Action_Snark's Full Review: Aliens Versus Predator 2 Gold Edition for Mac
**Author's Note: This is a review of the full game that origionally appeared in the section for the AvP2 Multiplayer demo. It has since been updated, cleaned up and moved here. The origional (and now duplicate) review has been removed.**
Ok, I'm going to start things off with a bit of a bottom line: This game is damn fun. I mean, it's not as good as say, getting frisky with that special someone, but it comes pretty darn close. For those of you who've been living in a cave on Mars with your fingers stuck in your ears, you may not have heard of two of Fox's greatest SF/action franchises, namely the Aliens and Predator universes. Both have spawned multiple blockbuster films (and a few box office bombs as well.) so it's only natural to see what happens when Aliens and Predators mix it up when humans are about. That, in a nutshell is the premise of the game. Pick your favorite species, and go to town.
Plot: The single player game actually revolves around a very well told and well thought out story. The story unfolds throughout the length of three seven mission campaigns (one campaign per race) and each angle is presented quite well to the player. Basically, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation (AKA "The Company" in the films) has set up a bio-weapons research facility on a remote lump of rock named LV-1201. LV-1201 is home to an ancient alien hive that has been dormant for millenia. The humans, predictably, decide to go in and try to grab a few aliens and tame them, among other things. The Predators (or Yautja, to those of you in the know about them) simply want to kill a few aliens, and hang their bleached skulls on the bulkheads of their ships. The aliens, predictably, just want to eat anything that crosses their path. While my potted plot summary seems a bit disjointed, rest assured that Fox and Sierra are better storytellers than I am.
The plot is fleshed out through a lot of ingame cutscenes and scripted sequences, all of which are every bit as good as anything seen in Half-Life and then some. Plot rates an 8 out of 10 for being quite well done, espescially for a videogame.
The Graphics: The graphics are very well done overall. AvP2 uses a heavily modified LithTech engine (LithTech 2.5, if memory serves.) The LithTech engine is a very robust and sturdy engine, having acquitted itself quite well in previous games such as Shogo and No One Lives Forever. The characters boast very good polygon counts, and the lighting and textures are quite well done. The model animation is also top notch, with subtle nuances of motion being well rendered onscreen. My only complaint is that visuals seem....well.... a bit plain in some places. There's nothing technically or artistically wrong with them, I just feel that a little more visual bling bling could have been added in places. Graphics score an 8 out of 10, for being very well done, but could stand a little more glitz.
Sound and Music: Audiophiles will not be disappointed with this game. Pertinant sound effects have been faithfully lifted from their respective films, and some very inventive new effects have been added. Everything from the Predator's clicking mandibles to the sandy stattaco of pulse rifle fire is crisply beamed toward your ears. Sound is used quite well to help build atmosphere, in the Marine missions espescially. Music is also used to increase atmosphere to the utmost. Following the tradition of the Alien films, scary, spacey pseudo-ambient tracks are liberally sprinkled throughout the game. Most of the music is timed to pick up just before a particularly scary scripted event or attack.
For Snark's Alternative Listening Suggestion, I'd recommend either Hybrid's Wider Angle, or Massive Attack's subdued Mezzanine Sound and Music still rate a solid 9 out of 10 for being quite well done and doing a very effective job of adding to the game's atmosphere. Sound is really very top notch.
Gameplay: Of course, all this bling bling in the audio, visual, and story departments would be meaningless if the game is worthless to play. Rest assured, Fox has taken the utmost care to make sure that each race is in a fine balance with the other two, and all races play equally. From the lumbering, technology laden Predator, to the agile, wall-walking aliens, everything controls crisply and smoothly. Each species has it's own specific style of play, and each style is very effective, with practice. Each species play style bears a bit closer examination, so here it is:
Human: Your average Joe Sixpack grunt does pretty well in a fight. Humans have a huge advantage in the motion trackers they carry, and pack some serious firepower. Humans tend to rely on rapid-fire and area-of-effect weapons, combined with group tacitcs. Truly, "peace through superior firepower".
Alien: Agile, swift, and deadly pretty much sum up the aliens. All alien types exept the Praetorain are capable of walking on walls/ceilings, and have a devastating pouncing attack that can cover several meters and simultaneously rend a target to shreds. Aliens are the most tactical of the three races, as they have only melee weapons, and must use their speed and strategy to get in close.
Predator: The predator is a sheer power fighter. Relying on their cloaking devices, shoulder mounted plasma cannon, and various bladed weapons, a predator is something akin to a two-legged main battle tank. Predators use skill coupled with liberally applied brute force to get the job done. The predator's greatest strength and weakness lies in his mask, and the vision modes it uses. The predator can adjust it's mask to pick up the energy signatures of various species, and this aids him greatly in targeting that species. This also leaves him nearly blind to any other hostile species in the area. Predators tend to make their kills, and fade back into the shadows to await another opportunity.
Now, along with each race's style of play, the single player campaign tailors itself to your race's style. The predator spends a lot of time in it's campaign raining death from above onto humans. The alien crawls through a lot of dank vents and sewers. The marines tend to be fighting for survival from minute one.
Of course, the real fun begins when you decide to hop onto your local TCP/IP network, and dish out some multiplayer love. Multiplay has some great highs, and some pretty bad lows. Varied modes, such as Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Survival, Evac, and others are avalible. I've found that team DM offers the the best experience, but other play modes are not without their charms. My biggest gripe with the game is that it suffers from a case of poor netcode. Ping times are decent, but the game suffers from a sever case of packet loss. This means that when things get hairy, weird things start happening. Players may disappear and reappear in different locations as a result of the game 'dropping' the packets that you should have recived that showed that player moving. This is a real pain, as you have precious little time to react when an alien starts charging you. Aside from the packet loss niggles, net play is a joy, as each species is truly different in their play styles, but all are equally balanced in their innate ability. Gameplay scores a 8 out of 10 with really fun multiplayer and a top notch single player experience losing lots of points due to some very poor net code.
Update: Well, those wonderful folks over at Monolith have done it again. The latest update for AvP2 (1.0.9.5 at the current time) has not only slain the demon of packet loss, but added some wonderful new features as well. DM and Team DM now have the added flava of ALICE units and Alien Queens. Through an option on the server's control panel, the host may now allow the game to spawn a fixed number of ALICE exosuits (fixed as in only so many suits may be active at once). Also, a new feature is the ability of the aliens to 'molt' into a Queen after a certain number of kills is reached. (Also set in the server options) While these new features add a huge value to the gameplay, there are some issues with them.
First, ALICE units can make life extremely hard on alien players, espescially if Alien Life Cycle is enabled. While the Marine driving the ALICE loses the benefit of motion trackers (Thus making it near impossible to detect facehuggers skittering about), marines in ALICE units are totally impervious to being facehugged. If there are a lot of ALICE units running about, it pretty much guarantees alien players will spend a lot of time as facehuggers. A better way to implement this would be to have the facehugger be able to facehug an ALICE driving marine, but only after it eats it's way through the ALICE's armor, thus giving the marine a chance to shoot the facehugger off.
Another gripe about MP with Alien Life Cycle enabled is 'corpse camping'. With Life Cycle on, when an Alien player facehugs a victim, both they and the victim die (Though the alien player is not penalized.) The alien then spawns as a 'chestburster', which is extremely vulnerable. The problem is that human players tend to cluster up, and if a comrade is facehugged, they will camp on the corpse, waiting for the alien player to spawn so they can off him for an easy kill.
Second, the kill ratio for aliens to molt into queens must be carefully considered. Nothing makes the gameplay more intense than seeing "player X has molted into a queen!", and suddenly a 17 foot tall killing machine bursts out of a nearby corridor bellowing for your blood. However, the number of kills needed to reach the molt to queen is a touchy subject. Make the number too small, there will soon be a dozen queens running around terrorizing marines. Make it too large, and the aliens will never get the enjoyment of playing as a queen.
While there are some shortcomings to the new features added to MP, they are far outweighed by the benefits of the added abilities and items. ALICE units are an excellent addition to the marine arsenal, and make the game much more tactical. (It takes some very crafty aliens to dislodge a squad of marines with an ALICE backing them up)
Also, queens are a hoot to play as. Their lives tend to be pretty short and violent, as queens dwarf even the gargantuan Praetorians, but can dish out and take punishment like nobody else's business. I was so impressed with the update that I bumped gameplay value a full 2 points, from a 6 out of 10 to an 8 out of 10.
Overall: I'm going to stamp my seal of approval on this game. The origional Aliens Vs. Predator was a great game that got bogged down in too many niggling flaws, and wound up crashing and burning. AvP2 fixes all the shortcomings of it's predecessor, and adds some really well thought out and well done touches. Single player and multiplayer are both quite well done, and the graphics are great, if not excellent. I would recommend that you have the hardware to push lots of pixels, you'll need it with this game. Anyway, why are you still reading this? Get to your local software merchent and buy a copy of this game!
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