This was brought to my attention by a friend.
It looks pretty sick. It's the kind of power fantasy on both sides that I'm in to (In Friday the 13th, made by the same guys, the dynamic of running scared from the baddy and picking up different objective objects doesn't really do it for me.)
But after hearing about it and being like "Oh cool, you can shoot back at the Predator and actually fight him", I checked out a piece of Youtube-ry with a somewhat provocative title.
He doesn't hate it, but thinks there are a lot of missed opportunities and some kinda shit balance.One can always chalk some of this up to "well no duh the Predator gets smoked when all 4 people are there but ruins a single opponent because he has 14 quadrillion HP." But there's other things. Reading that all the enemy team has to do is use silencers and cover up in mud to make the Predator's job 60% harder doesn't sound terribly fun, sounds one note and kinda frustrating for the Predator. Watching the actual movement mechanics of the Predator leaves something to be desired as well. It's like "TREES" or GTFO, his on foot mobility is shit but he makes these anime-style mega jumps into the trees. The AI opponents look like cardboard, meant to be shot so the game has that action movie vibe while not really being a threat or requiring much from the player. That should be like, the biggest advantage for the Predator, is all the AI around to pressure players. But they basically react one guy a a time for the most part and go down with a couple bullets while not really doing much damage to the player.
I think his point that there's not a lot of ways psychologically to mess with players is a valid point too. The game's rando-action sound pretty bad, and when I saw you could spot and mark the Predator I kinda went......eh. It's a bog standard thing for this kind of game but it doesn't sit well with me, since confusion and a lack of communication between players should be another one of the Predator's big advantages. But it's the difference between people who know how to hit a button at the right time, or not. I see can see myself playing the Predator, getting seen by one person and getting lit the fuck up from all angles and it just doesn't sound all that great.
Matchmaking also sounds pretty bad atm. It takes a long time to be able to play as the Predator, no shocker there.
I dunno, I'm intrigued but it sounds pretty shallow at the moment. If it didn't have a grindy unlocky "shoot an AK47 1000 times to unlock a red dot sight for just the AK47" system in place, it'd probably be called barebones. I've got my eye on it but for the things I've seen that actively dissuade me from getting it, I think I'd like to see it cook quite a bit longer.
Also, full disclosure, online PvP hasn't really been a strong draw for me years.
Just my 2 cents having looked it over. I've always loved Predator games and this one definitely is trying to do a lot of the things I've always wanted that the other AvP games were always too broad to address.
Author
Topic: Predator: Hunting Grounds (Read 1141 times)