Well, I’m pretty much sure all of you know about SEGA’s upcoming Aliens vs Predator game, but in case you don’t, here’s a short review about the progress, the game and the demo release. The game is being made by the Rebellion team. Their first major successes were Alien Vs Predator on the Atari Jaguar in 1995 and Aliens Vs. Predator on PC in 1999, creating game innovations years ahead of their time. And as their name suggests, Rebellion’s approach to game production is focused primarily on cross-platform innovations and product quality.
It is Rebellion’s aim to produce innovative videogame products of the highest quality, to have solid links with comic, book and movie content to ultimately ensure that the final consumer experience is as exciting as possible. The game has been in development for about 2 years, the team concentrating on creating the ultimate AvP experience.
About the story, the action takes place on the planet BG-386, where the humans have established a colony. Apparently, they find an ancient Predator temple which was forgotten by the Predators and that’s what triggers the whole story. The humans find the aliens and capture them for tests, the predators find out about the temple and the marines are sent on the planet to clean up the mess. You can experience a distinctly new and thrilling first person gameplay as you survive, hunt and prey in the deadly jungles and swamps surrounding the damned colony of Freya’s Prospect.
As the Marine, you’ll experience a claustrophobic and terrifying experience where light is your friend, but there’s never enough. However, the United States Marine Corps are humanity’s last line of defense, and as such they are armed to the teeth with the very latest in high explosive and automatic weaponry.
As the Predator, you will stalk from the shadows and from above, passing athletically through the treetops to ambush your victims. Although equipped with an array of powerful, exotic weapons and tracking equipment, honor ultimately dictates that you must get in close and take your trophies face to face.
As the most deadly species in the universe, the Alien offers you the chance to play as the very stuff of nightmares – the monster in the dark swarming forward with countless others, jaws like a steel trap and claws like blades.
Play all sides off against each other in a series of unique 3-way online modes and go tooth-to-claw-to-pulse rifle in the reinvention of one of multiplayer gaming’s defining moments
Last week, on Thursday, February 04, the demo was released for AvP. So far, the demo supports a multiplayer deathmatch mode with 8 players. The code presented in the demo is not the final release and all the DirectX 11 features will be available in the full release.
The first time I launched the demo and already I had problems, but wait! I wasn’t the only one who had them. The full game features the ability to browse for and create games but for the purposes of simplicity the demo was limited to matchmaking, so you had to wait from 5 minutes to even 10 minutes to manage to play online. Shortly after the demo was released Rebellion updated the demo and managed to fix that issue. They even apologized about it “We’re really sorry that this issue tainted a day in which we saw many people get hands on with AvP for the first time and we’re hugely gratified by the positive feedback to the game.”.
Overall, the demo was pretty good. It gives us a great example of every race’s abilities to kill it’s prey. The marine for example, his motion tracker can give the alien’s position very easily making the vicious xenomorph an easy prey. The marine’s weapons are pretty much basic, he can equip himself with a pulse rifle, the smart gun, pistol, sniper rifle or a flame thrower. If you’re impressed by those then wait till you hear the Predator’s arsenal! Trip mines, pulse cannon, spear, “ninja disks”, deadly claws and vicious look; all of those are bound to give you a chill down your spine. But what about the alien? It’s quite simple and deadly, you are the weapon.
While you play as each race you see the game through different perspectives and you also have to come up with a completely new strategy. The Predator is based on stealth, he uses a cloaking device to become invisible which gives him the element of surprise. The marine is like a beeping radar with a gun, while the alien is like a deadly sword waiting in the dark.
The demo really convinced me to buy the game and test all the multiplayer modes and the single player campaign and of course, to try the game with all it’s features which are guaranteed to bring a one of a kind AvP experience!
I also took the liberty to record a multiplayer match. Enjoy!
Here’s an older story for our latest featured item. Scientists Go Online is one of Friendly Garg’s earlier tales using Half-Life and the traditional image story format.
In this story, Luther and Walter begin bickering over on-line gaming skills one day and decide to play a round of Half-Life’s Deathmatch.
To access the game, they use a piece of Black Mesa technology that transports them into the game.
Originally, a part two of this story was planned. However, due to a personal lack of interest and a feeling that the story had run its course, FG decided to drop that second project.
Tonight I have updated the Text Fiction page with a new sub-category or sub-section layout. Now, original works will be separated from fan-fictions unless a part of a “collection”.
Basically, there is a section for novelized original stories, novelized fan-fictions, collections of original & fan-fiction shorts, original shorts, and fan-fiction shorts .
This will help divide up the page so that viewers may tell if they are about to read an original work or a fan-fic based on a game, TV show, etc.
The exception to this new format is the Collection group. Collections are several one-shot stories that have a binding similarity. For instance, my collection titled Mod Fiction is thus far two fan-fic stories I wrote based on our own mods GargArena and Cat-Life. And I might add more shorts at a later time.
The second Collection are two new submissions by Syrus Rayne. Untitled Stories is a collection with, at this time, two original one-shot stories.
So if you’re looking for some good fiction, stop by our text fiction page.
Okay, so if you’ve followed this fiction over the years then you know it is now effectively a finished story.
In fact, it was finished in April. Written by SquirrelKing, the original Full Life Consequences was epically scrambled. According to SquirrelKing’s profile and forum posts when it first appeared at FanFiction.net he was learning English and used the writing to help. He also demonstrated some more simple concepts in writing and imagination, which would lead some of us to the conclusion that he was also very young.
Originally, topics about the series were posted in forums such as the fan fiction forum on PHL. The story was ridiculed and people such as myself often defended him by pointing out the likely age and ESL issues. The story was also picked up for a rather famous YTMND “epic reading of an epic fan-fiction”.
This story was amusing and the reading made it great. A second story appeared as well and then the story remained “to be continued?” for years.
But in the past couple of years, YouTube has brought even more attention to SquirrelKing and his fictions. There have been several flash animations, gmod videos, and even hand drawn animations depicting the first two stories and some of the other works including Halo: Halos in Space, and Metal Gear Solid: Fight of Metal Gears.
Most notably, Icton Entertainment (creators of the Idiots of Garry’s Mod videos) made an adaptation of both stories. These adaptations were fairly amusing and worked quite well.
Now, by this time SquirrelKing had been inactive for years. Halo: Halos in Space 2: Aliens attack was his last story which was published in August of 2007. Suddenly, a new chapter in the Full Life Consequences saga appeared in February of this year (2009). Do the math.
Most notable about the later 2 chapters of Full Life Consequences is the recognizably deliberate effort to make them “so bad its funny”. It is possible that someone may have obtained the account and finished the story. But I think it is more likely that SquirrelKing was responding to his internet fame.
Basically, there are too possibilities. Either SquirrelKing was a less successful artificial character, like Peter Chimera, or he was legitimately a kid trying to write and practice his writing that has since turned into a “sock puppet” or fake writer due to internet fame.
I happen to think that he falls into that second possibility. Why? Mainly because if this was always a fake writer, he did a terrible job setting up the character. Using Peter Chimaera as an example, the author created a character that could not grasp the English language and didn’t know much about his subject matter. Sounds a lot like SquirrelKing right? The difference is that Chimaera is supposed to speak English as a primary language and not have spent much time reading or understanding the plot of his subject matter. In short, he’s a newbie, a llama, and a childish writer all rolled into one.
Conversely, SquirrelKing started out as a kid who was learning the English language and seemed to have at least some understanding of his subject matter. He was believable as an author. That is, believable at first. With his latter stories, such as the Halos in Space tales, he seemed to be trying to make bad stories. And since he suddenly reappeared his two latest stories feel even more forced.
Irregardless, the stories of John Freeman, and eventually his son Henry, are funny. And the Icton videos are fairly popular, well made adaptations that have undoubtedly been the reason for SquirrelKing’s reappearance.
In fact, these are popular enough that many YouTube patrons have been trying to beat them to the cliched punch by making adaptations as soon as a new chapters are ready.
I won’t bother you with these wannabe-Icton videos… instead I’ll just link you to the real thing.
Okay, the latest featured story is a throw-back to our Half-Life story days. It’s one of our less talked about tales.
Most visitors that remember the site from those early years think of certain key image stories. Specifically, the Barney Time Series or, on occasion, one of the other team-made plots. But some of the best, most creative stories were fan-made.
In this case, I’m thinking of a story by R. Tarrman. “INVASION”
Invasion by R. Tarrman
The story follows an unnamed scientist from an undisclosed facility that looks a lot like Black Mesa. When he awakes in the locker room to find blood and death have filled the halls, he becomes concerned. Then he encounters aliens and knows that his only recourse is to travel into the Black Mesa Research facility and find a way to stop the Xen invasion.
Of course, as with most of our stories, this one is based more around humor and is no where near as dramatic as it sounds.
This story is a 31 page image story on the Half-Life Stories page. The majority of the jokes appear toward the end of the story when the scientist joins with Barney the security guard to stop the aliens.
When all else fails… turn to the Holy Book of Final Fantasy!
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