Delayed Hat-Tipping: AvP Classic 2000
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.
There's a part of me that thinks releasing this is absurd, because it's so good a game that it might hurt demand for the new game, but that's probably just me being guilty of fogeyism. You and your fancy modern pixel shaders - in my day, all we had was trilinear filtering, but we were happy. Kids today, etc.
The downside is that the super-important multiplayer's missing. Rebellion claim it's due in a free patch, but the frothing, paranoid cynic in me wonders if perhaps it's being deliberately withheld for a while to ensure Nu-AvP's online shenanigans suffer no stolen thunder. It'll be a fine day once it is released, whenever it may be, because it means gangs of us can set to tackling the still-wonderful, still-atmospheric, still-frightening Skirmish mode with the greatest of ease, rather than dicking around with IPX networking. I do look forward to coralling the RPS community into doomed adventures once this tantalising patch arrives.
Back in proto-RPS days, I wrote about Skirmish's curiously fulfilling futility - a rustily tense-hopping piece I suffer a strong urge to rewrite whenever I link to it. Stalinist revision, but with Aliens.
Anyway - for £2.99 there is essentially no reason not to own AvP Classic (no need for that 2000, let's be honest). I hope it pitches up on other download services too soon - certainly, it's exactly the kind of thing that should be on GoG.
Here's what it looks like. Am I just being a nostalgic old fool again, or does that still look pretty impressive in its admittedly blocky way?