back story done. a new multi-platform avp game from the makers of the original is being released and some pretty sweet looking teasers and trailers are shown off:
looks good - maybe even good enough to pre-order.
ok, so a few days ago a demo was released (on pc, ps3 and xbox i would assume, but i played the xbox version). now if you're gunna release a demo before your game's released there's a fair old bit of pressure to release a good demo - there's currently no other way for people to try your game. you need to reasure the people who want to buy the game and try and sell it to the guys that didn't.
which brings me to the main motivation for a blog post. i want to like this game. before this demo i probably would have bought this game without question, but this makes a pretty good example as how not todo a game demo. first of all this is a single player and multiplayer game, and there will be an audience that want to play either one or both of these. not only that but there are quite a few different multiplayer game modes too.
personally i'm more looking to the single player experience. i'm a big fan of the alien and predator movies and pretty much hate the avp movies (like the rest of the world) so creating a similar experience within a single player campaign should be good fun - and i'm still looking forward to trying the game's campaign mode.
however the multiplayer will always have balancing issues between playing as aliens, marines and predators. first i should mention the brightness. avp games have always been dark. aliens need to hide in it. marines need to fear it. now darkness isn't really an issue when playing as aliens 'cause enemies are highlighted anyway and same applies for predators with their vision modes but as marines your left in the dark with a shitty flashlight and a motion tracker.
now i know darkness plays into this game alot, but this is ridiculous:
yes, this is unedited and the in-game brightness turned right up. i admit this could be something on my tv but i messed with some settings and it didn't help much, plus i've never had any problems with any other games before.
as a marine in this game you're basically fucked. which is a shame 'cause marines were my favorite mode to play. predators can cloak and lock onto you. aliens are so much faster, see you miles away and can scale up walls and ceilings. a flashlight and motion tracker ain't gunna do shit when an alien can be on the horizon one second and biting a hole through your head the next.
the final game will have many online game modes so why in the demo would you limit us to an 8 player free for all deathmatch. surely part of the point is to have the marines and aliens working as seperate teams at least. but oh well, at least having one game type will make finding games easy right? ...
wrong!
maybe call of duty: modern warfare 2 has set the bar too high, but you can select any of the dozen game modes and be in a game ready within 10 seconds 90% of the time and load times getting from the lobby into the game are about 10 seconds too. all other games should be like this. either copy call of duty's code or buy it off them.
this demo takes around a minute to find a game and i saw this useful message for much longer than you'd expect and very often too:
anyway this post has been longer than i expected. i'm just annoyed that this was a game i would have bought without question before this demo was released, but now i'll hold off and wait to hear how it's reviews turn out first. the final game could still be good but this demo is not gunna do it's sales any good at all.
if you read this far you must either be insanely bored or you're a big enough avp fan to get this far, so as a reward you'll probably like this vid:
