AvP 2 game analysis

avp.wikia.com/wiki/Andrew_Harrison

You cannot tell me with a straight face that Aliens Vs Predator 2 doesn't have problems up the wazzoo. If it didn't have cons then you wouldn't be crying for a hd remake and more mod support every goddamn time it gets mentioned.

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avpgalaxy.net/games/avp2/marine-walkthrough/?page2
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It has a nice atmosphere and a decent Holla Forumsmic book-like story, just like its original concept art its inspired from. The atmosphere is spooky - a bunch of scary sound effects and some lonely creepy music to make you feel uncomfortable.
A lot of data pads which aren't very interesting, just shitty social commentary between the NPCs of the game. But it helps build up the fact that working as a Weyland Yutani employee is hell, imagine being a lonely civilian on a shitty planet full of aliens and corrupted security guards ready to kill you or have you fed to the aliens.

A lot of things break and keep you on the edge. A lot of unnecessary things are added for the sole purpose of making you scared; having to hack doors at all, a blowtorch to break locks, your unpractical 20 meter motion tracker, super fast sprinting alien(s). But the gameplay options are terrible. No way to return back to your previous locations, no overarching and satisfying story conclusion for the sake of the planet, no allies/teamplay, no real replay value.

As for the engine in combination with the gameplay design choices, that bothers me the most, more than the shit graphics.
As a marine you will die if you fall for more than 10 feet.
Your hitbox is terribly made, as the predator you will miss every hit with your combi-stick and as the marine you will die a lot from your own grenades even if they were never point blank.
The shooting spread is also terribly crappy and it feels like a hitscan rather than real bullets hitting the wall. Your ammo meter is fake. It will show you shot 100 bullets, when in-game you only shot around 20-30 bullets, most of which never hit in a fixed zone. The accuracy of the bullet spread is both terrible and the spread is tiny. Do not go shotgun if you don't want to have a bad time.
The aliens never slow down when you shoot them. A lot of them feel like homing missiles straight to the point, rather than a real living breathing AI creature trying to fuck around with you.

Playing as the Alien in AvP 2 doesn't feel very great. You're just a walking camera, you can't judge how far your claws and tail reaches, you can't use the darkness in your advantage, you can't judge if the NPCs can hear you or not.
Overall AvP 2010 did a much better job at dealing with the alien. (If it wasn't for the fact you cannot freeway climb every wall and surface you'd like and going into a vent system requires you to press E, yes that's a bad thing).

wasn't it just "shit's fucked, bail" for everyone but the Aliens


I'd completely agree with this, for some reason they really managed to nail down playing as the alien, but also making Aliens a threat without resorting to "muh swarm"

The predator had some really unfitting neutral music whenever it wasn't in combat. It has this sad, low-energy mopey music playing, like it was some abandoned babby trying to find it's dadda.

Just… really weird that Rykov gets put as the antagonist just for stealing the predator's mask. You were going to kill him anyway you goddamn hypocrite, you're the one who broke his spinal cord and he had to get an artificial one and constantly use medicine to not be in pain. (It's shown in the cinematic, but you never get to play that part in-game). I'm surprised Rykov didn't die from the spinal cord pains.
The tribal maniac constantly tries to get portrayed as the "le noble, honest bounty hunter looking for a challenge". If he was a noble warrior then he wouldn't blow himself up like an asshole whenever he lost the war. Just really weird how the Predator was designed and portrayed in every iteration in such a bi-polar by the context manner.

In AvP1 you were a mean killing machine. You didn't have to constantly cloak and manage your plasma gun's energy.

In AvP2 you're weaker and you constantly have to take your enemy by surprise in a stealthy manner. In some cases you're weaker than the Alien drone.
I played some James Bond music during my predator session just for shits and giggles and it really gave me that great stealthy atmosphere. Assassin's Creed music works well too.

AvP2 had pretty good Alien gameplay just for the leap. Going sonic-speeds and leaping from wall to wall is fucking fun.
In 2010 didn't like the random facehugger spawn for civilian PRESS-E-TO-EXECUTE moments. They don't run around randomly unless the hive is being attacked. What I liked was the sense of weight they gave to them even with the lost agility. Too bad the campaign was short as and the levels linear.

Also, daily reminder that preds will always be the obsolete third wheel.

Shit, did the exact same thing. Played TS soundtrack on repeat in the background.

AVP2 was only good for the multiplayer which is long dead now. No one cares anymore, let it go.

To protect fucking technologies of his suit from dirty savages? Hello, it's dangerous hobby, not a war. If your prey is capable of science, you need to protect your shit from reverse-engineering.

Now that would actually make for some good bonus content after you finish the campaigns.

Monolith was always a C/D list developer. They rarely had a killer game on their hands. Nice ideas but it's not common you'll find good execution fromm them. NOLF was decent, NOLF2 was good, Fear was great but beyond that things fell back to their norm of mediocrity or just OK games.

I don't know about any of you but I spent the greater part of my highschool years playing avp 2010 online on ps3.

That shit was fun as fuck but had serious balancing issues. The predator was the most powerful between the 3. If you were a predator online you basically never died.

Marines were the shittest with the aliens being right in the middle.

why fucking live?

Modern publishers are incapable of creating good IPs so the only thing they have left is IP necromancy and that shit goes bad fast. So just relax and watch, user.

The only "innovate" thing this game did was to let you play as 3 different characters each with their own abilities through their own campaign. Which really isn't all that unique.

I still want my drivable APC and base defense survival, damnit.

Monolith did not by any stretch of the imagination deserve what happened to them.

...

For the people whom played AvP 2, how would you rank each mission/level?

Marine - mission x
Predator - mission y
Alien - mission z

1. alien - hive-outpost
2. marine - colony
3. marine - pods
4. predator - pods
5. alien colony
6. predator - wilderness
7. alien - pods
9. predator - hive-outpost
8. marine - hive-outpost

They were not the greatest, but they were tightly made shooters, heck most of their shooters were tightly made and with passion put into them, they were basically the best middle market developers for gaming.


It hurts, at least we have a plenty of official fan fiction written by the original writer for Shogo.

avpgalaxy.net/games/avp2/marine-walkthrough/?page2
Replying to myself here.

Honestly all of them felt pretty much the same in terms of atmosphere and design.
Some missions were much shorter than others, but they all maintained the same theme. Go hack X panel, figure out your way out of this abandoned base, watch your back for enemies, don't miss a door or a keycard, don't suicide yourself when the wall collapses onto you and a fake alien pops out.

Unwelcome Guests felt like 3 missions in 1. Same for Betrayal(the pods sections).
I liked the first mission cause it builds up the tension and atmosphere. It's not very mysterious and eerie, it instead shoves a predator in your face, running across the hallway and blowing up the bridge.

The second part in Unwelcome Guests instead felt really scary because you're not outside, you're isolated deep inside an operations base following the acid mark trails and wondering when the hell are the aliens going to pop out.

AvP2010 failed at it this because it literally shoved 1 alien drone in your face and that was it, the whole encounter. Plus the countdown timer was overplayed and so on.
In AvP 2 you get swarmed by dozens of aliens and you have to run a ventilation system and then backtrack the whole dark and scary base you were silently moving through - very similar to the movie Aliens.

marine mission A Long Detour offered some great horror value when you go down in the sewers and have to fight aliens and chestbursters right inside the darkness.
Collateral Damage offered a similar feel too, but less loneliness because you had an APC through the tunnels shooting some aliens as well, despite the fact you never had allies or they died easily.

The pods were nicely designed, but I just didn't like them. Too many humans, too scripted, too cramped, too many locked doors and not enough creativity and originality with the challenge. Plus little 10 year old me was confused to see the same design on the Nostromo, but finding out it's not the Nostromo ship launching into space. I originally thought those pods were some spaceships and they could launch into space when the planet blew up or the aliens invaded.

Price of Admission
was a rather meh boss mission. I hated the elevator part because it was too short-lived, despite being a great horror idea which looked like it was copied straight off the cover box image of AvP 2. I also hated it when I first dealt with it because I had no idea that I was suppose to jump off of it, I always thought I had to wait for the aliens to come and then I thought I had to do something with the elevator.
It calls back the predator from the first mission which wanted you dead. What pissed me off was that the fight was underwhelming. The predator kept killing me if I looked at it, along with it being able to kill me anyway in 1 hit. The arena was narrow. Instead of using the landing bay as a war zone, they instead used the tiny alleys, which felt a lot like the predator was trying to steal my wallet like a petty thief rather than asking for a real challenge.
This is where either AvP2010's fighting system could have came in handy… or simply make it so the predator doesn't 1 hit kill me with any of it's weapons.

The predators in AvP 2 were far too overpowered compared to the aliens where you could kill 5 at once without breaking a sweat. Plus the encounters were always memorable because of how OP they were, as well as how much preparation they had. Not even the praetorians were as dangerous to deal with than a predator. Which is sad cause the aliens were suppose to be these insanely dangerous creatures you cannot 1/1 efficiently, let alone kill in droves.

In Alien sure but Aliens pretty much solidified them as a swarm

avpgalaxy.net/games/avp2/marine-walkthrough/?page6

Loose Ends.
Again some sort of long-winded boss level. Except that in this one you could either end the mission without fighting the praetorian, or simply pull out the handgun and use 600 bullets to kill it in the hallway.
I was pretty disappointed with this one because all the doors were locked, it seemed like the level designer stopped giving a fuck for filler content, bonus weapons, data pads… and simply locked all the additional doors so the player can focus on the real pathway.

I think Colonial Marines's Raven level did a better job with this one because the raven alien could actually kill you if you fucked up. It was genuinely chasing you and if you stood still, didn't act fast enough then you would die.
In Loose Ends I tried everything to get the Praetorian to kill me, but I couldn't. Every door automatically got shut behind me. I was waiting around 3 minutes for each door to see if the Praetorian is really going to break the door and come kill me, but it didn't. It was a shitty scripted event illusion.
I kept checking to see what activated the praetorian to come after me. Most games worked on conditions and actions.
So I tried up every condition:
Wield the blowtorch in my hand (no)
Start breaking the locks on the vent (no)
Finally break the locks on the vent and escape (yes)

I think they could have used up my first 2 suggested conditions to activate the praetorian, but then you wouldn't have the chance to narrowly escape the praetorian. Plus after you escape the mission ends there, without the praetorian following you anymore. It was a very short and disappointing mission.

Plus I really hated the fact that every ally you ever met instantly got killed in 2 hits. But that wasn't the worst part, the most annoying part was accidentally shooting your stupid ally and getting a Game Over screen.

Marine - Level 7 Savior

Again, they kind of hackneyed it.
I enjoyed the exo-suit, but again it was too short-lived. You only use it once in the entire game, for just 1/2 of the mission.(aside from multiplayer). It really bummed me out that I didn't fight the alien queen with the exo-suit. No wait, what bummed me up even more was the fact that you never fight the matriarch queen, the really big one as tall as 4 floors. They had the Matriarch model used for cinematics, but they never bothered introducing her into the gameplay.

Instead they used the queen which was too fast for her own good. The only reason my marine and predator kept surviving the queen battles was because the dumb AI always stopped in place whenever it wanted to slash at you. Plus the queen never used its tail, weird thing. The Praetorians instead could pounce at you, while in multiplayer they couldn't.

As for the style and level design itself. It starts off promising. You're descending down a pit full of Space Jockey technology like you'd expect out of a sci-fi franchise. Lots of smoke, lots of weird sounds, nice horror action atmosphere.
You go down an elevator(slowly so the physics don't break, naturally) and then you're put to destroy some xeno tendrils to make the generators working.

Sadly the level layout in this last level is atrocious. You cannot climb a wall and get some leverage, so you're stuck on a small circular pathway full of aliens and you have to hug the wall otherwise you fall in the crevice around the 2 generators and die.

You never climb up atop the generators, explore the spaceship properly, learn about the space jockeys. Get a horrifyingly eerie feeling like in Crysis 1 when you explore the alien ship submerged in water.
The space jockey again is used is simply for tribute reference and never gets incorporated into the story and gameplay.

Anyone else have some thoughts on AVP 2?

bump

Excellent stuff, had a real feeling of tension too in the multiplayer, those classes where a great ballance off of each other.

I was planning on replaying it soon once I finish my run through of the tex murphy games is it worth it?

AVP2 is great. It's like 3 games in one.

It was never as fun and visceral as the original, what is now known as AvP classic.

I was there when the demos were released, each with a level for one character (in order: marine, predator, alien). Beating the marine one was orgasmic: an acid explosion would screw you, facehuggers oneshotted you, and there was no saving. Also vid related, the crabs were the scariest of all the AvP games.

First I've heard of it, can you share a link?

I really liked the variety in weapons for the humans. I often did feel like switching based off ammo and situation.