Aliens Vs Predator Demo: First Impressions

I've now played 3 Aliens vs Predator Deathmatches on XBox Live using the multiplayer demo that became available today. My absolute first reaction is, unfortunately, "This demo isn't going to sell many copies of the game!"

The graphics look like something out of the 1990s, which is really too bad when we're almost a full decade into the 21st century now! Everything, from the choice of font right through to the details of the environment, feels cheesy and retro - and not in a good way! I'm sure the game makers will say that they were going for a very dark and dirty vibe, but they need to compare what they've produced to something like Dead Space or any of the F.E.A.R. games in order to appreciate what their game should look and feel like by this point in the industry's development history.

One of the first things that you see when you launch the demo is the following disclaimer: "This demo is based on pre-release code and does not reflect the quality of the final product." I really hope that's true; but I suspect it isn't. The issues I have with what I've seen aren't that it suffers from a few random bugs that need fixing; rather, it just doesn't seem like a modern-generation game.

Now, the underwhelming graphics notwithstanding, there is some potential in the gameplay. I got to play one Deathmatch each as Marine, Predator and Alien. I did best in the human role, which matches my experiences with the original AvP game from 1999. It's the one where you can really feel that you're in mortal danger at all times and have to rely on your motion detector, handy assault rifle and quick reflexes to have any chance of survival. The controls are sadly a bit clunky, but at least the thumbsticks don't do anything ridiculous if you press down too hard on them (yay!). When I was a Predator, however, I couldn't even figure out how to fire my weapon, leaving me to melee my way to a measly 7 kills. That's a minor detail, as I'm sure it'll soon become clear what I was doing wrong, but it's a knock against how intuitive the role isn't that someone who's played an earlier version of the game couldn't even suss it out immediately. As for the Alien, I always sucked at it before, and I still do. The choice to have you press one of the triggers in order to transition from one surface to another feels very wrong to me, but maybe it was always that way in the past. I just found today that I was always scampering up a nearby wall when I really meant to be lashing out in attack mode. I imagine most new players will find the Alien role, with its 360 degree range and weird key mapping, to be somewhat daunting and therefore off-putting. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as too easy a time as an Alien or Predator makes balance difficult to achieve in online play.

Of course, this demo only has multiplayer, and just one mode of it. As such, it's a very small sample of what the full package will deliver. I'm hoping that the single player campaigns - three of them, one for each species - will be as fun as I remember the original game being. It's hard to tell from this demo, though. Also, there are 6 other online modes, with Deathmatch being the most vanilla of them.

While I'm disappointed with the demo, I still plan to buy the game when it comes out in 12 days. I expect to play through all three single player campaigns, as I did with the original AvP several times before moving on to multiplayer. I think I'll just have to tone down my expectations around how the game looks, which is too bad.