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.

Originally Posted by The Wandering God

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by Mirai Gen

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.