[Colonol Dekker]

Yeah there's a topic for the multiplayer demo. But i'm talking about the single player game here.
 
The Marlow, Number 6, the club. Using 'that feature' as a pred for the first time then repeating the hell out of it til thats all you can do.
 
 
The joy of trophies, the love of the hive and the terror of realising it was . . . . . . . Just a pipe.

[starbug]

So far my thoughts about the single player are 'meh', i am playing the marine campaign at the moment and so far i have enjoyed the intro and the club fight, but i find it is lacking the tension and scares i felt when playing Monoliths AVP2. This one seems to be just average, as i have said i am just started to play this it may get better and the other campaigns may be better but other people have told me that the singleplayer is rather short.

[Colonol Dekker]

They're all short if you play on anything less than hard.
 
 
So far the aliens is my favourite.
The clanship in the marines intro actually made me squee.
 
It's better in the pred one.
 
 

[VPR]

What's the AI marine awareness like when your an Alien or Predator? I remember watching the gameplay videos earlier this month and they looked pretty bad at working out where you were. I've since been reluctant to buy it, though I assumed it was because the playtester in the videos were perhaps on the easiest setting but what's their awareness like in the full game at hardest difficulty?

[Colonol Dekker]

To me, i'd say it's just that tiny bit short of challenging me to the point where it hought my money was worth shelling out. One or two times "Testing the perimiters" and then you've clinched it. Although to be fair, they did once or twice call a flamer in to flush me out...

[Vasudan Admiral]

The human AI is pathetic, which sucks cos it makes the whole predator 'distraction' thing feel so contrived since they do EXACTLY what you tell them to every time. :\ There's also a distinct lack of terror when a huge cloaked or uncloaked predator lands in front of them. In those ways Crysis felt much more like a fun predator kind of game, because it was much more satisfying to 'outsmart' the AI.

Beyond that, the multiplayer demo is probably the absolute worst experience of gameplay I've had in any game and brought me from desperately wanting to get it to seriously not wanting to go near it. Fortunately I was able to 'borrow' the steam account of a friend who had it to give the single player a try, and decided it was going to be worth buying after the first predator level.

Overall despite the frustrations of varying degrees often due to developer laziness or poor planning I thought the game was brilliant fun! The finishing moves are absolutely BRUTAL and the hand to hand combat works well enough for me to not care when there were infinitely respawning aliens in one part, because I was having so much fun ending them in all kinds of horrible ways.

Story-wise it's basically all in the marine campaign and a lot was left unanswered more in the annoying kind of 'not fully fleshed out' kind of way rather than the 'deep mystery here' kind of way BUT I have yet to listen to any of the audio diaries. Even if more story is in there though you just don't get enough from the game to make it remotely worth getting for the story. You get it so you can BE an alien or predator - because both are handled quite well. For example seeing 5 aliens coming towards you at once as a marine is an 'oh snap' kind of moment. Seeing 10 aliens at once as a predator is very much a '....bring it ON!' kind of moment, even if you die horribly repeatedly.

Spoiler:

There was a great bit as the alien when fighting....myself i think from the predator campaign, where I was seriously injured and using a column to run around to keep the predator out of sight for a moment while I healed. After 2 or 3 revolutions in different directions apparently he decided he'd had enough of that rubbish and sprint-lunge-STAB killed me around the column. I was totally and utterly pwned.

[phatosealpha]

Not a very good game.  Very sad, since Fox kills all mods with either IP on sight.

Facehuggers are entirely too laid back.  It's very obvious in the Alien harvest animations, but it's really anywhere you see one.  They're slow, casual, and entirely unlikely the flying face rapists they should be.

The audio is inappropriate.  Nowhere near enough blood curdling screams where they should be.  Harvest someone as an alien - a civvie who will blow himself up to avoid this fate if he sees you coming - and he barely makes a sound.

Campaigns are overly short, level design is largely uninspired.  The marine weapons are a joke - the pulse rifle feels like a rapid fire BB gun, and if you make the mistake of using the flamethrower on a alien, you're almost certainly dead.

And god, the multiplayer.....


It's a shame, all around.  Makes me want to reinstall AvP2 to see if anyone is still playing the multiplayer for that.

[Fineus]

I hate to say it but you raise a lot of good points, particularly about the Facehuggers and the pulse rifles feel. They should double the number of aliens, increase their speed by half again and triple the damage done by the assault rifle. That'd make it interesting.

[Colonol Dekker]

Moddability for the win. . . .

[phatosealpha]

The speed drones seem to move at is at least fairly consistent with Cameron's flick.  They weren't really all that fast.
That said, the things can move very, very fast - just not while on the walls, and the AI drones don't do so.

[Colonol Dekker]

In addition to my first post, now more of you have played the full game. I finished marine and alien on insane on sunday. I bought it on saturday. The only bits that gave me trouble were the club, the dropship and the first combat cyborg encounter.
 
As the Alien the predators were a bit of a git.
Not had time to progress on predator past the second level.
Motion tracker's not scary enough althoug I love alien AI wall movement. The club was excellent fun. The first time I played my tracker was going mental and I was stuck in standard FPS mode wondering where they were til I lobbed a flare out and illuminated a ceiling FULL of Xenos.
 
 
Good stuff. Need more grenade capacity.
 
Looking forward to the sequel as hinted at by

Spoiler:

Bishop clone number 426(probably)

[Vidmaster]

I did not like it. Full of wasted potential plus I am actually an Aliens fan not an Aliens vs Predator fan 
Good thing Gearbox finally started working on Aliens: Colonial Marines for real now. I still hope that will be the awesome game I am waiting for since 20 years now. We have the technology now, AvP is the proof for that. Now in good please!

Hey Dekker, do some Spark when your done with the game yes? 

[Colonol Dekker]

Spark doesn't compute? This unit cannot access installation records.


The reclaimer is unavailable.




etc.






Wut?

Good thing Gearbox finally started working on Aliens: Colonial Marines for real now.

WAit....................................   

Crap, i bought the wrong one 

[Vidmaster]

I actually cancled my preorder when I saw the first reviews. Eventually played a pal's version of it, like I said, I was glad I did not buy it myself. It's unoriginally and full of bad design choices, the worst being taking the fear out of the game. Marines blocking with bare fist, come on...

[Fineus]

I think you've just summed up why I'm really being put off buying without trying first. This has happened 3 times now.

1. I bought Borderlands. Entertaining but not enough to warrant the price. If I could, I'd have returned it.

2. Modern Warfare 2. Again, fun. I'm glad I played it. Not entirely sure I had to buy it as soon as I did though. Would wait for a price drop if I'd known.

3. Aliens Vs Pred 2010. Again, I'd wait for a price drop and would probably have spent my money on Bad Company 2.

Three games, three times I think I could've saved / used my money in a different way for a happier outcome. Two of them didn't have a demo and the third generated enough hype that I ignored the demos quality. They'll make a software pirate out of my yet.

[Vidmaster]

1. I bought Borderlands. Entertaining but not enough to warrant the price. If I could, I'd have returned it.

Same here. It's fun somehow when I play it with my sister but there is a certain "it's work" feeling every time when I thing about playing this game. That vanishes when actually playing and shooting things but still, it's there. LACK OF STORY, basic gameplay is okay.

[Colonol Dekker]

I get that feeling with the Fallout series believe it or not.
 
Also GTA games.

[Mongoose]

That's the reason why I try to shy away from sandbox-esque games myself.  I'd far rather have a completely-controlled, tightly-spun narrative a la FreeSpace than be running over a game environment the size of the state of Nevada, looking for something interesting to do.  I do enjoy compromises between the two, like most of the 3D Zelda games, where there's optional side tasks you can complete between the main-story stuff, but when the former starts to outweigh the latter, I generally lose interest.

[Nemesis6]

This game is just downright bad, and it was hilarious to see the fanboy reactions to critical reviews -- I CNA USE THE CONTROLS JUST FINE, U R NOOB FOR SAYING IT HAS BAD CONTRLS!

There are so many ways you can criticize this game, but they all tie in with the basic fact that explains them all - It's a console game.

[Fineus]

...Actually the controls are one of the things I didn't have trouble with.