Alien Gameplay Reveal at GamesCom

[BlackWatch]

Rebellion has revealed the Alien single-player gameplay, as well as some multiplayer gameplay, from Aliens vs. Predator at GamesCom and IGN has the goods. Here's an except from their article, which includes a couple new screenshots, that details harvesting civilians for hosts:

Get up close and personal with the enemy, however, and the game displays its heavy appetite for gore. There are a number of grisly death animations, with a personal favourite seeing the Alien leap on an unsuspecting Marine from above and then poking out his eye with its tail.

There's more to the Alien than skulking around in the shadows, however; once the Marines are disposed of, there's a change of pace as the Alien freely picks off civilians to harvest for the hive. Here the cat and mouse game is reversed, for while slaughtering the Marines requires cunning and careful planning, executing unarmed civilians is a simpler pursuit.

Chasing one down plays out in a stunningly similar way to the first person sections in David Fincher's Alien 3, but the game's version has an unexpected climax. Cornered in a room, the civilian pulls out a gun and shoots themselves in the head, sparing them from the misery of being dragged to the Alien's hive. Cornering another civilian later on in the demo has similar results, though this time Rebellion's taste for viscera emerges when he blows himself up with a grenade.

The article also mentions how Rebellion is still working on balancing out the classes, specifically for multiplayer, which is good to hear as up until now the Predator has sounded like it heavily out-weighed the other two classes.

More at IGN.

[deezelboy]

From Eurogamer:

AVP Alien campaign, multi detailed News

SEGA has been proudly showing off new sections of Aliens vs. Predator at gamescom in Cologne this morning, with Alien gameplay being demonstrated for the first time, alongside new details of the multiplayer.

We were shown parts of the xenomorph campaign - the last piece of the three-part puzzle to fall into place. Visually it's very distinctive, with a more muted pallete wrested from Alien 3, and the fish-eye viewpoint familiar to fans of the first game. Movement, although remaining in the traditional spine-shivering scuttle mould, has also been refined. A minimal HUD now indicates orientation to the floor when on a wall or ceiling and a new focus mode will highlight vents and gaps which can be instantly leapt through, popping out on the other side to munch on unsuspecting squishies as they loiter in corridors, smoking and slagging off the sergeant.

As you'd expect, the Alien is still quite the mover, rattling along any flat surface to take out marines before they get a chance to bring guns to bear - a process assisted by the pheromone vision which allows you to 'see' the outlines of colonials through walls. Essentially, the name of the game is to pick off the armed guards one-by-one, isolating the unarmed and vulnerable colonists who remain. Then you grab and incapacitate them whilst a facehugger pops up and does the dirty business for you.

These harvestings all form part of larger objectives, pleasing your hungry queen as you progress. Leave a frightened civilian to their own devices for too long, though, and they'll often take the easy way out, popping a quick cap in their own melon, or hugging a grenade to stymie your larder-stocking plans. It's all quite tense and sinster, much as it should be.

There's more to playing the alien than just the fun and rape games, however. Marines will often set up traps and sentry guns, which must be disabled by destroying the power outlets which they're connected to. Or you can distract them with a handy hiss and leap from the shadows to perform a swift and lethal quick-kill manouevre when they come to investigate. First impressions are that the Alien campaign will also involve a fair bit of problem-solving, with larger areas full of marines requiring careful traversal to avoid detection and extinction.

On the multiplayer front, the main news is that there'll be 18-player, cross-species battles on all formats. There'll also be pure-blood modes where members of the same species are pitted against one another. Finally, there'll be four-player co-op, in which a quartet of marines will stand off against waves of encroaching aliens in a survival mode similar to Gears of War 2's Horde.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/avp-details-on-show-at-gamescom

Suiciding civillians - cool!

--EDIT--

Videogamer also has a preview:

At gamescom 2009 we saw a gameplay demo of the final campaign, that of the Aliens which made the franchise famous in the first place. With a stronger emphasis on stealth and a completely different HUD, it's clear that AvP will offer three unique campaigns each geared around the strengths and key attributes of each species.

Most obvious upon starting the demo is the HUD. It's almost devoid of information, but you do get some indication of the level of cover you're in, your health and the location of your next objective. Using a similar method to that seen in the Riddick games, the edge of the screen represents how visible you are in the environment. Move into the shadows and there will be no light seeping into the edges, but crawl through a well-lit corridor and light will start to bleed onto the screen. Your health is simply a curved line at the top of the screen and your waypoint marker is an even less obtrusive marker that indicates the direction you need to head. Finally, there's a reticule in the centre of the screen that lets you know how you are oriented in the room - seeing as Aliens can leap around onto all surfaces (effectively walking on walls), it's helpful to know whether you're on the true ground or not.

Aside from the obvious gameplay differences in terms of manoeuvrability compared to the Predator and Marines, combat is also a completely different ball game. Without any projectile weapons to play with the Alien's main form of attack is to get up close and personal, using its claws, tail and teeth to more or less rip apart enemies. During the demo marines were dispatched in a variety of gruesome ways, including the classic tail through the chest and perhaps the even more nasty tail through the eyeball and skull. With bits of blood and flesh spewing out of the open wounds AvP will more than earn its adult rating on release. We didn't get to see it during the demo, but one of the ways the Alien will replenish its health is to use its disgusting inner jaw to delve into human skulls - nasty!

Key to playing as an Alien is stealth and making sure the area has been fully assessed before rushing in. While a deadly killing machine, when outnumbered by marines you're going to get pummelled with lead and fire, so picking off foes is essential. Using a similar display mode to what Valve used in Left 4 Dead, marines are highlighted with a green glow, even appearing in your vision when they move behind walls, giving you a massive advantage if you play your cards right. Marines will be able to hear your footsteps, though, and blind-fire in the direction they last saw you. Combat situations already look incredibly fluid, but work is still being done to make the Marine AI even more dynamic, so they'll react in different ways to each situation.

An interesting mechanic is civilian harvesting. Marines will often be protecting helpless humans, but if you can get to them you can harvest them to produce new Aliens - try to get them when Marines are about, though, and you'll spill lots of that acid blood. When you do finally manage to carry out the procedure a Face Hugger appears and latches on to the human host - objective complete. It's not quite that simple, though, with civilians able to run away and prevent themselves from being used as a host by committing suicide. In a graphic scene during our gameplay presentation a civilian locked himself in a room, found a gun and shot himself in the head just as the Alien had managed to pry the door open.

That ended our demo of the Alien campaign in AvP, but developer Rebellion did reveal a few nuggets of information about the exciting multiplayer component. 18 players will be supported across numerous game modes, and there's also a co-operative survivor mode playable with four players - from the sound of things it's Left 4 Dead but with Aliens and Predators, which sounds good to us. It's also worth touching on the presentation. After the dreadful ShellShock we had our doubts about Rebellion's ability to create truly impressive next-gen games, but AvP looks great. The environments are moody, the lighting is superb and it all seems to be running at a decent frame rate despite being months from release. From what we've seen fans of the franchise needn't worry; the original AvP developer is giving this franchise re-birth the care and attention it deserves.

http://www.videogamer.com/ps3/aliens_vs_predator/preview-1931.html

Sounds like the scared marines from AVP1 are back as well!

[Neltharion]

Fuck yea.

From this, I may leave the Marine Campaign to last. Alien sounds to fantastic to miss!

[BlackWatch]

Went ahead and merged this with the existing post I put up this morning. Hope you don't mind deez!

[the-yellow-alien]

Sounds awesome. Can't wait to headbite someone in glorious HD.

[Neltharion]

I'm gonna enjoy forcefully face raping people

Oh the joys... Release date next kthxbai

[BlackWatch]

Release date next kthxbai

February 2010 by all the reports.

[Neltharion]

Birthday Present!

[amv79]

the alien campaign kinda disappoints me just...
....for the dumb idea of the genetically created Frankenstein ALIEN

but the ideas of the facehugger raping in campaign and the ideas of the gameplay sound INCREDIBLE

[Neltharion]

the alien campaign kinda disappoints me just...
....for the dumb idea of the genetically created Frankenstein ALIEN

Wut?

[deezelboy]

Went ahead and merged this with the existing post I put up this morning. Hope you don't mind deez!

Hey, no problem.  Not sure where to put these following snippets, though!

Campaign length confirmed:

In AvP, there are essentially three campaigns: Marine, Alien, Predator. Each campaign is said to shed light on to an overall story arc, so playing them all is effectively necessary to understand all of the plot. Each campaign doesn't seem like it will be overly long though, as all three campaigns seem just longer than a normal game combined.

When speaking to Rob Bartholomew of SEGA he said:

"It will probably take around 12-14 hours to complete all three campaigns. However, it really depends on the player. While the Marine campaign is very structured, the Alien and Predator campaigns are more about stealth, so a lot more time can be consumed."

http://www.gamingunion.net/news/aliens-vs-predator-campaign-length-revealed--342.html

On the PC, multiplayer will go through Steam:

All three formats - PC, PS3, 360 - will have 18-way multiplayer, we were told after a demo, and all will fgeature mixed and pure-species game modes.
“If you’re playing on PC, we’re also leveraging Valve Steamworks to provide anti-cheat matchmaking Achievements, and we’re using Steam Cloud as well, so your saved games and settings” can carry over onto any PC you happen to be using, Sega chap Rob Bartholemew said.

Four-player co-op will be present in a Survival mode, where you and friends play as marines facing waves of aliens.

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/49794/Aliens-vs-Predator-Enters-The-Cloud

Just for fun:


Oral rape!

[Hooper]

Ya know, my daughter's been bugging me to buy either a Wii, xbox360, or playstation 3 for the family. I think I just made up my mind which one I'll be picking up for Christmas.   

Any xbox360 experts here please shoot me a PM, I got some questions.  Thanks.   

[amv79]

the alien campaign kinda disappoints me just...
....for the dumb idea of the genetically created Frankenstein ALIEN

but the ideas of the facehugger raping in campaign and the ideas of the gameplay sound INCREDIBLE

Wut?

sorry
Maybe you dont know this yet

[Neltharion]

the alien campaign kinda disappoints me just...
....for the dumb idea of the genetically created Frankenstein ALIEN

Point out the part that says Frankenstein Alien.

[Hudson]

I'm not even going to watch or read any of this because I'm just going to get too excited for a game I won't be able to play.