By Martyn Licchelli
[Originally published on 19th February 2010]
I was asked about this game quite a bit, so i decided to upload my review that I did on this weeks DKR pre show 'Button Mashing' (Available at Dropkickradio.com from the 21st of Feb).
enjoy.
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Aliens vs Predator is the latest in a long series of games made my Rebellion based on the idea of two of the worlds deadliest alien races clashing in an all out war, and dragging humans in to it. Technically the series should read Aliens vs Predator vs Colonial Marines. But since the Marines are generally little else than fodder, those no reason to hold a grudge on that. The Original AVP game was released in 1994 on the Atari Jaguar. I had this game. I played it relentlessly, with the Jaguars pad having a a megadrive style layout alone with a digital telephone like key system at the bottom there was a lot of remember control wise however it never felt a chore. 15 years on, the game still feels the same. I feel like I'm playing a series that despite obvious evolutions in graphics and sounds, really hasn't improved. In fact in some ways it feels like a devolution, and those controls? now mapped to the 8 xbox buttons and the 4 dpad directions, they feel strange. In the Predator, or Hish, sections Placing a mine and then detonating involves a down on the dpad, then right trigger, then hold down the down button. Which makes it awkward if you dont want to blow it up right away and want to use your laser disc, which requires a left on the Dpad to select. Jumping is also an issue, requiring you to hold left trigger and press A to jump any sort of decent distance, and even then it's only where the games lets you do it. There is a standard jump, but it's quite useless.
Playing as an Alien is the part that suffer the most devolution in my opinion. 15 years ago, the Alien was quite dull, you couldn't even run up walls. It was saved by the ingenious lives system, that relied on you laying an egg in a human, so as that when you died you would come back alive from the egg. The devolution however comes from the 1999 Rebellion game AVP on the PC, in which you could control a facehugger to attack humans and lay your egg... you would then assume control of a chest buster, and feed for a certain time until you'd morph into a full alien. It was only a small section of the game, but it added something that really seems to be missing now. The controls for the alien are irritating too, moving as fast as you do you'll often end up running up walls you dont intend to, or overrunning on walls you do intend to and getting disorientated. Take away the boyish joy of being an alien or a predator and we're left with a game, that for both alien races, features game play that at it's core is kinda stealthy as a hunting game should be, but the clunky controls ruin a lot of the fun.
The last part of the game is the Marine sections. SAved for last, cause there's really not much to say. You use generic weapons, in a very very generic setting. Some nice set pieces see your fellow marines get dragged away, but you rarely have more than 1 marine fighting with you so you know any others are food anyway so there's no shock when they die. Indeed the only shock really, is that Rebellion thought the best way to make the Marine levels scary was to make you do repetitive turning on and off of lights and leaving you with a tiny pointless torch as your only light. In on level you hunt for a fusebox to give power to all the lights, only to then walk 100 yards through a fight, to turn the same lights off again to reroute power somewhere else. Leaving you wondering what the point was anyway.
The game does have some good points, general fandom will allow a lot of people to see past the many problems. Hell, it helped me through. For gorehounds, the close up kills will always please, as they are both violent and creative, especially for the Predators. The final levels of each mode are the most fun, as you're fully powered. But as each story only lasts 3 hours across 6 levels, you basically spend 150 minutes building up to the decent 30 minutes.
Multiplayer is also slightly disappointing. The controls issues move into the multiplayer modes, and ruin any enjoyment that could have been had. Only having played this mode for an hour before giving up on it, I can't give a full opinion, but from what I saw I highly doubt this will be on the top 5 of anyone's Xbox live play list.
Overall AVP is a game that does decent fan service, but not much else and instead chooses to play safe. A shame that a series that was once pretty good, is now nothing special at all. I hope that if we do get another predator game, we get the Batman vs Predator series. Not only was the comic thoroughly enjoyable, but hopefully Rocksteady games would be able to somehow help Rebellion find their feet with this series of games. Even if they have to remove one of the main characters to start the rebirth.
6/10
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