I had the chance to play the Aliens vs. Predator demo a little more last night.  I've played both the Marine and Alien so far.  Being the Predator just doesn't interest me all that much, and it doesn't fit my playstyle.  Here's what I think:

Compared to both the original and Aliens vs. Predator 2, this remake is true to the series.  The visuals and sound effects are top notch and help create the atmosphere needed for a game like this.  The deathmatch game mode does seem a bit stupid, as all three factions have no loyalty to one another.  With that said, one of the games I was playing last night had a group of Marines working together anyway, while the Aliens and Predators seem to play solo, which was pretty cool.

There are two big things I have a problem with:

• Matchmaking is used in the demo!  Ugh!  Worse yet, they actually said whether they'd have dedicated servers or not.  So, I noticed a decent amount of lag when playing, which was even more apparent when trying to play as the Alien, which relies on moving extremely fast.
• The controls aren't as smooth and reliable as I was hoping.  However, some of this could be the result of matchmaking lag.  For example, there are "grab" attacks Aliens and Predators can do when they get right behind an opponent that allows them to perform an instant kill, usually by impaling their enemy.  This looks awesome, but can be visually disjointed.  There were very few instances while playing as an Alien where I successfully grabbed someone without a visual glitch.  Most of the time, they'd appear to be a few feet away when I already hit the grab button.  Then they'd suddenly be in my grasp anyway.

I've already pre-purchased the full version on Steam.  And, despite my misgivings about matchmaking on the PC, I'm going to follow through.  Aliens vs. Predator 2 was one of the first FPS games I played on my first powerful PC.  Considering this seems to be a decent follow-up (despite the apparent lack of dedicated servers), I can't resist.

Anyway, here's some gameplay of the Marine.  Once again, I love the sound effects.  Most notably when nothing was around me and I heard the environmental woosh of humid air and a faint Alien noise.  Very cool.

Update on Monday, February 8, 2010 by Alex Taldren

I have some additional thoughts about AvP now that I've played it a bit more.

• Why can't you crouch as a marine?  Seems rather stupid.
• Why is my microphone always transmitting when sitting in a game lobby?  I know this is a PS3/Xbox 360 feature, but this is basic PC development.  Not everyone has the same microhpone/system settings, so you can anticipate how that will affect things.  For example, it doesn't affect some people, like my brother, who's microphone isn't sensitive enough to pick up his voice unless he speaks, but mine is very sensitive, so I'm constantly transmitting unless I unplug it.  Worse yet, there are no options to customine the microphone settings for the game.  Dumb.
• Transitioning from the ground to the wall an an alien is a pain.  Walking up to the wall and then pressing and holding the transition key requires you to wait a second before you can start crawling.  Yes, there are ways around this by focus-jumping to the wall, but simply running along the corridor and strafing onto the wall shouldn't be that difficult.
• Matchmaking is horrible.  It is made even worse when the game doesn't migrate to a new host if the original one leaves.  If you HAVE to do matchmaking, at least get the basic concepts down.

All in all, the actual gameplay is fun, considering I've only played deathmatch, which typically sucks.  At least the menus can be navigated using the mouse (*cough* Borderlands *cough*).  Hopefully, Rebellion plans to tweak its PC version of AvP a little more after release.  I just can't stand these un-optimized PC games much longer.