Multiplayer

My favorite part of any game. Taking on other targ.. er.. Human players, and killing them dead as hell. Multiplayer in AVP2 is sweet, but the ping times seem extremely high to me. Roughly half the servers I was on had very high pings, but this could be because most of the servers I have good ping to seem to be listen servers on cable, rather than dedicated servers on good connections. Or perhaps the network code just needs to be patched up a little bit. There's an explanation of the the high ping times posted on Blue's News here. (Thanks Rune.) For finding games AVP2 has an in-game browser, or you can use Gamespy arcade.

Balancing between the species seems excellent, with most games I've played in having pretty close scores between the teams. The aliens seem to be the preferred race on the servers right now, and man. If you can play an alien, it's wicked. As an amusing note, you can break most of the power ups in the game. So if you REALLY don't want those damned hoomans getting new guns, break 'em every time they spawn. :) Very annoying.

There's a variety of different game types available for your multiplayer mayhem enjoyment.

Traditional deathmatch: You've played it before. It's a free for all. If it moves, try and kill it.

Team (race) deathmatch: Aliens vs. Predators vs. Humans. Kill as many of the enemy species as you can, try to stay alive and keep your teamies the same way. First team to the set number of kills wins.

Hunt: One outnumbered team vs. everyone. Only the hunters gets points.

Survivor: One player starts as a mutant. Every time he kills someone they become a mutant as well. Last survivor standing wins.

Overrun: One team defends, the other team attacks. The attackers must kill all defenders to win.

Evac: One teams tries to get their asses to the evac point, and holds it for 10 seconds. The other team tries to kill them. Dead.

All of the modes and deathmatch maps are fun, but team deathmatch in the hanger is so very, very creamy. As an interesting, Team Fortress style move, each race in multiplayer also has different classes that have different abilities such as speed, armor or certain weapons they can use. Makes it much harder, and quite interesting.

I do find one thing annoying about the multiplayer. If you get dropped from a game, or cannot connect to a server it doesn't take you back to the browser, it drops you back to the multiplayer menu and you have to go back in to the browser. Grrrrr. Fools.

Manual

Well written, gives you all the information you need to jump in and start playing. Complete default keybinds, information on all weapons, tools and species, gameplay tips, multiplayer info and tips and a few nifty art pieces they've thrown in. Also the manual just looks cool, being totally black :)

Controls

Standard shooter controls, but you do have different controls for each species. The basic move controls are the same, but each race has their own special weapons and moves. It's a little tricky to learn three complete keysets for one game, as well as all the moves and abilities. Most people I know who play multiplayer just stick with their favorites species. All keys are easily remapable.