Aliens Vs Predator demo on Steam

[The Wandering God]

No purchase necessary to play demo.

Downloading now and will provide more thoughts after I get some game time in.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Goddamn it my pc will never run this! Why can't there be a PSN demo instead? Ah well, not long to wait now anyway I suppose. I really wanna play this though, I just know it's gona be awesome.


Is the steam demo just of one race, or does it have parts from each campaign?

EDIT; Holy shit never mind, multiplayer demo just went live on the psn! *Downloads*

[The Wandering God]

Okay, there are a few problems with the demo.

1. It's a Free For All deathmatch with all the races with only one map. Everyone killing everyone unless they agree to team up. (Aliens seems to get along the most.) You'll die many times. The irritation of getting instant killed by a pred or alien that gets behind you can look pretty cool sometimes. But you'll just respawn in 5 seconds, so at least you can get back in the game quickly.

2. During round set up and afterwords, everyone's mic is automatically activated. Just turn down mic volume in options, or mute during those times.

3. Now the big one, actually getting into a match can be pretty difficult. Until they fix it, expect to have to wait anywhere up to 30 minutes to join a game. Just alt-tab out while you are waiting, and check back every couple of minutes.

4. Melee attacks can auto-aim. That might annoy you.

But, aside from that, I'm having fun.

The predator gets starts off with wrist blades and an infinite cloak option (but the cloak shuts off when you attack) and has to search the arena to find his 4 weapons. The combi-stick (I hate it so far, but maybe I'll get better), proximity mines (pretty fun when you know where the high traffic areas are), the disc (which works somewhat like the guided rocket launcher from HL2), and the classic plasmacaster. But the last two weapons require the use of the tell-tell red dots that give away your position. You can also jump like crazy with the use of the 'focus' button.

The marines start off with a pulse rifle and motion tracker. You have to look around to find grenade rounds for it, along with the a shotgun, flamethrower, and smartgun. If an alien gets in close, you are usually in trouble, but you can survive sometimes.

I suck as an alien. But I've found it works best to use auto transition from floors to walls because getting the buttons to work can be a pain. Also, use the focus mode and wait for someone to be highlighted in a circle to pounce them.

I think I'll pick this up.

[Corel]

Pretty much sounds like what multiplayer was in the previous games!

Melee have auto-aim? Thank goodness for that. How annoying it was being an Alien and belting towards someone and past them only to realised that you missed your tail-whip by just inches.


I suck as an alien. But I've found it works best to use auto transition from floors to walls because getting the buttons to work can be a pain. Also, use the focus mode and wait for someone to be highlighted in a circle to pounce them.


I would say once you get used to the changing orientation and speed combined with learning the maps well Alien really starts to shine. For me the Alien started to become the Hunter at later stages more so than the Predator.

Then again saying this I always thought the game's strength was the campaign. A co-op marine campaign would be pretty cool, I always got that mod for the other two games and was a lot of fun on higher difficulties.

[Mirai Gen]

I'm liking the fact that the game feels like Alien versus Predator and they just updated it.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Gah, I can confirm that the psn version also takes an age and a day to get into a game. I mean come on, MAG betas never had a problem fitting hundreds of people into a room, so why the hell does this thing take 30 minutes to find 8 people worldwide??!! It's a fucking joke.

Also for some reason I can only contribute to a rough demo code it lags like fuck. Everyone who I see running around seems to teleport for the most part, marines mostly, though Xenos do it quite often as well. Preds not so much, or at least not while they're jumping to new places.

But... so long as they fix these 2 VERY big problems with the final product, I think my excitment for this game shall be fully justified. I've only played as the Marine so far and the weapons are all solid and cool (the Smartgun is truely amazing).

1 Other tiny problem I've had; Not being able to select species. I duno if there's a limit on how many of each species are allowed in a game or what but for some reason I can never seem to select Predator, which is what I really want to try out. Course I've only played 2 games so far and the first time I was happy to jump in as the default marine, but the option to switch to whatever you want in free for all deathmatch, perhaps after dieing, would be nice.


I shall try it again later. Hopefully it won't take half a lifetime to get into the next game.

[The Wandering God]

Gah, I can confirm that the psn version also takes an age and a day to get into a game. I mean come on, MAG betas never had a problem fitting hundreds of people into a room, so why the hell does this thing take 30 minutes to find 8 people worldwide??!! It's a fucking joke.

Also for some reason I can only contribute to a rough demo code it lags like fuck. Everyone who I see running around seems to teleport for the most part, marines mostly, though Xenos do it quite often as well. Preds not so much, or at least not while they're jumping to new places.

But... so long as they fix these 2 VERY big problems with the final product, I think my excitment for this game shall be fully justified. I've only played as the Marine so far and the weapons are all solid and cool (the Smartgun is truely amazing).

1 Other tiny problem I've had; Not being able to select species. I duno if there's a limit on how many of each species are allowed in a game or what but for some reason I can never seem to select Predator, which is what I really want to try out. Course I've only played 2 games so far and the first time I was happy to jump in as the default marine, but the option to switch to whatever you want in free for all deathmatch, perhaps after dieing, would be nice.


I shall try it again later. Hopefully it won't take half a lifetime to get into the next game.
While I'm sure the online will get ironed out more or less, the console versions will rely on matchmaking, as opposed to the PC getting dedicated servers.

Also, I don't know if it's any different for your version, but when you are on the screen with all the names and people are obviously changing species, click on the big picture of the marine, alien, or predator to cycle through. There IS a limit of 2 predators per map though.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Yeah I've figured that out now, but still a pain in the arse to choose pred. Why the hell there is a limit of only 2 I'll never know.

As for the matchmaking side of things, it still should never take even a fraction of the time that it takes now. I mean it's the same system as CoD, Uncharted 2 and countless other games, and requires even less players to fill than those games, so even if it was shortened from 30 minutes to 5 minutes it would still be a ludicrously long wait.


I did finally get to play pred before. As I suspected, it was cool, though complicated, juggling all of his stuff and recloaking after each kill and everything. Only been able to succesfully use 1 of his other weapons though so far; the combistick, which while not the best weapon it certainly makes for the most impressive trophy kills if you have it equiped.

Haven't been able to actually use the plasmacaster or what I think was the smart disk yet. Can't seem to ever get them to lock on.

Still for all of my complaints/whining and the faults it's experiancing right now I've had some good fun so far. Just wish I could have had a go on the single player first so I could learn each species properly (and then have the option of just selecting whatever species I want in deathmatch). Playing with friends with mikes certainly helps the fun too, such as when both me and a friend both ended up pred and while he was dicking around trying to change weapon I leapt across a room and wristbladed him from behind. He was most annoyed.

[Mirai Gen]

Playing the alien on console must suck.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Playing the alien on console must suck.

... Why?? Seems to work fine, if somewhat dissorienting, but then I'd expect that from the xenos. I do wish their ability to see enemies through walls was a little more extended, as it doesn't really seem to provide as much advantage as I thought.

They seem to have gotten things a little fixed now on psn; you no longer have to wait 30 minutes for 8 people, you can just gather a smaller group of friends and it will begin a game much quicker, though it means you can only have a smaller party.

Luckily this means me and 2 friends got to have several games kicking each others arses and I got to play and work out the various intricacies of each.

I am loving the pred, though I rarely seem to win when I get into close quarters with a xeno, but that's probably about right really. Only way I can win seems to be to heavy attack, then quickly circle around for a trophy kill. I MAY be able to win by backing off right after the heavy hit and using a secondary weapon, but that's more complicated, slower and riskier, depending on what weapon is equiped. I also learned the hard way that plasmacaster does not = an instant kill, at least on marines.

[Toastburner B]

I daresay that the 2 predator limit comes from the older games. IIRC, in AvP 2, the predators were pretty overpowered. Rebellion seems to have done a good job of balancing them out, but I think there is still a perception of predators being overpowered.

I gotta say it seems balanced to me. I plugged a goodly number of predators as a marine last night (protip: charging head-on doesn't work...I can see you coming even if you are cloaked. Say hello to Mr. Pulse Rifle). That's not to say I'm a good player. I found playing as a marine to be rather scary, even in multiplayer (once a predator surprised me so bad I literally jumped in surprise and accidentally pressed the guide button on my Xbox controller made the rest of his kill much easier, I'm sure). I've found that that tends to separate the good predator players from the not-so-good: The not-so-good ones trust their cloak to keep them safe and charge head on, and the good preds still sneak around.

I played as an alien...sucked at it, but had fun with it. It's just a hoot to crawl around on the ceiling. You'd be surprised how often people don't look up (I hardly ever do). Unfortunately, I lack the skill to turn that into a proper ambush. Melee between preds and aliens seem to favor the aliens (I haven't played as a pred yet, so I can only comment on my alien games, and it seems I own more fist-fights with preds than I lost), but on the other hand, it's hard to sneak up on a watchful pred. On the other hand, Aliens are also wicked fast. I caught up with a running pred and grab killed him.

Grab-kills are the most interesting/amusing/frustrating thing about this game. While they do guarantee a kill, I found they often turn into, what I call, a "conga-line of death", as other players sneak up behind you while you doing the grab kill animation and grab-kill you. I've seen this go three or four people deep (I saw a pred grab-killing a marine, I ran up and grab-killed him, and another alien ran up and grab-killed me). I know in my head that I'm better off just melee-ing a guy to death...but it's just so easy to to give into that instant kill tempation...even if it does mean I have a 50/50 chance of being ganked as soon as the animation is over.

All in all, I had fun wiht it last night, and I intend to play it some more. If I like it enough...hooray for tax returns!

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Hey Toasty are you playing it the psn or not? If you are we'll have to have a game sometime.

But yeah I agree with your entire assesment there. It is really well balanced, Preds will fall to gunfire easily and melee really doesn't favour them. Key to Preds is stealth, which generally leads to people calling you a camper or complaining because you're using the caster at long range (although the only times I've ever really used the caster is when marines camp the smartgun, so maybe they should not camp either and get out there and take down preds up close and head on, because they won't survive). And so what if I'm using the caster, I'm gona have to recharge soon, move to catch me then!

I've had the same problem with getting the drop affectively on people as the xeno for the most part too, except for 1 really cool moment when I ceiling crawled, transitioned to a wall, then jumped at a waiting Pred and hacked him up. Felt very "Alien".

Alien speed isn't as good as you might think though either; as a Pred you can sprint as fast as a fleeing xeno and trophy kill them easily. I don't know whether the xenos who I manged this one were sprinting as well or not though so if you're not sprinting as a xeno, then get off the floor, because your speed isn't keeping you safe.

[Mirai Gen]

He mentioned the Xbox controller - I'm pretty sure he's on Live.
... Why?? Seems to work fine, if somewhat dissorienting, but then I'd expect that from the xenos.
Xenos generally are super disorienting; what I was referring to was the inability to have quick reflexes in any direction. Sure everyone's on even footing but being lightning-fast is what rolling Xeno is all about, and I can't imagine it working that well with a fiddly thumbstick instead of a mouse.

Playing the game on PC makes me want to buy the full game so I can rock the Xeno single-player and eat some fucking Marine heads. I never realized how much I loved the AVP series; I thought it was just nostalgia!

[Doc ock rokc]

dont worry Hawk Ill play with you. Ill friend you over PSN After i do a few things on here and download that monster

...HOLY SHIT THIS GAME IS AWESOME! I decapitated a Marine As a Alien by Doing Focus, Sprint, and Wall transition To both confuse him and his buddy then light attack. I LOVE ALIEN! its like playing the Monster in the movie. It takes some thinking though. Against Preds Its best to run and attack them from behind when they try to follow you. on marines You ether sneak up or take them out quick and get the hell out of there
As a pred I noticed i moved slow when the marines are around Taking my time till i could attack without them knowing. I Only attacked them in groups when i had good weapons or they where by themselves...meanwhile the Aliens I noticed I had to keep moving to avoid them and only attacked when i led them to a place where they where at a disadvantage. In other-words I was thinking Like a hunter. That's great when a game makes you to think like the guys your playing.
On marine it was ether Move fast to good guns and Fucking shoot everything you even THOUGHT moved. Seriously Mariens are the most stressful ones to play...but if you catch to enemies fighting each other then your golden for a some kills. I never played long as a Marine because I lagged out of the match playing as one.
Also Still going to Friend you hawk

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Just added you Doc. Hopefully we can get a game up later on. It may end up as 1v1 though, seems to be quickly getting groups of friends into games now, rather than do any sort of matchmaking. I'll try not to spend all my time as a Pred... people don't like it when I only play Pred...


And I think I've discovered the most terrifying thing in this game; Playing 1v1 as a Marine vs a Xeno. Me and a friend just did this, I was the Marine. God damn that was tense stuff. Only had 1 kill between us, but it was a good game of cat and mouse.

If you're interested, the mouse won.

[Doc ock rokc]

things i found out
marines vs alien fun as hell on both sides
alien vs alien fun but seriously comes down to grabs
pred vs marines is good but can be hard for marines
pred vs alien is a slaughterhouse for the xeno

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

To be fair, we did get into quite a lot of melee fights and I was as surprised as you how much I dominated them. In melee they should be about equal there. Usually in melee against xenos I fail completely.

You should block more.

Or focus leap/attack.

I was happy with my accidental suicide/kill with one of the mines though. Felt very "Predator" that.

[Doc ock rokc]

To be fair, we did get into quite a lot of melee fights and I was as surprised as you how much I dominated them. In melee they should be about equal there. Usually in melee against xenos I fail completely.

You should block more.

Or focus leap/attack.

I was happy with my accidental suicide/kill with one of the mines though. Felt very "Predator" that.

every time i blocked you just struck me right through it. Then their was times I was turned by your punches allowing for the trophy kill also you where always in the wide open area so I couldn't get close to you with the Leap attack
also I think i was laging cause You jittered more then once

[Arcanum]

Okay so I got this on both my 360 and PS3 and I've been playing the crap out of it over the weekend -- on my 360, I played one match on my PS3 to see the controls, but the messed up matchmaking led me back to the 360. I prefer the PS3 controls, because R1 and L1 are much better than the bumpers for melee attacking, but I'm pretty much used to the bumpers after an entire weekend of playing. Anyway I kind of just glazed over this thread so here's my thoughts on the demo.

Once you get used to the intricacies of each species, everything feels really balanced. I noticed a few complaints about the melee combat between preds and aliens, but once you figure out how the melee system works it's just a matter of skill/luck. For those who haven't figured it out, block only works on light attacks, light attacks interrupt heavy attacks, and heavy attacks break through blocks. Lunge attacks are also considered light attacks, so they can be blocked. Basically the combat boils down to a fast-paced game of rock-paper-scissor.

Anyway, most of the time I'm finishing in the top 2, if not then top 4, with some pretty heated matches. The best times I've had were when I was playing with a friend and we both managed to be Predators, and the other 4 players were Aliens.

Oh and I also think I noticed a comment about why there's only 2 predators. It's actually because the demo has Species Balancing turned on, with the Species Ratio set to 1 Pred, 2 Aliens, 2 Marines. (press Y on 360 (and I assume triangle on PS3) to see the match settings when in the lobby). Which is why in an eight-person lobby you can only have 2 preds, and a max of 4 aliens or marines. One can also assume that in the full game the host will have control over the balance toggle, as well as the ratio.

Oh and Hawk, let me know the next time you plan on playing on the PS3 and I'll switch over and play with you.


edit -- oh and if this post seems a little "all over the place", it's because it's 3:30am and I'm about to go to sleep.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

every time i blocked you just struck me right through it. Then their was times I was turned by your punches allowing for the trophy kill also you where always in the wide open area so I couldn't get close to you with the Leap attack
also I think i was laging cause You jittered more then once

That was the heavy attack breaking through, which also stuns allowing for trophy kills. But I think I was more often using light attack, like when we ran into each other in one of the small rooms downstairs, that was all light attack spam. Only time I remember using heavy was when we were fighting near the ramps and you backed off, so I figured I had time to start the animation and ran at you while he wound up the strike.

You were good at avoiding the caster though, almost never got a shot off at you.

Arcanum, I may be on at any point today. It's sunday, I have no plans.

EDIT; Oh and Doc, did you have auto transition turned on or off? It may or may not help, I still need to try xeno with auto transition on myself because I suck as xeno.

[Arcanum]

That was the heavy attack breaking through, which also stuns allowing for trophy kills.

.......

Arcanum, I may be on at any point today. It's sunday, I have no plans.

EDIT; Oh and Doc, did you have auto transition turned on or off? It may or may not help, I still need to try xeno with auto transition on myself because I suck as xeno.

One thing I noticed about the heavy-attack-stun-then-grab-for-insto-kill is that sometimes Aliens or Predators can break free from the grab. I have no idea how it's done, if you need to push a certain button at the right time, mash the living shit out of the buttons, or if it's reliant on your current health when grabbed; but a lot of the times when I tried this my grab has been broken out of, and I've also managed it a few times but I still don't know how.

Also sounds good, I'll check in on PSN every now and then today.

Also also, how exactly does the auto transition work? Does pushing RT/R2 act as a toggle for it? The only time I would push RT/R2 would be when I was on the ceiling and I wanted to drop to the floor.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

You break out of trophy animations automatically if your health is above a certain level. Stealth kills from behind are unavoidable though. Strangely I don't think I've ever broken free of a TK, either I keep getting stealth killed or only get TKed after sustaining serious injury.


Auto transition just removes the need to ever have to press r2 to move onto a wall/ceiling. You still press r2 to drop and revert to right side up view, but if you want to run up a wall then you only have to run up to it. On the downside it means if you accidentally move too close to a crate or wall you'll instantly start moving up it, so you have to be a bit more aware of objects near you. Still I found it easier on, because I don't have to hold r2 indefinately.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Does anybod know what kind of multiplayer modes are going to be in the final game? I gues I'm reall just asking if Hunt will be in the final game because that is all I care about.

[TDK]

I keep clicking "install demo" but it doesn't even try to begin the download. = (

Anyone know how to fix this?

[Mirai Gen]

Auto transition just removes the need to ever have to press r2 to move onto a wall/ceiling. You still press r2 to drop and revert to right side up view, but if you want to run up a wall then you only have to run up to it. On the downside it means if you accidentally move too close to a crate or wall you'll instantly start moving up it, so you have to be a bit more aware of objects near you. Still I found it easier on, because I don't have to hold r2 indefinately.

I kind of like manual control actually, because on PC holding M3 is cakewalk if you ever want to make a wall transition.

What I'm trying to get used to is pouncing - xenos while sprinting have a crazy leap distance. It totally kicks ass but I'm trying to aim it right and predict distances. This is why the xenos are the best class.

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Does anybod know what kind of multiplayer modes are going to be in the final game? I gues I'm reall just asking if Hunt will be in the final game because that is all I care about.

Game modes include free for all deathmatch, species deathmatch, mixed species deathmatch, survivor (4 player co-op as Marines vs Xenos), Infestation (1 player randomly selected as a Xeno, every killed Marine respawn as Xeno, last Marine standing wins) and Predator Hunt. Pred Hunt is the one I care most about too.

I kind of like manual control actually, because on PC holding M3 is cakewalk if you ever want to make a wall transition.

What I'm trying to get used to is pouncing - xenos while sprinting have a crazy leap distance. It totally kicks ass but I'm trying to aim it right and predict distances. This is why the xenos are the best class.

I've kind of got used to doing this (not always from a sprint mind), but it's everything else about the Xeno I have trouble with, like maneouvering and transitioning smoothly along all surfaces without breaking stride. I just end up all over the place in a confused mess and then I get killed.

I need to remember to use focus attack more often with Pred too, I neglect it way too much and it could really help me get more kills I think.