in the history books of gaming. With this in mind, if there's something to be feared other than acid-riddled xenomorphs then it's that mission objectives will seem a smidge bog-standard.

Having to knock out a bunch of generators to gain access to a Marine base while playing as a Predator, for example, isn't a crime - but we've knocked out similar generators plentiful times before. So while there's little doubt that the new Aliens vs Predator will be an absolute blinder, with the game's release so far away we're not going to tempt fate with rampant pre-ordering just yet.. This guide's been written to help you grasp the basic functions of each character.

Hopefully, it will help you cope with the many bowel-loosening encounters you'll face during your AvP experience. The slowest character in the game, and probably the weakest. He is protected only by his armour and guns. If you learn each level and move quickly to reach the armour power-ups and health, you stand a better chance of survival. Use short, controlled bursts, and aim for the head. A reliable weapon with a grenade launcher for when you're in a rush.

Another handy weapon against Facehuggers. Always run backwards while firing and never let a burning enemy touch you - you'll go up in flames, too. Big one-shot rocket launcher. Effective against Alien Queens and Predators, not so effective in confined spaces.

More powerful than the pulse rifle's launcher. Comes with three different types of grenade: basic, fragmentation and proximity. The nastiest gun in a Marine's arsenal.

Predator's main appeal is its three disparate campaigns, in which you respectively take control of a marine, an alien, and a predator. Each campaign has its strengths and starts well enough. The first two levels of the marine story, which plays as a fairly typical first-person shooter, are dark and creepy, making good use of atmospheric lighting to enhance the tension.

Your first encounter with a creepy-crawly xenomorph is properly nerve-racking and will have you searching about in the dark, using your handy motion tracker to try to figure out exactly where it is while trying to bear with the tracker's incessant beeping. Playing as the alien, your escape from the confines of a laboratory features some good old-fashioned bloody head-chomping, and there is some short-lived fun in crawling all over the walls and ceilings. And the predator offers his own delights.

It can be fun to leap from surface to surface while you gaze down at hapless marines as they stroll underneath and you prepare for a gloriously disgusting kill. But in each campaign, the thrill wears off quickly when you discover that Aliens vs. Predator botches a lot of the basics, and what seems thrilling at first becomes downright tedious as you struggle with poorly designed levels and gawky gameplay.

For example, the dark thrills of the first marine levels give way to tedium once you leave the dark behind and enter jungles and temples, which are far less interesting and make shooting the grotesque xenomorphs no different from shooting up raptors in Turok--except that the levels are much more confined and straightforward. Eventually, you'll learn that the same trick in combat dispatches aliens almost every time: block their attack, smash them with a melee attack, and shoot them when they're down.

This doesn't work when there are a lot of them, but it gets the job done more often than not. That doesn't mean the marine campaign is a cakewalk; some levels feature annoying choke points or give you too little room to maneuver, which makes certain sections feel more cheap than challenging.

Come 'ere and give me a big sloppy kiss. The alien campaign is interesting at first, thanks to a number of cool abilities that are initially fun but ultimately can't compensate for some major mechanical malfunctions. For instance, it seems fun at first to crawl around on walls and ceilings, until the awkward controls suck all the pleasure out of it. You are supposed to hold the right trigger to scamper onto a wall, but in actuality, there's no consistency to wall- and ceiling-climbing.

You'll crawl onto some walls and outcroppings willy-nilly whether or not it's what you intended to do. You'll try to activate one of the game's super-picky button prompts and jump onto a wall instead, or wrestle with the controls and camera trying to do something as simple as slither into a vent.

You'll eventually learn to wield some control over the alien's fickle movement, but even then, moving around isn't all that enjoyable. You never feel in control of an actual creature; instead, it's as if you are floating just above the ground. Sadly, the troublesome movement gets in the way of your sneaky attacks.

It can be mild fun to get in position above an unsuspecting marine and pounce, but the unwieldy movement and haphazard level design make it much more enjoyable just to stay on the ground. For example, you might try to pounce from a wall onto a passing victim, only for a beam to get in the way and cause you to drop right in front of your enemy without doing a bit of damage. Yet as clunky as it gets, you'll have fun when everything comes together in just the right way.

Positive: 13 out of Mixed: 21 out of Negative: 1 out of Over all Aliens Vs Predator has succeeded in bringing to the table so much newness with an old concept.

It just does not get old anytime soon in it's playability. All this publication's reviews Read full review. The controls for Predators and Xenomorphs may be a bit tricky and the AI sometimes doesn't show any "Intelligence" at all, but nevertheless: AvP is a most-have for fans of the movies, as well as the games - especially if you're into absolute multiplayer-mayhem and dont mind "some" gore.

Aliens Vs Predator is a standard First Person Shooter, but thanks to the Predator's and Xenomorph's campaigns, it entertains old and new players. Even the multiplayer mode is funny and well structured, but the graphics engine is not that good.

PC PowerPlay. Proves not every game needs to innovate to be entertaining. All this publication's reviews. I have to deal with what I have in my hands, and what I have is a single-player mode with some noticeable highlights and a multiplayer mode with too many problems to remain enjoyable, despite all its promise. A lot of promise mixed in with failed execution is what riddles Aliens vs. Absolute Games. This incarnation of AvP is a second-rate shooter in the most typical form, with overly repetitious game design, coding mistakes, threepenny visuals and dialogues scribbled on a rumpled napkin.

User Reviews. Write a Review. Positive: out of Mixed: 60 out of Negative: 56 out of Way scarier than the origonal. The graphics are great and the music and sound effects make for a very enjoyable if not nail bitingly Way scarier than the origonal. The graphics are great and the music and sound effects make for a very enjoyable if not nail bitingly suspensful playing experience.

When I first entered the game, I noticed how many different things you can do! My favorite by far is the ALien, but the Predator is very strong when you have become familiar with it's functions. Who wants to be human? Alien vs Predator for the Atari Jaguar came out the following year Developed by Rebellion, this game is the first FPS in the franchise. With gameplay and graphics similar to Wolfenstein 3D , this game gave players the option to choose from three campaigns based on each faction: Marines, Aliens, Predators.

This is a feature that becomes a staple of the AvP video game franchise. There was some pretty unique game design in this title, with mechanics significantly changing between playable characters, such as the Alien, who can't heal but can infect injured Marines with a Facehugger, which allows the player to respawn in that location upon death.

Generally, this game was met with very positive reviews, with many outlets citing the game's unique mechanics and atmosphere as stand-outs for the FPS genre. Alien vs Predator is still widely considered to be one of the best games on the Jaguar. Released in and once again developed by Rebellion, this game is essentially an improved and shinier version of the Atari Jaguar game, with three full-length campaigns based on each faction. This game plays around with lighting and vision to imitate each of the playable characters, such as giving the Alien a fisheye lens view and giving the player an echolocation ability, or using infrared vision as a Predator.

Critics were quick to praise this game's visual and gameplay improvements over the Jaguar predecessor, but did find its story and lack of any save features to be some pretty big downsides. The direct sequel, Aliens Versus Predator 2 , released in , swapping out the Rebellion developers for Monolith Productions.