AVP3 - The slip of Grimmie's Tung!

Post by **Grimmie** » February 22nd, 2010, 12:48

Played about 20% of the marine and predator campaigns.

Enjoyable, if not for a few little annoyances.
Everything feels a little big and clunky as the marine, fat set-pieces, no ability to crouch, bit of a dodgy blocking system. Acid-spitting aliens are impossible to see and have crazy range.

However, everything I've come up against go far has been suitably frightening. Dark, cavernous military installations where aliens crawl from wall to wall and leap from ceilings to floors and back again, just in time for you to completely miss anything other than their tail with your flashlight. A real sense of panic when three or four of them are all creeping towards you, and you can't hit a single one. Facehuggers dash around with their tail hoisted up, often making you waste a ton of ammo as they slip up doorframes and sneak behind you. Only just got onto the Marine vs Predator missions, so will be interested to see how that pans out - the only mention of him so far has been a brief dual at distance with pulse rifle and plasmacaster.

Predator is fun to play, even if the leaping-around bit feels a bit tacked on just to add some 'tactics'. I still haven't found the best way to approach some marines without being spotted immedately (even cloaked) - but the playthings you have more than make up for it. Cloaking system, blasty shoulder canon, and the wrist blades are great - especially with the rock-paper-scissors melee system all three races use. Looming over your floored foe and ripping their head off is mighty satisfying.

Some of the controls are a bit weird, having to press and hold keys to perform actions instead of tapping (picking things up, using buttons etc) gets old quick, I don't see the point. Having to hold a weapon-selection key (2) to detonate a mine that you select by pressing (2) is an odd choice of keybind. Have already had to re-arrange a few to make more sense.

Being thrown out of the action at the end of each chapter to either press 'continue' or choose one of the other races to play as is really annoying, and completely ruins the immersion. If I wanted to play as someone else I'd go to the fucking menu and choose it myself. If I chose marine to start with, then assume that's what I want to play! Fucking thing.

Have yet to play alien as they're all observing the same story at the same time, have decided to plough on and finish marine before I advance any further in the other races.

Mr. Johnson · Post by **Mr. Johnson** » February 22nd, 2010, 16:53

I started as an alien, as that was the easiest mode in the previous games, then it's predator and finally pants-shitting marine time.
I did notice it's very, very dark. I know it's supposed to be dark, but not so dark I can barely see anything at all, even as an alien.
Also, I seem to have some performance issues. It runs very smoothly but every odd minute it freezes for a few seconds, I've had this with previous games but I can't remember how the hell I solved it. It probably has something to do with directx.

Post by **HereComesPete** » February 22nd, 2010, 17:03

In no particular order - Update drivers. See if you've got any forced settings in the card manufacturers own app. See if you can horse the game into vsync if it isn't already. Try upping buffering but losing some of the pretty. Turn down the pretty one thing at a time to see if anything is causing the stuttering. Jam. A sharp stick.

Do you mean by too dark to see it's in need of a gamma correction? Or is it just that the flashlight/thermal hunting vision/alien heat sight aren't good enough regardless of gamma?

Mr. Johnson · Post by **Mr. Johnson** » February 22nd, 2010, 17:52

I'm trying out a couple of things, but apparently I'm not the only one with the problem. I already turned vsync off, which seems to make it a bit better, but it still locks up.
As for the darkness, it's mostly a problem if you play as an alien because they no longer have night vision, and if you're climbing up walls it's sometimes confusing to find out where exactly you are, even if your crosshair indicates it. I've put gamma on the highest setting but it still looks as if I'm wearing sunglasses indoors. I can see the point with the marine campaign, but as an alien it's pretty inconvenient. But I'm sort of getting used to it now that it's darker in my room.

Post by **Joose** » February 22nd, 2010, 18:02

I also have the weird stutter issue. Its a bugger of a thing.

Apparently setting shadow complexity and textures to "normal" should help. I'll give it a go and report back.

Mr. Johnson · Post by **Mr. Johnson** » February 22nd, 2010, 18:24

I tried setting it to DX9, and turning your pre-rendered frames to 0 seems to work as well. For Nvidia users, that is.

Post by **Joose** » February 22nd, 2010, 18:27

My shadow complexity and textures were already on normal, so that didn't do much. Turning off vsync and mouse lag something or other has helped a fair bit, its now only really locking up when I drain energy off stuff as a pred.

Mr. Johnson · Post by **Mr. Johnson** » February 23rd, 2010, 17:54

Does anyone else's multiplayer not work?

Everytime I try to play he can't find any servers, ranked or unranked.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » February 23rd, 2010, 18:08

Probably because they forgot to release dedicated server files yet.

Mr. Johnson · Post by **Mr. Johnson** » February 23rd, 2010, 18:14

I did get on a player match, but then the missus called. I already know it takes FOREVER to connect though.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » February 23rd, 2010, 18:16

Yep, it's still using p2p hosting like the demo, not ideal.

Post by **FatherJack** » February 23rd, 2010, 19:48

Why does Steam blatantly lie about how much it has downloaded? This was after about 2 hours downloading AvP and some other stuff, it can't have managed nearly 70gig - it must add on the size of the decompressed files or something.

Glad my broadband doesn't have a monthly limit in any case, though. Go Virgin, shame the telly box is crap.

Post by **deject** » February 23rd, 2010, 20:32

how long has it been since you've restarted Steam?

Post by **FatherJack** » February 23rd, 2010, 21:07

That was two hours from startup, though I did do some backups and I suspect they were counted as "bytes downloaded".

It's still off even from a single action, tonight all I did was DL Medieval 2 TW as I'd gotten it from the Napolean TW package - a 6gig game installed, yet it claimed 11,500MB downloaded.

It doesn't matter of course, I just wonder why it's happening - perhaps some stat-padding so so they can quote "Ten trillion bytes downloaded" in some sales blurb.

Post by **deject** » February 23rd, 2010, 21:17

That is strange.

Post by **FatherJack** » March 2nd, 2010, 19:21

I played this, and apart from the marine, the controls are really awful. There are too many buttons to press for things that you want to do all the time and do quickly - you can't keep your fingers on all of them.

Why not have heavy attack as a charged quick attack instead of a separate button? Why do I need to press seven buttons while sprinting along a wall, dodging and preparing a ranged attack? Aliens are now ponderous oafs who have to contemplate walls before they can scamper up them.

Post by **Grimmie** » March 2nd, 2010, 19:59

Worked fine for me, not sure what buttons you're referencing.
I mapped my mount surface key to a mousebutton and scampered everywhere with ease.
Jumping onto a surface was as easy as looking at it and manfisting the spacebar.

A heavy attack is RMB because, as you said, a charged LMB is a light attack designed to fuck enemies up when they're making a heavy attack against you. Tap or hold LMB to make quick attacks.

I dunno, it didn't seem that bad to me.

Story was a bit naff, but the Alien ending had a certain sense of satisfaction to it.
Not bad for the £18 I paid off play.

Post by **FatherJack** » March 2nd, 2010, 23:09

Maybe I'm just clumsy, but my alien seem to run into walls a lot. If jumping onto the wall's easier than using the transition button, I'll use that.

I've changed the defaults a little, but faced with a long corridor with enemies at the end I wanted to be more like the aliens in the marine campaign, not trot towards them on the floor. The seven buttons I meant were Forwards (default W) which has to be held down, side to side for dodging (A and D default), the wall transition button to get on the wall (Alt?), holding SHIFT to sprint, the range attack (Q I think) needs to be held as you approach, then MOUSE 1 to deliver the attack. All while trying to avoid bullets and running very fast. I just thought it would have worked better with less single-use buttons, having taps and holds do different things, and more toggles.

Mr. Johnson · Post by **Mr. Johnson** » March 2nd, 2010, 23:14

options->alien auto transition on.

A bit disorienting at first, but it felt more natural, and I enjoyed killing lights, waiting for a marine to come by (whilst sat on the ceiling), dropping down behind him and BRUTALLY MURDER HIM (or her).

Post by **Grimmie** » March 2nd, 2010, 23:24

Odd, I dunno if I unintentionally changed controls.

I had WASD for movement
Mouse 5 (thumb button) to transition
LMB for light attack
RMB for heavy attack with the tail
Space to jump from wall to wall
Q to sprint