| Software > Alien vs Predator
Now I'm REALLY starting to wonder why I bother downloading these things. Bitch mode: Activated.
Okay, now this one gave me problems from the get-go. This would not be so bad if it were not a 50 meg download, but it is. I could probably tell from the installation where I got the odd question "Alien vs Predator requires your hard drive to be defragmented to work properly. Would you like to exit the installation to perform defragmentation?". I dunno about you but I've never had THAT one asked before. For some reason all my sound was also screwed for the movies and menu sound effects, but I suspect that's my machine (I seem to have these problems with most games - except quake, so I haven't been too worried - since I installed DX6). Another annoying feature I came across was that you can set up two keys for every one action. I have no idea why you would need two keys at all really, but the problem was I would set a key, forgetting I had to do it twice, set another one to do the same action thinking it was to do something else. Thus I'd fire my weapon only to have it change a moment later. However, after I learnt to press the button twice this wasn't the problem.
The MAJOR problem, that rendered the demo unplayable, was that the mouse was screwed. The minute I would move or use a button on the mouse, the zoom feature would zoom all the way in. I'd zoom out; try to move again, only to zoom all the way in again.
Hmmm. Now by this stage I'm wondering if the guys at Rebellion (the masterful coders behind this "demo") have any braincells outside of the few they use to code pretty lights in D3D. Okay, I'll try the keyboard. Of course 30 seconds into the level I have my first run in with the aliens. Now I find out how bloody important the mouse is, as these behave more like the ones in the films - crawling over the walls, moving really fast, often attacking from behind. Of course trying to lock onto them with the bloody keyboard was impossible, when they come from every angle imaginable. Suffice it to say I cannot survive the initial attack.
However, what I HAVE seen of the demo looks sweet. The demo only allows you to play as the Predator; and he has all the kickass features from the movies that you would want, including the ability to cloak (which is only effective against human marines), and can change view modes, infa-red to spot humans and electro-magnetic to spot the bugs. And yes, he does have the plasma-caster on his shoulder, and yes, you can use it in the demo, but it won't do you much good (unless you can get your mouse working. I tried my old one as well, as some games don't like Logitech mice, but it still gave the old auto-zoom bug)
The premise for this game, however inept the demo is, looks fantastic. Deathmatch will never be the same. You can choose to be a Colonial Marine, relying on heavy ordinance (hehehe, goody) for survival; the Predators, with hunting type weapons and stealth; and of course the aliens, in which you can crawl over the walls and run like hell and attack with your jaws, tail and claws. Clan wars would certainly be interesting.
This demo was the Predator demo, and it appears there will be a demo for each side. Hopefully they will be addons for the Predator demo, as I don't think very many people will download 50 megs for each side - whats that, 150 megs? You can probably download a game smaller than that.
As for the graphics, yes, they do seem good, although I haven't seen very much of them, and if you thought I whinged too much about the minimum specs on Rogue Squadron, if you have less than 32 meg of ram you can forget it. Apparently users with 32 meg of ram experience problems, as 64 meg is recommended, although I didn't have any problems running the game. (Stupid zoom bullshit aside.)
Well, apparently the demo is a "work in progress" (for fucks sake, if it's not working properly don't God damn release it. If they can't get the demo working it makes me wonder about the state of the whole game). Hopefully a new demo would be released, or better yet a patch (I ain't gonna download another 50 meg). However although the demo is shot to hell I'd say overall the game actually looks quite good. Of course, the mouse problem might just be my system, as I haven't heard of anyone else having problems with it. If you want to give it a shot, head over to the axg ftp server, and if you have no problems, I'd like to hear about it.
Author:
[EvEm]_Omen
Created:
December 30, 1998
Modified:
January 1, 1999 - 06:29:55 AM
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