How to Botch a Demo, according to Rebellion

Rebellion is the developer of Aliens vs Predator, the upcoming reboot game of the 1999 PC classic. I was tentatively optimistic about the game, and today the demo finally came out. Let's examine just why this demo is probably the worst advertisement Rebellion could ask for!

First, some backstory. When Modern Warfare 2 came out, and PC gamers everywhere unleashed a torrential flood of rage over the lack of dedicated servers, Rebellion announced they would fully support dedicated servers because they care about the PC gaming community. Hooray! The internet rejoiced and began praising AvP alongside Battlefield: Bad Company 2 for having features that are simply standard on every PC game released since Quake. So, this week, the demo was announced, and it would be a multiplayer demo! Wait, what? Let me explain just why a multiplayer demo is a bad concept for a game that ISN'T entirely multiplayer:

The purpose of a demo is for potential consumers to sample the game and decide if they want to buy it based on how much they enjoy the demo. When your demo is multiplayer only, it's not so easy to get a feel for the full game. It's an inherently competitive atmosphere, with each player trying to win, so learning the controls and mechanics of play aren't so easy when you're thrust into that. A prospective player hops onto the game to try it out, and they end up getting killed over and over while trying to learn the controls. It makes them feel frustrated and that feeling becomes associated with the expectations for the full game. Besides, a lot of players (including me) are interested in certain games for single player, not multiplayer. I didn't particularly care about AvP's multiplayer, but now the only way I can get a feel for the single player of the game is to play the multiplayer, and that's not very easy.

This decision to release only a multiplayer demo for a game with a substantial single player campaign is only the first in a series of monumentally stupid ideas! Let's go through them one at a time:

1. The demo does not have dedicated servers! Seriously, do they even care at all? The player has zero control over their experience. You just hit "quick match" and you get to stare at a screen saying "searching for game" for twenty minutes until you arbitrarily get put into a game or kicked off of matchmaking for timing out. And that's not an exaggeration. I watched the clock, it takes around twenty minutes to find a game. That's just not acceptable. I don't care if some developers think it's "easier" than going through a server browser to find a game, it takes MUCH longer, and it gives me much less control and feedback. What exactly is it doing while it says "searching for game" for twenty friggin minutes? Why exactly does it time out sometimes? I have no idea because it won't tell me. I understand this is the first night of a demo, and there aren't that many people actually playing yet, but it's a symptomatic problem for matchmaking and it's there whenever I've tried it on other (console) games. It sucks. And here's the kicker! Remember how I said the full game was announced to have dedicated servers? And yet the demo doesn't. How is the demo supposed to be a way for the player to sample the full game and figure out if they want to buy it, when the demo doesn't actually represent the experience of the full game?! If the demo DOES represent the experience of the full game, there's no way in hell I'd play the multiplayer of it, which only leaves the single player. But I guess I don't need to sample that, because Rebellion said so.
2. The other major consequence of not having dedicated servers is that players host servers. This means lag, and I mean a LOT of it. The game is barely playable half the time. Of course I don't know how MUCH lag, because the game is kind enough not to tell me what my ping is! Seriously is it that friggin hard to do this, when every PC game since the beginning of time has done this?
3. Next, while there are scalable graphics settings and it works fairly well on my computer at low settings while looking decent, there is one very annoying and non-optional feature of the graphics: motion blur. If I turn fast, the screen blurs annoyingly. This makes quickly turning or aiming behind me very difficult, which shouldn't happen in a PC game. I don't know if I'd mind it terribly in single player, but in multiplayer it has no place.
4. So how about the actual gameplay? I'll just break that up into each of the races you can play as, because they all have serious issues.

Predator
You spawn with no weapons but claws. No disc, no speargun, no plasma caster, nothing. Invisibility doesn't make you nearly invisible enough either; marines can detect you with their motion sensor (if you move at all) and aliens can just see everyone, all the time, everywhere. Predators also don't have as much health as the original game, so they go down to a few shots from marines or melees from aliens. Their super-jump ability consists of holding down a button and then auto-jumping to a marker that pops up onto the terrain. While doing this, you can't turn more than a few degrees, so jumping and turning around is just not possible.

Aliens
You automatically stick to every surface. You wouldn't believe how annoying this is. The original game had a crouch button to hold down if you wanted to wall-walk, but this game has no crouch button. I guess that's too complicated. If you run to the edge of a platform, instead of jumping off you will start walking down the edge. If you are running and casually bump into something, you'll wall-walk up it even if you don't want to. Oh and did I mention that Aliens had wall-hacks? Because they can seriously see every nearby player through walls as a bright outline.

Marines
The humans unequivocally suck. The other two species were DESIGNED to prey on humans. I can understand this in the single player, because the Marine's campaign is supposed to be like a horror game. This shouldn't be the case in multiplayer! Regardless that the lag made it impossible to aim or react properly to enemies, the marine only has a pulse rifle to start out with. No grenade launcher attachment like the first game, it seems, which was the main balance in that one's multiplayer for the humans. As a human in this one, you're just going to walk around and hope you can hit an enemy before they close into melee range, because at that point you're done. Also you better hope you aren't facing more than one enemy at once, or you're done. It's frustrating and it isn't fun to play as a Marine online.

Common gameplay problems:
The entire melee combat system is simply broken for multiplayer. Normal melee attacks by predators and aliens will kill other species in around two hits. When you get hit with a melee attack, you go through a hit animation in which you are stunned and cannot move or turn or attack. This leaves enough time for a followup finishing hit without any possibility of defense. If you get hit by one melee attack, you're probably going to die. Oh, there's a block button, but it doesn't help much beyond preventing that first hit (which it probably won't anyway). Oh also, melee has auto-aim, which will track enemies during the animation. I can understand this on a console game, but on the PC it's stupid and inexcusable because it just removes any remote semblance of skill from the melee system. Although, the grabs throw any remote chance of balance straight out the window as it is! If you are behind an enemy, you hit E to grab them and insta-kill them. They cannot defend themselves. Already that's a big red flag for anyone who knows anything about multiplayer balance. And yet, it gets worse! While grabbing and killing someone, you are stuck in this animation that lasts a good three seconds. During this animation, you can be shot at, and you can even be grabbed yourself, and there's nothing you can do to defend yourself! It's entirely possible to be grabbing another player, when a player grabs you, and a player grabs that player, and so on. No one can defend. If you are killed in the middle of the kill animation, the original victim won't even necessarily survive; if they have been killed during the animation, but the animation itself isn't finished yet (e.g. the predator stabs an alien in the face, and is about to throw him to the ground) you still can't move, and if you get grabbed or killed at this point, you'll die and your victim will die and neither of you can defend yourselves! It's a real mess. I can't imagine why anyone thought this was a good idea for multiplayer!

I'll keep a jaded eye on how the single player turns out for this game, but I'm definitely no longer excited for a frustrating, laggy and unfair multiplayer experience. Luckily, the multiplayer for the original 1999 PC game has recently been resurrected, and it plays far better, so I have that to fall back on!