Aliens vs. Predator 2 Preview

Well, the 54Mb demo download took a while. I guess the servers all over the world were busy serving numerous gamers who wanted to slip into marine boots and try their luck in the Aliens vs. Predator 2 demo. As you probably know, the original was developed by the boys at Rebellion Software who "came out of the blue" with this one and captured the hearts of so many Sigourney Weaver wannabes around the world.

Aliens vs. Predator became famous for its thrilling atmosphere and the fact that you practically had three games in one, because of the greatly varied styles of gameplay it offered. The players could choose to play as marines - heavy on guns, low on physical abilities, predators - great with gadgets and a whole lot of other things, or as aliens whose physical abilities enabled them to climb walls and do all sorts of neat tricks that we've enjoyed watching in the Aliens movies.

Now Monolith is in charge, and AvP2 is powered by the next-gen LithTech 2.5 engine, but the story is much the same. Not literally, rather in a sense that the sequel carries the feel of the original, and that mix of gameplay dynamics and suspense that made the first game so popular.

Aside from that though, the demo unfortunately didn't introduce any refreshing gameplay novelties. We only got to play as the marine, and that took no more than 10 minutes to finish, so we can't really elaborate on this subject. One thing's for sure though - the concept is the same, and apart from some flashier visuals, the game (or at least what we saw in the demo) didn't really offer any refreshing features over the original. On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised with the LithTech code. Man, you'd expect it to choke rendering anything that's not painted in all the colors of the rainbow (think NOLF), but I guess I was wrong. The programmers managed to evoke the gloomy atmosphere of a wrecked space ship with all the little details like nasty shades, water drops, and broken steam pipes. That rush that you got in the original is certain to overwhelm you once again, which is why many people liked the game in the first place. The dynamic lighting and reflections add a lot to the overall mood, and the tried and proved concept of "quiet before the storm" suspense elements combine to deliver a decent thrill.

I was a bit disappointed with the level of game world interaction, which is fairly low, and the particle system, but that's how it is once you've played Max Payne. The models look very detailed and abundant with polys, but I had a few doubts about the animation of the alien models. It simply doesn't look natural or fluent enough. Sure, the aliens are very fast, so the discrepancies won't stick out, but the jerky movement is I'm afraid still visible.

As far as the textures go, it's a rather mixed bag of impressions. With all the settings pushed to the max, some of the walls still looked a tad too blurry. Nothing too noticeable, but if you're a picky person, you just might object.

The bottom line is that we haven't seen any real advances in gameplay, but I guess that's partly because we only got to play a 5-minute marine mission. Is the demo worth the download? I don't think so, especially if you're riding on a slim pipe. Fans of the serial certainly won't miss the opportunity to try it out, and neither did we, but don't expect anything you haven't seen in the original. We certainly hope that the demo is not an indication of the full product in terms of creativity, and that the programmers have managed to come up with a few original concepts for the sequel.