Aliens Vs Predator demo on Steam

[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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by Doc ock rokc

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.