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AvP2: Primal Hunt Review Aliens vs. Predator 2 was just crying out for an expansion pack. We battled through the same story from all three perspectives, exhausting every single way to hunt, dismember and generally survive against the multitude of enemies. When the dust settled and the carnage was over, though, there wasn’t much left to return to as a lone player. So then we turned to the multi-player arena. Our prowess with firearms, spikes and slime-covered inner jaws (and, in some cases, manipulating the game code for nefarious purposes) was tested against others like us. And when we got to the top of the food chain, we realised that the game was basically wrong: a player with no skill or honour whatsoever could win a game by simply throwing the disc whenever he/she held it. Later on, hackers ended the fun of the game for those who weren’t already tired of other players’ cheap tactics. Now, a year later, these issues have finally been addressed. New single player missions and fresh game options have been added to the AvP experience. So how do these new additions shape up? Is it worth parting with your hard-earned (or, like me, leeched from parents) cash to buy Primal Hunt? And will we finally get to fight against Monolith’s Monkey? Anyone hoping that Third Law have made drastic changes to AvP2 will be disappointed. The boat isn't rocked here, but receives a fresh polish and some repairs done to the leaks in the hull. The most immediately obvious of the new additions are the new single-player missions. We get new animated faces at the character selection screen, depicting the three playable characters: the PredAlien, the Ancient Predator and that luscious Russian mercenary Dunya. It’s nice that such small details as this are altered, and bodes well for the game. As before there is an overall storyline which can only be fully revealed by playing as each character. Personally I always thought this to be a bad idea: it means that because each species plays in the same environment, the game’s replay value is automatically slashed shorter than Danny DeVito. The original Aliens vs. Predator featured a variety of different locations for each species, which stopped it from becoming even vaguely stale. As Third Law wished to keep the game’s basic mechanics intact, they chose another way to combat the variety problem - by making the single-player game incredibly short. This does work; the game never gets stale, unless you want to replay the missions, or die a lot. Unfortunately you probably will die a lot: to counter the game’s shortness, each individual mission is lengthy and very tough. You’ll need to cut your way through vast swathes of xenomorphic foes, although the PredAlien faces less heavy foes than the drone did in AvP2. Speaking of heavy foes and bosses, there seems to be a distinct lack of these throughout. Although there’s the occasional Praetorian to support its drooling, chitinous brethren, you never fight against an enemy PredAlien, Queen or Predator (with the exception of the PredAlien’s brief opening stint as a Facehugger). Instead, we are introduced to several completely new creatures. Early screenshots of the beasties indigenous to LV-1201 were not promising; they distinctly resembled the monsters cast in early B-movies - you remember, the ones where they used glue to stick cardboard “spines” on iguanas to make them look like dinosaurs. However, don’t be fooled: these creatures are one of the game’s strongest points. Each of these enemies can both give and take vast amounts of damage, and some can be pretty hard to spot. The best enemy is quite obviously borrowed from the modern B-movie Tremors: they come at you from under the ground. And these creatures don’t just spring up at you like a mine when you come near and then vanish again when you walk away- they hunt you. Ghost readings on Dunya’s motion tracker can often mean a bad case of subterranean worms. These Tremors-clones make for great gaming action; it’s worth playing through the entire game just to face them. The rest of the single-player game is generally something of a letdown, however. As mentioned, the game is very short, and also ends rather abruptly. In AvP2 there was a distinct learning curve, which peaked superbly at the later levels. In Primal Hunt, there is no curve: the game is tough right from the start. This might not necessarily be a bad thing, but the difficulty never changes throughout- it doesn't get any harder or easier. This includes the finale for each species, all of which are rather disappointing. We don't get to battle against any kind of final boss, and the player is left after completing the game with a distinct impression that something is missing. Advertisement Despite the new single-player missions, Primal Hunt seems to be geared more towards multi-player gaming. Although we only get a small amount of new multi-player maps, each is well designed and you'll never have to wonder around for long before finding some action... unless you join an empty server, obviously. Various tweaks have been made to existing features of AvP 2, for instance exosuits are now far more vulnerable to aliens. Some imbalances have not been addressed, such as the infamous auto-aiming weapons, but an indirect solution has been added: server admins can choose to remove certain weapons from the map, and even disable specific player classes. Many people out there hate PredAliens, and with the new options they can simply join a server which bars this class. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, server admins don't seem to be making much use of the weapon/class barring options... although the cause of this may be that the game has only been out for a week. The last major additions to Primal Hunt are the weapons. There are only a few of these, and sadly not all are particularly worthwhile additions. The humans get dual pistols, sentry guns, turret guns and an updated motion tracker. The pistols and new motion tracker are rather superfluous: dual pistols still lack the stopping power of the pulse rifle or shotgun, and can often be hard to find in multi-player, meaning that the pistol is still a last-resort weapon. The new motion tracker is only for Corporates, and has a 360° field of detection rather than the Marine's 180°. Tag that with a very cool image for the HUD, and at first it is hard to see where the downside is... which is that Corporates can only detect motion from half the distance that the Marine can. This makes the new motion tracker ideal for new players who don't check their backs often enough, but for everyone else it is a major hindrance: a cloaked Predator could be lining up a speargun shot from medium range and the Corporate would have no idea. The last two (and most noteworthy) human weapons are far more common in multi-player than single-player. Turret guns are basically high-powered stationary miniguns, and are very welcome additions. Skilled players can be very hard to topple from behind the turrets, but those with less skill can still be picked off with ease, making the turret gun nicely balanced. There are usually lots of ways to spring at a turret gun, the level design incorporating various shafts and air vents as well as corridors, so a turret-gunner must stay on their toes. Finally we have the sentry gun, a stationary machine gun which fires when it detects motion within a 180° arc in front of it. Several of these can be in operation at once, but they are very fragile and can usually be dispatched with a single claw swipe. Also, because they rely on motion tracking, a player keeping completely still can avoid detection by the sentries. Kills with a sentry gun count as a suicide by the victim rather than a kill by the sentry's owner. Unfortunately despite the counterbalances associated with the sentry guns, these are intensely annoying weapons. When a sentry is taken out, it respawns incredibly quickly, so if a human opponent is determined to deploy sentries then there really isn't anything you can do about it. Finally, the Predator gets two new weapons and another player class. The Ancient Predator, the playable character in the Predator single-player missions, has a cool gold skin with a rather low-tech strip of cloth across his front. His weapon set is fairly limited, although he does get to use the most major new Pred weapon, the Energy Flechette. Mounted onto the Pred's wrist-mounted control panel, this weapon is the Predator equivalent of a machine gun: it fires a rapid barrage of fairly weak energy shots. When trained on an enemy, the effects of this weapon can be devastating, but this requires a steady aim. Because this is an energy weapon it uncloaks the Pred, and due to the bright green projectiles it also makes him highly conspicuous. Lots of players are already using this weapon online to great effect without resorting to cheap tactics, making this the best weapon in the expansion in my opinion. Also as a last resort the Predator can self-destruct, as he does in the films and rather rarely in the games. The Pred player can only activate this when he has less than 10% health remaining, and when it is used the Pred laughs loudly and disturbingly, then explodes. Naturally as this is a suicide weapon the Pred loses a frag by using it, but earns frags back for each enemy he takes with him. The effects of this weapon are not always fatal: the one time I have seen this deployed was when I wasn't particularly close, so the explosion only took away about half of my health. Third Law have done a very good job on the Predator weapons, although I don't advise using your energy flechette on the indigenous creatures... bright green energy tends to make them cranky. There are plenty of fairly small additions in Primal Hunt which haven't been mentioned so far, such as Dunya's player model receiving a makeover, but these details are fairly inconsequential. Overall, the expansion includes just enough features to warrant it being sold for a price, but isn't particularly lavish either. It's hard to understand how Third Law managed to spend an entire year putting the pack together, in the end it resembles a large retail mod, such as Tactical Ops or Counter-Strike. Regular online AvP2 players will definitely benefit from the expansion, although single-players won't find enough here to keep them entertained for long. And do we finally get to fight against Monolith's monkey? This game is Third Law's baby, and PH's huge worms can kick that chimp's hairy ass any day. Overall Score: 4/5 By SirYawnalot Comments? Flames? Praise? Mail feedback!