Comments on: Retrospective: Aliens vs Predator 2

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:01:40 +0000

I loved the second game. I felt that the atmosphere was pretty decent , if not as nightmarish and hopeless as the first game.

The single player was fun enough to bring me to complete all three storylines, which is more than I can say for AVP1 , where i recall stumbling around in the dark, throwing flares at walls, and then quitting to go do something else.

That said, the MP of AVP2 was probably the better part, I loved how you could be a young queen alien and just rush around stomping folks. Comedy gold.

By: jon_hill987

jon_hill987 — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:22:12 +0000

I really enjoyed AVP2, but then I never played the first one so I didn’t have any preconceptions of the game.

By: The Shed

The Shed — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 14:04:57 +0000

It was a good bit.

ColMar better have more open level design to it; I remember hoping that the original AvP would simply be huge levels popultaed with Aliens, and you trying to escape- but no such luck, it was a bit more linear than that. The second one even more so. Of course, i know shit all about ColMar anyway.

By: Alex Taldren

Alex Taldren — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:37:03 +0000

It isn’t all-marine is it? I thought it just focused on the marines and would still, obviously, feature aliens. I’m tired of the Predators… they are boring.

By: guy

guy — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 06:36:10 +0000

Just want to say that the wall-walking in AvP2 is easily the most enjoyable character movement mechanic I’ve ever played. Even better than Mario 64. The level design quite often worked against it, sadly. And yes, being an alien in multi is incredible.
I’m astonished that the new FPS is all-marine. Wasted opportunity.

By: Skylance

Skylance — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 06:33:10 +0000

Man, AvP was a scary game. I never played either of the AvPs (Jaguar version doesn’t count) online, but I remember being more afraid playing the Marine campaign in the original AvP than any other game I’ve ever played before or since. In fact, I’ve never even managed to get more than halfway through before I just had to quit–it was simply too intense for me.

AvP didn’t have music, that I recall. Just a quiet *tick, tick, tick* sound from the motion detector. It was always so freaking dark that, just for a moment, your whole world would become that sound. So when a door opened, or a fan turned on or something would spark it would damn near always make you jump. That wasn’t what really got to me, though. Plenty of games and movies use that technique. What got to me were those goddamn aliens.

The thing about the aliens that ultimately would end up scaring me out of the game was their sheer freak speed. You had, oh, maybe a quarter of a second to react if one of the chirps on your motion detector turned out to be an alien. You’d hear something, fire off a flare, maybe at the other end of a hallway you’d catch a glimpse of movement, and suddenly that fucking thing was right there eatin’ on your face. And if you managed to kill the thing in time to save your life, you’d then relax a little bit just to realize, Oh, crap, acid. And then you didn’t have legs. And then more aliens came and started eatin’ on your face.

God, I hated that game. I loved it, but I really fucking hated it, you know?

By: ju

ju — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 08:49:51 +0000

Seriously, this game is my favorite multiplayer game to ever be created. I mean you can be a Pred alien, that while slow could allow you to leap across maps and land on a marine with a large blood filled explosion. S.A.T.I.S.F.A.C.T.I.O.N.

By: Spiffae

Spiffae — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 04:30:24 +0000

Never played AVP on LAN, but remember fondly playing three humans against one alien in AVP2 – if you played the alien right you could sneak up the humans, climbing on ceilings, killing one guy, and then jumping halfway across the map. Ah, good times.

By: Nimzah

Nimzah — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 02:47:41 +0000

I think a lot of the stylistic differences between the two games came from the fact the original was sourced directly on the movies, which were pretty much all about horror/scares whereas AvP2 was sourced from the Dark Horse comics/novels (which are more about conspiracies and humans being norty).

I liked both games immensely (AVP2 just topping it), but like many wish the dynamic lighting and general slickness of the original had made it into the later, as well as the co-op skirmish mode, which was always fun over a LAN. Story and execution of it was excellent though, the level design was outstanding too. It’s vastly superior to FEAR in every respect that matters, heck it even looks nicer (art design variety > shaders).

It really disappointed me how content-free FEAR was in comparison: Attrociously dull level design, lack of character, lack of originality, lack of story development/intrigue. It’s like they’d forgotten everything they made before. I too hope Project Origin has more akin to AVP2 and isn’t just a shaderfest.

By: Fumarole

Fumarole — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 05:21:06 +0000

One of my favorite gaming moments of all time was playing AvP at a LAN. We were playing Last man Standing on the Hadley’s Hope map, with about five or six marines and one alien.

In this particular round, one of our sneakier friends was the alien. Being a particularly jittery lot, all of us marines had gathered in the control room, thinking that there was safety in numbers. How naive! The alien took his time, letting the tension build up. Eventually he dropped through the ceiling right into the middle of the group of marines – except me. I was standing in a corner armed with the minigun. I panicked and hit the mouse button. When the smoke cleared, nothing was alive but me. Yes, in about two seconds I had managed to kill every other person (and alien) in the game.

Being known as a person who is very particular in where he shoots and seldom commits friendly fire, my friends still rib me about it to this day. And it always brings a smile to my face.

By: Iain

Iain — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 13:59:47 +0000

I only ever played the demo of AvP2, and I didn’t really like it, for two reasons:

1) It really lacked the tension of the original AvP. The scripting of the “shock” events was so telegraphed you could see them coming from a mile off. AvP was truly, frantically scary, AvP2 felt like a pale imitation.

2) At the time I tried the demo, I’d also been mainlining Deus Ex, so whenever I kept trying to open a door with the Marine, I’d blow myself up with a Pulse Rifle grenade, leading me to castigate myself repeatedly with the words “Use! Is! Not! Bound! To! The! Right! Fucking! Mouse! Button!”

By: madhaha

madhaha — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 03:39:08 +0000

AvP is incredibly atmospheric and a great LAN game. It doesn’t even try to equalize the races, it simply says: Predators are superior, Humans are twitchy prey and Aliens are made of tissue paper and acid. Balance came from class caps and gameplay modes. In terms of animation and sound it was far closer to the films. Sadly the tech was all in house and it rarely runs well on modern systems. As a singleplayer game it alternates between aimless maze solving and unforgiving death but the atmosphere can’t be faulted. Scarier than System Shock.

AvP 2 is a game with some fabulous features and gimmicks. Pilot the exoskeleton! Start as a facehugger and claw your way to queenhood! Play as a Marine or a Corporate Mercenary! Unfortunately it has terrible netcode. Its noticeably laggy even on a LAN. The races are rebalanced so that everyone is equivilent and as a result it doesn’t feel true to the source material. No longer are you a desperate stranded Marine or Predator against hordes of deadly xenomorphs, you’re simply playing team deathmatch. The weapons are nearly all instant kill and 100% accurate with redundant ammo. Fire is a minor nuisance instead of all blinding, all consuming death that even Aliens fear and the Acid Blood has been toned down to Mildly Sour Blood. What’s the difference between a Marine and a Corporate? The Corporate gets a 360 degree motion tracker. So who the hell WANTS to play as a Marine? The singleplayer is a pretty solid game but its not really meant to be scary. Just mildly challenging romp through the scenery that you imagine would be in the films. Meh.