By Alec Meer on November 27th, 2009 at 9:58 pm.
Man, this was a lucky escape. I was at a preview event for the upcoming Aliens vs Predator remake/sequel’s multiplayer mode a few weeks back, at which Men With Cameras were on the prowl for talking heads – specifically, a few journalists to give this game they’d seen (frankly, not all that much of) a big thumbs-up. Hmm. A fortunate confluence of having to run for a train and looking like a hobo meant I dodged this fate. The gentlemen below did not. As well as all their smiling for their close-ups, there’s some footage of the multiplayer and commentary from a Rebellion senior bod.
Apologies for the rather squiffy video quality – that’s me being a bit over-aggressive with the compression settings. I have much to learn.
My feelings on the multiplayer remain uncertain, incidentally. It was certainly close to the olden game in many ways, so I felt both the joy of familiarity and worry about limited novelty. The major difference was the ability/limitation (depending on how you look at it) of the Aliens and Preds to auto-leap to specific spots and to activate stealth kills from quite some distance away, which will hopefully lead to more cinematic takedowns and not too much annoying ganking.
Alas, I had to play it on a Playstation 3, so any muscle memory I had of the original on PC was lost, and the controls seemed a little over-complicated as a result. So I’m keen to play it on PC before passing any kind of judgement – and most especially I want to try out the new game’s interpretation of Skirmish mode, which sadly wasn’t in the build I played. A game I shall continue to follow keenly, certainly. But not to the point that anyone can film me offering wide-utterances about how double-plus awesome it looks.
27/11/2009 at 22:06 Javier-de-Ass says:
hahaha. this is all you are to these companies, game writer persons
27/11/2009 at 22:06 blah says:
I hope you washed your hands afterwards… ;)
27/11/2009 at 22:07 Carra says:
I thought torturing was against the Geneva convention.
27/11/2009 at 22:15 Miker says:
zing!
28/11/2009 at 02:13 DJ Phantoon says:
Hahahaha Geneva Convention. No one follows that anymore.
Wait, the joke was about torture wasn’t it?
27/11/2009 at 22:15 Heliosicle says:
But John it was your time to shine!
27/11/2009 at 22:23 Jaffo says:
Wow, John Romero’s wasting away.
27/11/2009 at 22:28 hydra9 says:
A ‘strong brand experience’ is what I look for in my gaming.
27/11/2009 at 22:43 Dr_Ham says:
The only thing I like more is an experience which has been monetized…
27/11/2009 at 23:05 Spoon says:
That’s how you make things bleeping awesome.
27/11/2009 at 23:48 DMJ says:
I can’t wait to consume this end-user product.
27/11/2009 at 22:44 GreatUncleBaal says:
Managed to get a game on this at the Eurogamer Expo a few weeks ago, and had a go as the alien in multiplayer. I was just getting used to the crazy speed when a chap next to me pointed out there was a sprint button, at which point I became some sort of xenomorph pinball.
My main concern with the multiplayer was the stealth kills, which seemed to effectively mean as long as you were behind someone you could press a button and get a one-hit kill – this was quite easy to do with a bit of practice by zipping past enemies as the alien, doing a hasty 180 and whacking the button – it just felt a bit cheap. Otherwise I’m really impressed by what I’ve seen so far, but I’m more interested in the single player campaign.
27/11/2009 at 22:47 Po0py says:
Why do British game developers always look a bit weird and scary?
27/11/2009 at 22:51 Psychopomp says:
Please don’t balls it up…
27/11/2009 at 23:08 Fumarole says:
It’s not developers who are scary, but journos.
27/11/2009 at 23:12 Thrawny says:
i see no video, just a blank white space.
27/11/2009 at 23:23 Starky says:
Turn off your ad filtering then buddy.
28/11/2009 at 01:15 Thrawny says:
I’m not your buddy, Guy
28/11/2009 at 01:16 Thrawny says:
even with adblock plus off it’s still not showing anything.
28/11/2009 at 01:48 Starky says:
Quoting South Park…
You clearly don’t deserve to see the video.
28/11/2009 at 02:04 Thrawny says:
Yes that’s right, i should probably go off and sob into my bedsheets and blog about this terrible day.
or not…
27/11/2009 at 23:14 The Great Wayne says:
My main question is: what is this freakin hobbit doing in the game at 00:30 ? Isn’t that a weird try to cater to the Lotro fans ?
That’s quite disturbing if you ask me.
27/11/2009 at 23:22 Starky says:
I’m full expecting this game to be a great big steaming pile of…
It’s going to be a sucky consolitus suffering borefest – It’s idea of “respecting the franchise” is going to be a few in jokes from the movies, and maybe a couple of hidden eastereggs mocking the AvP movies. Then filling the rest of the setting with cheesy lines and bad story so terrible that it becomes a bad parody Aliens. It will feel all through the SP like it really wanted to be starship troopers instead, and fail at that too.
The multiplayer will lack dedicated servers, or cheat protection – it will probably run through GFWL or Gamespy, if it runs at all.
The multiplayer will be unbalanced and cheap, a skill-less spamfest of grenades for the Marines, to counter the one hit kill stupidity of the aliens, and the overpowerdness of the predator.
All in all it will suck harder than almost any PC franchise resurrection in history.
I keep telling myself that every time I see a post like this or a new vid, because then when it happens I’ll have fully expected it.
All the while, a hidden, repressed little voice in the back of my mind is hoping and praying for this to be awesome.
27/11/2009 at 23:32 Dominic White says:
Why pour so much emotional investment into it? If it’s bad, I won’t bother playing it and I’ll be mildly disappointed. If it’s good, I’ll rent the console version. If it’s great (and the multiplayer holds up well), I’ll buy the PC version.
Nothing wrong with ‘just’ hoping that it’s good.
27/11/2009 at 23:40 Psychopomp says:
“Then filling the rest of the setting with cheesy lines and bad story so terrible that it becomes a bad parody Aliens.”
So, anything ever called Alien Vs. Predator?
28/11/2009 at 01:54 Starky says:
Dom, I don’t – I honestly couldn’t care less about AvP3, I enjoyed AvP2, missed AvP utterly then could never get it to run when I tried post AvP2.
Just a bit of dry humour is all.
Pomp… erm one or 2 of the books were, erm okay… okay?
28/11/2009 at 09:47 Bogie says:
I’m kind of agreeing with you on this since I heard a rumour that it will be shitty listen servers only for PC.
We shall see….
28/11/2009 at 11:19 TheSombreroKid says:
reading you’re post told me you’d never played avp and you don’t know that this is the same developers and that most of the stuff your saying is already been proven not true, e.g. they’ve explicitly said there will be dedicated servers, given all that rebelion are very hit and miss and so it’s still not a given that it’ll be great.
28/11/2009 at 11:31 Starky says:
No I have played AvP, just didn’t play it for long, I simply didn’t enjoy it. But I was playing it well after AvP2 (which I enjoyed greatly, especially the multiplayer) – Ironically, I owned the game (still do in a box someplace) but it wasn’t until I found a prepatched and fixed torrent I could get it to run. Maybe it was the age of the game showing but I struggled to enjoy it, it had atmosphere yes, but the graphics and controls were terrible.
One of those things, we all like to pretend graphics don’t matter, but sometimes when you go back to play an old game it’s so ugly you just can’t get past it – my most recent example, Nights into dreams, loves that game when it was new, tried to play it recently and just couldn’t – it was too ugly.
27/11/2009 at 23:39 Mike says:
Yer chumped.
27/11/2009 at 23:40 StalinsGhost says:
There’s nothing else besides Thief 4 being developed that I’m so nervous about. It’s less the fear of disappointment I’m worried about though, and more the missed opportunities.
28/11/2009 at 00:56 ZIGS says:
@ Starky, Rebellion said this game was gonna have dedicated servers. Still, and judging by their last 2 games (Shellshock 2 and Rogue Warrior), I’m not expecting this to be any good :\
28/11/2009 at 01:22 Dominic White says:
Shellshock 2 was abominable, but Rogue Trooper was excellent, so… yeah, Rebellion are still all over the place.
28/11/2009 at 01:48 Springy says:
Not Rogue Trooper, Rogue Warrior, the apparently abominable thing being advertised all over the Steam store at the moment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSDXn7cDQIo
28/11/2009 at 04:29 Taillefer says:
I hear Rogue Warrior starts off terrible and then proceeds with that idea.
30/11/2009 at 11:34 Rich says:
That footage of Rogue Warrior is sooo early to mid noughties.
28/11/2009 at 01:29 Golden_Worm says:
Sniper Elite had its good moments too.
30/11/2009 at 00:29 Collic says:
Sniper elite was a great game. A forgotten gem, in my opinion.
28/11/2009 at 01:42 Max says:
Video will not play in Chrome, Firefox, or IE. And there’s no HD option so I can’t use my usual trick to get it to play.
*RAGE*
28/11/2009 at 03:09 Bret says:
Huh.
Worked fine for me with Chrome.
No clue what’s going on there.
28/11/2009 at 05:20 StarDrowned says:
And for me on Firefox.
28/11/2009 at 05:22 Vinraith says:
Peculiar. It works fine for me in Firefox. It’s almost as though you’re using Adblock, but you wouldn’t do that on a site like RPS would you?
28/11/2009 at 09:23 gary says:
ctrl F5
28/11/2009 at 02:07 ZIGS says:
@ Dominic, yes, Rogue Trooper was pretty good but Rogue Warrior (their latest game) is pretty lousy. AI is horrible, gameplay is extremely shallow (What’s with lack of depth in today’s games anyway?) and it took em 3 hours to finish it
28/11/2009 at 02:36 Lewis says:
Gaston’s expression goes a bit maniacal when he talks about players getting decapitated. Christ.
28/11/2009 at 03:51 Nickosha says:
This video made me less excited, because it showed console footage, showed console gamers, and interviewed a guy from a console magazine. I thought that AvP was PC centric series. It’s just some irrational disappointment, but WTH.
28/11/2009 at 08:28 A:/Big.bat says:
I’m thoroughly looking forward to playing it. Not sure if it’ll be a fantastic game, but I always love immersing myself in that world for a few hours; fingers crossed.
28/11/2009 at 08:29 jon_hill987 says:
It will need autojump spots because with the lack of dedicated servers it will be so laggy that any precise control will be impossible.
28/11/2009 at 09:37 TonyB says:
Are you saying that no-one will bother setting up dedicated servers for it, or did you just miss the announcement that it’ll have dedicated servers on PC?
30/11/2009 at 11:14 jon_hill987 says:
I missed that. I heard an anoncement just a few weeks ago that it wasn’t going to have them. I guess they changed their minds after the fuss with MW2.
30/11/2009 at 20:29 TonyB says:
I think it’s just that they were non-committal about it initially, which after MW2 wasn’t a good move.
Here’s the owner being committal: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/dedicated-servers-for-aliens-vs-predator_9
28/11/2009 at 08:39 Psychopomp says:
I think the autojump in general is a good thing. Jumping around in first person, Metroid Prime series aside, is hard. Couple that with some of us having no sense of direction or place, and jumpy bits in shooters quickly become an exercise in frustration.
They could be a bit more subtle about it, though. Giant red markers are distracting.
28/11/2009 at 10:40 PFC Skinner says:
I had the opportunity to play AvP multiplayer at Eurogamer in London, and i have to say i was extremely dissapointed. Having read about the joys if the originals multiplayer, i went there with high expectations for it. I found that the controls were too numerous and complicated, until i realised that as soon as you came within a certain distance of someone, you simply needed to tap a button to insta kill them.
So combat as the aliens and predators is simply a mad dash to enter within a certain distance of the enemy and then be the first to tap X. Also i played the game on a HD tv and the graphics actually looked like a PS2 game. The only saving grace was the marine class, as it feels so underpowered that landing a kill on an alien or predator feels like a real achievement.
28/11/2009 at 11:00 Squirrelfanatic says:
I`ve got the same problem as Thrawny, there is no video showing, just a blank square space (in my case it is grey and not white, mind you). AdBlock has nothing to do with it, neither does my cookies setup or my pop-up settings. I’m using Firefox. Would anyone be so kind as to post a direct link to the video? Thanks in advance!
28/11/2009 at 11:35 Pod says:
You’ll regret that!
Oh dear!
Oi!
Just You Wait!
I’ll Get You!
28/11/2009 at 18:17 Miker says:
oh man, Worms. Good times, good times.
28/11/2009 at 12:11 OJ287 says:
For those not seeing a video, I CAN see it. I have FireFox 3.5.5 with AdBlock and NoScript.
AdBlock is disabled for RPS and these addresses are set to allowed in NoScript…
rockpapershotgun.com, google-analytics.com, giantrealm.com, quantserve.com.
28/11/2009 at 13:59 Squirrelfanatic says:
As I stated above, I am using Firefox aswell (most recent version of course) and tried shutting down AdBlock. I don’t have NoScript, so I suspect it’s got nothing to do with that too.
28/11/2009 at 14:55 Smurfy says:
Not working for me either. Firefox.
30/11/2009 at 15:18 megaman says:
I had that problem too a couple of times. Today, it worked. And I’m still using Firefox with Adblock Plus running.
28/11/2009 at 13:24 spliter says:
I wish there was a kind of a skirmish mode where you were allowed to be one of the aliens attacking that group of soldiers/preds. Just for the fun of it
28/11/2009 at 14:36 DMJ says:
AvP 3, Thief 4, Deus Ex 3… Truly 2010 is going to be the year that the venerable masters return.
If they all suck, I plan to nuke the entire site from orbit. And cry.
28/11/2009 at 15:56 Calabi says:
It sounds reasonable for aliens to be an instant kill if there in a certain distance, as that is just a fact. If there razor sharp limbs dont get you then the acid will.
I could definitely see shades of the original in those clips. I’m just wary of when they used the words story, I wish they would leave that up to the player, you’ve gotta do things, then other things happen, because you know whatever they are going to come up with will be rubbish, and fit for one single playthrough.
28/11/2009 at 18:12 Theyos says:
“so I felt both the joy of familiarity and worry about limited novelty.”
Considering AvP2 is still being played on at least one server quite regularly even after all these years, provided the gameplay is solid I don’t see it getting old very quickly.
29/11/2009 at 18:18 Kandon Arc says:
I haven’t been following this too faithfully, but I am cautiously optimistic. Does anyone know if life cycle is being brought back?
29/11/2009 at 23:26 MiB says:
“console gamers expect an interesting story”
Erm… riiiggghhhttt *backs away slowly*
29/11/2009 at 23:30 Psychopomp says:
Oh look, it’s elitist PC snob, who thinks that console gamers are all drooling simpletons!
29/11/2009 at 23:47 MiB says:
Well hai there!
Seriously though I dislike most recent shooters and consoles are not renowned for there strategy and rpg titles thanks to the godawful controller so…
30/11/2009 at 14:57 ToiletDuck says:
Oh dear, here comes another 4 hour game as well then
:’(
04/12/2009 at 23:19 kromagg says:
I must say I didn’ t think AvP was multiplayer centric at all. Perhaps the second was a bit more so than the first. I never played the first multiplayer and I think I soon tired of playing the predator (easy mode!) but the marine single player campaign was a real treat.
At least, that’s how I remember it and I’m not going to ruin it by playing the game again tyvm.
04/12/2009 at 23:21 kromagg says:
It occurs to me after rereading the title that we’re avoiding talking about this very topic? My bad. :-)