14 DAY TRIAL // Yes, you read it right. At least in the demo, where everyone is still getting the hang of things, the Marines are the kings of the game. Out of seven played matches, each and every time, a Marine was on top. This was because, at first at least, theory and reality didn't mix. What works great on paper, gets completely screwed up when faced with multiplayer interaction. First, this is a multiplayer demo, thus everyone is new at the game, myself included, and the previous experience is something to be taken lightly.
In theory, you can't catch an Alien off guard. In the dark, spooky maps, your enemies are highlighted, with the close-enough ones being visible even through walls. You're fast, you're agile and your health regenerates. The dark skin of the Alien Drone camouflages perfectly with the environment and the sensation of terrifying your prey with a hiss just before you grab them from behind and impale them with your tail is exhilarating.
But reality is far more cruder. Running around with the Alien is pretty inaccurate, and the only thing you get from climbing on the roof and walls is vertigo. Whether auto-transition (wall-walk) is enabled or not, most of your charges will miss their target, simply because you can't really get a clear picture of which is forward and which is backwards, now that you're with one leg on the ceiling, one on a side-wall and tail on the floor. Not to mention the times I scared myself silly, hearing something behind me, pulling a quick 180, and seeing my own tail. That thing has a life of its own and we do not see eye to eye.
The Predator is a master of stealth. If the xenomorph hunts through speed and agility, the Predator's force lies in ambush, waiting for his prey to come to him and blasting it away with his shoulder cannon. And, in reality, this is pretty well depicted, since he is incredibly slow.
Predators now have a targeted leap and it's easier to climb up to a rail than it was in previous AvP games, but good luck trying to do anything but wrist-blade someone. While I admit that this is my own incompetence, while I did pick up several predator weapons, for the life of me, I could not select them.
I admit that I saw other predators using the shoulder cannon and even the disc, but I didn't manage to select them as an active weapon. However, I'm sure this is a trick that I'll figure out with the passing of time. My second match with the Predator was a huge improvement over the first, and I got a lot better at the game. Jumping through vision modes and charging my way towards enemies turned out to be very dynamic, but I still didn't find a way to select a different weapon. Let's hope third time's a charm.
The Marine should be the prey. He should be cowering in a corner, clutching his rifle and hoping nothing comes looking for him. But, in reality, the Marine is a gladiator, a king of the arena. With pulse rifle in hand, and the motion tracker always on, this guy is a killing machine, and things get downright ridiculous if you find the smartgun. The Marine is a pick-up-and-go class, easy to play, easy to master, and it's a great one for a beginner, which, right now, is what everyone is.
Both the Alien and the Predator are a long-term investment, and will quickly overpower the Marine in the long run, but, right now, in the demo, they're both just cannon fodder for the Marine. Aliens run head-straight into walls or walk around in big circles and most of the Predators one will find will be standing perfectly still, as the player behind the keyboard tries to figure out which button does what, and how they use that in-game. But everyone in a multiplayer FPS knows how to aim a rifle and shoot, and the motion tracker, even if a gamer is inexperienced with the AvP universe, is very easy to get used to.
Classes aside, the title looks and feels great. The kill moves are absolutely delicious, the models and textures are incredibly generated and the animations are superb, especially how you perceive your own movement from the first person. Jumping around with the Predator feels very organic, while the Marine's motion tracker can sometimes cause you to shriek in panic, since it can't tell up from down, so it's screaming like a lunatic, but the enemy is a level above or beneath you, and you're perfectly safe.
