by Gwynhala
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Developer: |
Monolith
Productions |
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Publisher: |
Sierra On-Line |
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Price: |
$49.99 |
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Demo: |
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Release Date: |
10/31/01 |
What could be more
fun than a video game that pits the Thomas brothers’ stealthy Predator against
Ridley Scott’s acid-dripping Aliens?
It’s been done
before – both as a side-scrolling arcade fighting game (Alien vs. Predator, Capcom, 1994) and as a first person Quake-like
adventure/shooter for the Atari Jaguar (Alien
vs. Predator, Rebellion, 1994). A PC version of the Rebellion title came
out in 1999.
Monolith
Productions’ Aliens vs. Predator 2
is the fully-3D sequel in which you play through the same series of 23rd
century events from three perspectives: that of a Marine, that of an Alien, and
that of a Predator.
In single-player
mode, Aliens vs. Predator 2 provides
three decent adventure stories interlocking as the paths of the Marine, Alien,
and Predator cross during a failed bioengineering experiment on planet LV-1201.
In the six multi-player modes, the game becomes a tense shoot-em-up battle in
which each species has its own tactical advantages and disadvantages.
In Aliens vs. Predator 2 you begin the
single-player game by choosing a species – Marine, Alien, or Predator – and a
difficulty level. Each species has its own perspective
on the storyline, its own sequence of game levels and objectives, and unique
special abilities and weapons.
The species are
different enough that you’ll play the same level very for each. AvP2 takes
advantage of this, interlocking the stories by having you play on some of the
same levels as an Alien, a Predator, and a Marine.
Each species’ story
is divided into a set of missions (one per level), each with its own
objectives. The stories are completely linear: your actions never determine
what level comes next, you just move automatically from level to level by
completing objectives. Each story has its own ending, but there are no
alternate endings. If you die before completing all objectives of a mission,
the game simply drops you back to a menu to play the level again.
Once you’ve
completed a level as a species, the level is unlocked so you can go back to it
at any time from the Single Player menu.
Note: This feature
is tied to your player profile, which is named Player_0 by default. If you
create a different profile for multi-player games, be sure to switch back to
the Player_0 profile to play unlocked levels.
The Marine story
begins with a botched landing on research planet LV-1201. You’re part of a team
of Marines investigating loss of contact with the research facility. Your first
objective is to find the place you were supposed to land – but Command forgot
to tell you the planet is infested with insect-like, acid-dripping, head-biting
Aliens. Your body armor and starting weaponry (a combat knife, a pistol, and a
pulse rifle) are enough to handle the little ones. In addition to your weapons
you have a shoulder lamp, flares, a nifty radar display giving range and
position of friends and foes, and computer hacking gear.
The situation soon
gets worse when you are separated from the team and have to fight and think
your way to the rendezvous.
The Alien story begins
with your Alien embryo escaping from a smuggler’s egg shipment in a cargo bay
on LV-1201. Your first objective is to find someone to face-hug so you can
gestate in his or her body. Once this is accomplished, you get to burst from
his chest and hunt small animals and people for food. As you eat, you grow into
a more and more powerful Alien.
You discover that
human scientists are exploiting your hive for military research. Once they
capture the queen of the hive, you have more to worry about than just eating
and avoiding flame-throwers.
The Predator story
begins with a communal hunt for human researchers and their security escorts in
the lush canyons of LV-1201. As one of the Predators on the hunt, your arsenal
includes wristblades for close-up decapitation, a spear gun for distance
sniping, and a cloaking device that makes you nearly invisible. You get various
new and more powerful weapons as the hunt progresses.
The hunt goes bad
when you run into a party of Marines collecting Alien specimens, and they
capture some of your Predator buddies (who you have to rescue).
Aliens vs. Predator 2 features three single-player games and six
built-in multi-player modes, for a lot of variety.
The Alien, Predator,
and Marine have different abilities, but they’re all basically humanoid. Most
of the controls are familiar to anyone who’s ever played a first-person
shooter. In addition to a set of shared control bindings for common actions
like walking, running, looking up and down, and attacking, AvP2 provides
separate control setting options for each species.
Because of the
difference in gameplay for various species, the Gameplay Tips section of
the manual includes three sets of tactics. These are presented clearly, without
introducing cheats or spoilers – worth the read especially if you are playing
one of the species for the first time.
You can maneuver
using any combination of keyboard, mouse, trackball and joystick that you find
appealing, and can adjust the sensitivity of each type of control within a
comfortable range.
Special mention goes
to the Alien’s “wallwalk” controls, which new players might find hard to use
and very disorienting. These controls let you run anywhere on a level,
including across ceilings and along walls, so prepare yourself for some very
strange perspectives on the world and some confusion about exactly which way
you’re heading. The on-screen “up” indicator helps – if you have time to look
at it. Make sure you look straight ahead and level before wallwalking. Without
this trick, it seemed that the on-screen view sometimes didn’t match the actual
direction of travel of the Alien when wallwalking.
Overall, the
controls are intuitive and allowed good freedom of action and movement, without
getting in the way of the game. Check out the fun 3D animations on the control
options windows.
The various vision
modes (thermal, night vision, etc.) for each species are very useful in game,
whether for deathmatch or single-player. Each has enough built-in drawbacks to
balance its advantages and make you think about what vision mode is best for a
given situation.
The single-players
games in Aliens vs. Predator 2 are
typical of any 1st person shooter. You watch the opening cinematics,
find the exit from an area, kill some enemies, jump between moving platforms,
dodge flying debris, pull switches, and avoid getting killed.
Marine Gameplay
If you want fast
action and a familiar game strategy, play as the Marine. Marines have the same
variety of weaponry as in any space-marines shooter, and they shoot things.
What could be more traditional? The Aliens come at you really fast, and the
Predators sneak up on you cloaked, so you find yourself making a lot of
split-second decisions, turning and firing, and worrying about your ammo and
health.
To find your way,
just walk around until you overhear characters discussing some new plot point –
it almost always you’re going in the right direction. You’ll also find plenty
of documents such as maps and tablet computers, some with game hints, others
just for atmosphere.
The puzzles in the
Marine game mostly have to do with jumping into narrow spaces, finding secret
stashes of ammo or weapons, finding ways to electronically hack doors open, and
shooting things. The biggest challenge of the Marine game is the Aliens and
Predators who have many advantages over you despite your superior firepower.
I found two slightly
annoying aspects of the Marine’s game. First, at every level change you switch
back to your default weapon automatically, even if all you did was walk around
a corner. Second, the Alien AI seems primitive (at least on the normal game
settings) – you’d think hive creatures would coordinate their attacks, instead
of just rushing you from one or two directions.
Alien Gameplay
Playing as the Alien
is weirdest. The heads-up display is greatly simplified (just a health bar at
the bottom of the screen), but movement is more complicated because you can
crawl on walls and leap broad chasms. The Alien has no armor or equipment, just
claws, a tail, and your jaws, so you don’t have to worry about ammo or changing
weapons. You heal simply by eating your victims.
Initially the Alien
is very weak, but from birth it can see in the dark, jump very far
horizontally, and climb effortlessly on walls and ceilings. It attacks using
claws or a vicious “head-bite”. It has no armor (other than its exoskeleton)
and no weapons.
Playing as the Alien
mostly involves remembering that you can go anywhere on the level, and using that
to surprise your enemies. Find unusual ways to move secretly, then attack quickly without getting shot. The Alien’s
leaping attacks are lethal to both Marines and Predators.
It’s fast-paced, but
in a different way than the Marine’s game. The puzzles in the Alien’s game
often challenge you to think differently about strength, height, movement and
vision. To solve them, you must walk on walls and ceilings as if they were
floors, use your night vision or thermal vision to spot exits and enemies
invisible to your normal vision, and tear through gates and gratings with your
claws.
Our only real
annoyance in the Alien’s game was the control issue mentioned above: make sure
you level out your vision before wallwalking.
Predator Gameplay
The predator seems
at first like a very powerful player. Part of the fun of playing as the
Predator is to take on his mindset – that of an honor-bound big-game hunter.
This means, for example, that it’s not good enough just to kill your enemy –
afterward, you must move in close and take his head!
Your visor provides
normal, thermal, electromagnetic, and night-vision modes. The thermal mode
easily pinpoints humans (including Marines) even in dense brush but hides
Aliens; the electromagnetic mode makes Aliens stand out as bright white
outlines but hides Humans; the night-vision mode highlights Predators,
synthetic humans, and also, for some reason, gun turrets. Many advanced
predator weapons have deadly auto-targeting modes when used with the visor.
A Predator has no
armor, but can heal his wounds using energy stored in his body. The advanced
Predator weapons and cloaking device also use this energy. When your energy
supply is used up, you can get more by decloaking and using your energy sifter,
a device that gathers energy from the world around you. Be sure to hide before
you do this, because the energy sifter is noisy, creates a bright light that
attracts enemies, and prevents you from running or using other weapons.
The Predator’s game
features huge outdoor maps and platform jumping puzzles, because the Predator
is a wilderness type who is excellent at jumping both up and down great
distances without getting hurt. Greatly outnumbered in every situation, the
Predator relies on stealth, self-healing, and smart weapons to survive.
With six built-in
deathmatch modes, Aliens vs. Predators 2
is one of the most versatile multi-player games I’ve seen. In addition to the
expected individual and team deathmatch modes, the game includes four
additional team modes with team-dependent scoring and objectives.
Half of the
deathmatch modes in this game are so “creative” that very few on-line servers
run them. The other half are very fun to play and very popular.
There’s a nice
menu-driven system to configure your map lists and game parameters, but no
console, no bots, and no ability to intermix the different gametypes without
restarting the server.
Several of the
deathmatch modes deliberately prevent players from respawning once they’ve been
killed. As a “dead” player, your team chat messages are filtered, and you can
fly freely around the map or click to predefined fixed observation points.
Missing: chase cams that follow the surviving players or surviving teammates.
A patch is required
for playing on-line; it also fixes several problems in the CD version of the
game. The game will automatically check for patches when it starts up. Check
out the Sierra AvP2 Download Site
at avp2.sierra.com for the latest patches and map packs.
Standard Deathmatch
Traditional
free-for-all deathmatch fare.
You can limit the number of Marines, Aliens, and Predators if you want, for
example, an all-marine game. Aliens vs. Predator 2 comes with twelve deathmatch maps;
another four official DM maps are available in a free downloadable map pack.
About 30% of the
on-line servers are running Standard Deathmatch.
Team Deathmatch
A
traditional team deathmatch.
Aliens vs. Predators vs. Marines, all at once but each species score counts
together toward the frag limit. Uses the same maps as
Standard Deathmatch.
This seems to be the
most popular on-line mode for Aliens vs.
Predator 2 – probably 50% of the servers at any given time are running Team
Deathmatch.
Hunt
In Hunt, there are
two teams, the hunters and the prey. Only the hunters can score. If prey kills
a hunter, the prey player becomes a hunter and his victim respawns as prey. You
play to a frag limit, on the same maps as Standard Deathmatch
Don’t get it?
Neither do most on-line players from the look of things - very few on-line
servers run this unusual game mode.
Survivor
Survivor is nothing
like the popular television show. Instead, all players start out normal, and as
soon as one of them dies he becomes a mutant. Normal players (“survivors”) get
one point per second they stay alive. Mutants get 10 points for every survivor
they kill; the victim becomes a mutant. The player with the
highest score at the end of the level (frag limit or timer) wins.
This mode uses the
same maps as Standard Deathmatch. It’s creative, but also very different from
traditional deathmatch. Few servers run it.
Overrun
Two teams (by
species) play this game mode, which is basically about genocide. The Defender
team tries to end the round with at least one survivor, while both teams try to
wipe each other out. The round ends when one of the teams is wiped out, or a
time limit is reached.
Players don’t
respawn. Scoring is relatively simple. If the time limit is reached, the
Defenders get 1 point per surviving player and the Attackers get nothing.
Otherwise, the surviving team gets 1 point per survivor and the wiped out team
gets nothing.
A clever twist in
this game allows you to set the number of lives each team’s players are
allowed. For example, if you set the Attacker’s limit to 3 lives, each Attacker can respawn
twice before having to sit out the rest of the round.
The Overrun mode has
dedicated maps. Three are included with the game, and another two official
Overrun maps come in the free map pack.
The overrun mode
shows up on servers about as often as Survivor does.
Evac
Evac mode is a lot
of fun. There are two teams (again by species). One team is trying to escape
from the map, while the other team is trying to kill them off. Nobody respawns.
To escape, the evacuating
team has to get any team member to a designated spot on the map and, once
there, defend him for a certain amount of time (adjustable, but typically 2-10
seconds). An escape is worth 1 point, killing off the other team completely is
worth 1 point (and ends the round), and if the timer expires the attackers get
1 point. As with Overrun, you can set the number of lives a player gets before
being unable to respawn.
Aliens vs. Predator 2 comes with three dedicated Evac maps, and there are another four in
the free map pack.
This seems to be the
most popular of the “unusual” game modes (Hunt, Survivor, Overrun, and Evac). I
still only see it on about 5% of the servers.
There’s been a lot
of buzz about the coolness of the Lithtech engine used in Aliens vs. Predator 2 (versions also used in Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, No
One Lives Forever, and other titles). I was expecting to be blown away by
the rendering in AvP2, but I only noticed two things that really contribute to
my personal gaming experience: large, open outdoor spaces, and attractive
weather effects. The lighting was really nice, too.
The cinematics are
attractive, with some nice surprises like random blinking, moving eyelashes and
moving jaws of the humans. The models themselves are nicely shaped and
detailed, although some of the in-game skeletal animations, especially of the
human characters, seem unnatural.
The maps are a mixed
bag. Generally the texture and architecture work are both good, but the
buildings and compounds in the deathmatch maps all tend to look alike. The
outdoor Predator maps provide good variety, contrasting with the too-familiar,
almost cliché dark interiors of the Marine maps and the maze-like,
claustrophobic Alien maps.
The visual effects
look good and never seem out of place. The most common visual effect - the way
different races are illuminated using special vision modes – is entirely
believable as well as very useful.
Aliens vs. Predator 2 features great voice acting, including a
variety of actors and dialects.
You also get seamless blending of sound effects and ambient sounds into the
environment.
One annoying aspect
of the audio is a “badguy theme” that plays whenever you are about to be
attacked in the single-player game.
The $49.95 price tag
of Aliens vs. Predator 2 is typical of what leading PC game companies are
asking for new titles. The three single-player games and six multi-player game
modes provide excellent value (in terms of variety) for the money.
- Three built-in single-player modes with
interlocking storylines
- Six built-in multi-player modes and plenty of
maps for great DM variety
- Large outdoor maps with pretty lighting
- Who wouldn’t want to be an Alien, or a
Predator, or a space Marine?
- Abrupt story endings, with no alternate
endings, in single-player mode
- No bots or console in multi-player mode
- Unchallenging enemy AI at default difficulty
setting
A
good buy for players who like 1st person space marine shooter /
adventures or are fans of the Alien and Predator series.
|
Graphics: |
8 |
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Storyline: |
6 |
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Gameplay: |
6 |
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Sound: |
7 |
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Value: |
9 |
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Total: |
7.2 |
This review originally ran on
mindlessgames.com 1/20/2002. The site is now offline.