Rock, Paper, Shotgun

This enjoyed a more timely mention in Saturday’s bargain bucket, but as an aged fanboy of Rebellion’s finest hour, it would be frankly remiss of me not to grant last week’s surprise release of Aliens vs Predator Classic 2000 a post of its own. The name is absolutely ridiculous, and could only possibly stem from someone important losing their mind in a board meeting – “no-one must possibly mistake it for the new game! Keep adding words until it sounds like something different, no matter if it sounds like an ancient console or the sequel to Aliens vs Predator 1,999! Add more! More!” But this does not matter. What matters is that it’s the original PC AvP, one of the finest first-person shooters ever made, spit’n'polished for maximo-compatibility with modern PCs, and available for a silly price on Steam.
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Bold attempt to contextualise shooting dudes in the face ahoy! Rebellion’s AvP remake seems determined to make the world take Aliens seriously again – though alas it’s a doubly hard task after the UK developer making a woeful mess of things yet again with the recent Rogue Warrior. I got the chance to try out AvP’s multiplayer a couple of months back, and left the event extremely concerned about how formulaic and rustic my admittedly very brief time with it had felt; but hopefully the Rebellion guys are now driven and veteran enough to kick more heft and character into it than my superficial encounters have suggested. Perhaps, as in the Lance Henriksen-narrated trailer below, pinning it tightly to Weyland-Yutani lore will help…
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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.
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Steam’s new Community feature leapt out of beta yesterday, and is now fully integrated into the system. Which means that we rather thought we should have a Community Group of our very own.

Currently it’s completely empty, so join us, whydoncha? Either click on this to get at it via the electronic internet, or plop this into your Steam address bar:

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/rps

Become a member, invite your friends, make us feel like we are loved. And then organise those gaming events of your dreams, but without all the non-RPS reading scum who might otherwise spoil an online experience.

Don’t forget that your games list isn’t limited to the games available on Steam. So should you wish to arrange an AvP engagement, just go to your My Games page, click Games at the top, and then “Add a non-Steam game to My Games list”. It’ll smartly pick up everything on your desktop or quick launch bar as an option, or let you search elsewhere for others.

Do it already.

Like every good geek, I have a favourite gaming moment. It’s in Aliens Versus Predator, a vintage but oft-forgotten first-person shooter that gets mentioned by my games-hack peers about as often as the Pope says “are you sure this hat makes God happy?”
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