Aliens vs Predator 2 Demo

Shit, this game feels exactly like Shogo!

(Just thought about that...)

omg...
Compared to the last game, this one is terrible.
The play control is raunchy, but the charecter animation is just plain terrible.
Are they moving across the floor, or are those aliens just sliding? I can't tell... just way too "jumpy." Nothing in the game has fluid. And the motion sensor is worthless compared to the first AVP.

I love Lithtech, but what happened to Unreal? Isn't a move from Unreal to Lithtech kind of a... uh... step down?

-SmArT1

Hmmm, I never played the first one, so I hae no frame of reference, but overall I liked the demo.

First off, Lithtech really sucks. I'm sorry but there is absolutely no reason I should be getting 25-45 fps (800x600x32 all details maxed on a GF2 1ghz athlon 256 meg of ram) based on the quality of the graphics which are somewhere between Half-Life and Quake3. The graphics/models/texturing is adequate.

To Jason Hall: let Lithtech die dude. Please, enough already. You've fought the good fight but its time to pack it in.

To Fox Interactive: Please get in contact with Todd Hollenshead at id Software. The engine they are working on seems to have been MADE for the aliens franchise.

Now, where this demo does kick ass is in atmosphere. It oozes it. It felt EXACTLY like being in the movie. From the steady pulse of the motion sensor to the scream of the pulse rifle... perfect reproduction. The mood was only slightly marred by the voice acting which wasnt nearly as frantic/scared as it should have been ("Draaaake!!! We ARE LEAVING!!" "Sarge is DEAD!! Sarge is DEAD!!" "Weizbowski! WEIZBOWSKI!!" "Lets Roooock!" "We're fucked! We're Doomed") But I was tense, crawling around in the dark. This is good. The combat sequences were EXACTLY as they should have been. I'm sorry, but whoever felt that the combat was too quick and frantic and wasnt 'skillful' enough - dude, quake3/UT/counterstrike is calling... go play. Thats not what this game is or should be about. This game should be about paniced reaction and reflex.

Overall, I'm gonna be picking this one up. Its just too bad about that Lithtech thing....

Hmm. Pretty decent atmosphere, but the FPS are kinda low. I like Lithtech, too, but it ran a bit choppy for me. The menu was kinda wacked, too. Anyone else notice that?

This was enjoyable but its not what i was hoping for. It certainly isnt on the same level as nolf. First the good things.

*The game feels right, by that i mean the engine does its job well, and the player speeds feel good.
*The enviroment is pretty damn cool, nicer than the original.
*The graphics were nice, not over the top or mind blowing, but they do the job
*Lighting is cool and moody, and the use of your torch is a neccessity.
*Scary as fuck, the atmosphere is fantastic. At one point i was cowering in the corner of the hallway with my torch battery depleeted just hoping what ever was making the scary noises wouldnt come my way.

Now the not so good.
*The combat was pretty dull, i cant explain why but when your confronted by the aliens your reaction is "god, not another one" rather than the "FUCK AN ALIEN AAAAAAAARGH" i was hoping for.
*The models (speaking about the aliens here) is pretty damn poor, they look tiny and completley unmenacing. Its much scarier in the first half of the mission where your piering round every corner in anticipation of your first encounter. And it ends up being pretty underwhelming.
*The weapons are really unsatisfying, which anoys me since this was one of the areas Nolf excelled. The gones look nice enough but theres really no sense of kick back or power behind them, on top of that the sound effects down , well, ass.
*The level itself, i dont think it was really the best example of what the game has in store. Its pretty unexciting. At one point your forced to back track through the whole thing which just makes it all the more boring. I know its set on a space craft or station or something but it could be a little more intriguing. Look at SS2 it managed to get the balance just perfect for a space based terror game.

I want to cry.
Really.
This is the only game I've been wanting to love ever since I first heard of it, and what does this demo prove? My computer crashes on every lithtech engine game within 3 minutes, no matter what I do (hardware accelleration, resolution, 16/32 bit, drivers...)
I guess I will cry now...

ok i did a review of the demo and I did it in an iframe in a shack account, so this is kinda of an experment.. the host thats hosting the page is kinda of flaky but hopefully there wont be any more problems tonight

at anyrate you can see the iframed review here

http://www.shacknews.com/funk.y?person=ease_avp

if that does not work you can see teh review here but with no screenshots

http://www.shacknews.com/funk.y?person=ease_avp2

and if you do check out both, could you tell if you like the iframed one(1st one) or the one in the shack (2nd one)

Yawn... AVP2 didn't impress me one bit, looks too much like AVP Gold. Oh well, into the Recycle Bin for you and back to Day of Defeat for me....

I thought 'Lithtech' was vaporware.... damn.... thats a joke on me.

I am an ass hole. :(

these aliens are almost as hard to see as the green frogs in the green swamps of daikatana. and god does it look like shit. and CAN WE GET SOME MORE LOCKED DOORS PLEASE? i like how you cant save in the demo too, i like having to start over because some invisible alien mauled me while i tried to recover from an fps drop.

Heh I never played AVP2 but I was almost on the edge of my seat.

It's funny, I wasn't scared because of the enemies coming after me. I was scared because I knew I couldn't aim because 1) it was too dark and 2) the mouse sens was WAYYY to high, even at the lowest setting. I wasn't scared of battle but I felt I couldn't hit my enemy :(

It got boring pretty fast in terms of variety. It was going through doors and fighting aliens. I hope there is more variety than that in the final game :).

So, as far as I can tell, they got a brand new engine to make the same g*ddamned game. It looks the same, it plays the same, it sounds the same. I couldn't find ONE thing to call an improvement. I can't even figure out why they made this game at all instead of making expansion packs for the original game. Must be something the demo don't show because I sure couldn't see it.

shit.
* W R O N G T H R E A D ' D *

Woohoo!!! (I'm Dan btw.)

Dan,

This is an e-mail to let you know that you have been officially certified a Gravity Kills Street Team member. Congratulations! Our Street Team Coordinator will contact you in the next few months. Thank you for your prompt response!

Sincerely,
Jeff, Doug & Matt
Gravity Kills

For all of you 56kers, New PC GAMER (october issues?!?!?) is in stores already, I just bought it, it has CD with AvP2 demo on it. So just go and buy it.

4 KB/SEC. Haven't done this in a while...

Worth trying? Yep, of course. The Alien story is the scariest Hollywood franchise of the past twenty (!) years, and there's no movie adaptation that's going to give you a better spook on the PC.

After slagging off Lithtech, I'm ready to eat my words. The engine is perfectly capable of doing what this game requires -- creating a spooky corridor crawl. There are enough polys for verisimilitude, which is all that matters. You can have your Q3 engine; this one's got better lighting, again essentially for a realistic mood.

Not as impressive as the level design, the alien models were merely adequate -- maybe a notch down in quality from AvP. Even if they'd been better, I don't think it would have mattered. As in the movies, so in the games: what you *don't* see is what's creepy. Stealing through the levels, exploring, wondering what's ahead with your locator device ticking like your heartbeat, is where the game delivers.

Unfortunately, blasting the aliens is probably the weakest part of this game, just as with the last. Every fight is lightening fast, reducing the battles to you spraying bullets at an opponent that's on you in a heartbeat, and that kind of reduces it all to panicky twitching. Not very satisfying or skillful compared with, say, the Quake/UT style of FPS shooting, and I'd call that a failure on the developers' part. Maybe Alien(s) is better enjoyed as a film than played as a game....

Unless the other dimensions of the game are really great, I can see myself getting bored with this after a couple of levels. I'd need to see more complexity and a deeper gaming experience before getting this one as other than a bargain bin buy.

short demo...
got pissed turn up brightness yeah so i cheated sue me.

never played the first one...

Ran the game on XP build for about 5 minutes, looked great ran ok....


WHISTLAR'D

Hmmm... Just finished the demo.

While it was freaky, being and AvP game, I am disappointed. First, on the graphics front. I'm not sure that this game looks any better than AvP Gold. In fact, I'm quite certain that it doesn't look AS GOOD. It certainly runs slower, but it doesn't look noticebly better... and that flashlight/shoulderlamp thing is broken. Fricking useless. I aim it into the darkness, and it lights up NOTHING, except the face of a box to my lower left. It's like it can only project light onto one vertical plane at a time.. it can't light up this box up close AND the wall down the hall at the same time. Either/Or. Wonderful.

Gameplay... I dunno. Seems about the same I suppose... the level design isn't as good as AvP I thought, but it's hard to tell from just that one level. The locked doors thing was quite annoying yes. The whole "aliens popping out of the roof and floor at completely random times to keep you on your toes" bit is kind of cheap.

Oh, and that "Sliding Door" detector is real useful. It tells me when the door I am standing in front of opens, and when it closes after I pass through. Too bad they didn't give me some sort of Alien Motion detector. That would have been useful.

While waiting for the download to finish I tried this:

http://hive-mind.com/mindgames/mindcontrol/

Amazing!

http://208.239.29.90/avp2demo.zip

for those in line... I'll take it down tomorrow.

One mutha of a crop-circle:

http://www.circlemakers.org/totc2001.html
http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2001/MilkHill2/milkhill2001a.html

Yeah, explain that Mr. Science type guy!

i liked it, i thought it was pretty too. Nothing overly flashy but in a game like this, that isnt the focus. The marine on the menu was uber cool.

Okay, I liked the first game and I liked this one. I don't see much difference though.

The fastest I ever download on my cable modem is about 20k/sec now. I can't believe I pay $40 a month for this piece of shit.

i liked this demo
it played fine on my althon 800 geforce 2mx
I dont really like the flashlight thing and i liked the lighting in the original better but its still cool

Lithtech engine is ass. My comp isn't exactly a speed demon (coppermine 672, geforce2 mx) but it SHOULD run playably at 640x480x16 lowest detail. It's nice and smooth (with that funny-feeling lithtech mouse control) until an alien comes on screen and leaps toward me at 2 fps. And having to stand exactly the right distance from a door to open it is annoying as all hell.

I still think this game has potential, cause the atmosphere is awesomely scary, but gameplay is king.. we'll see

is there a way to take screenshots

Well, not really surprised that I get a bad offset in winzip or whatever the hell kind of error it is. Exact file size 55,341,009 is what I got ... what's the real one since it's corrupt from fileplanet? Fuck that really is upsetting, spent 6 hours downloading it :(

wtf.. I got stuck with nowhere to go after I fell through all the holes. all the locked doors keep me out

This is one kickass demo for its size. AVP scared me when I first played it; I LOVE that in a game. This one is no different. I must have jumped 10 times playing through this baby.

I can't wait for the full release. Great job. :)

pos download from fileplanet was corrupt.

Marine still moves slightly too fast, bob and sway = fixed.

Too scary for me, quit before I found an alien

37kps from fileplanet after a 25 min wait.

ahh 150k/s at barrysworld. wonder how it'll be :)