391st played so far
Genre: First-Person Shooter
Platform: PC
Year of Release: 1999
Developer: Rebellion
Publisher: Fox Interactive
Alien is an amazing and suspenseful movies. Its first sequel, while switching genres, stays as interesting, followed by some mixed later movies. The Predator series felt a tad trashier, but worked as a great action flick. Through an Alien alien skull cameo in the second Predator movie, the two fictional universes somehow became one, something the studios grabbed on through in comics, a few films and, most relevant here, some games.
I actually remember the previews for this game coming out, including explanations on how different the three factions were to play – something new to the genre at the time, and I’ve been wanting to at least try it since then. Let’s go!
Our Thoughts
It’s true, the three groups/races/factions/campaigns play quite differently, and it makes the game a lot more interesting. Although we didn’t have a chance to try multiplayer, it became clear these would reinforce each other.
The marines are straightforward, sneaking into survival horror. While the other two groups have some element of stealth built into them, marines have less ways to hide, instead having a radar to find the enemies hiding around you. Still, knowing little of what’s actually coming, whether a blip is behind a wall, somewhere ahead… or on the ceiling above you. Combined with the darkness of some levels, it’s a tense experience, not to the point of Resident Evil, but reminiscent of the milder parts of Dead Space.
The Alien parts of the game felt more confusing. Aside from not really having ranged attacks, your main advantage comes from your mobility. You can climb walls and ceilings, pretty much ignoring gravity. It means that you’re treating the space in the levels a lot more differently – through ducts and passages, many more routes open up, while you can far more easily sneak past a number of your enemies and backstabbing them when most convenient. It becomes a stealth game more than anything. The one downside is that while this mode of navigating is interesting, it is also disorienting, and with the speed you travel at, every once in a while you’ll simply have no idea where you are.ย Only after playing the levels for a while you really get a feeling of where you are.
Playing as the Predator, then, is slightly more straight forward. As the most powerful character of the three, in a way, you work far more on your own. You have a stealth field that makes it easier to get into position, creating a slightly different type of stealth from the Alien game, with some pretty powerful weapons. Marines can still find you at times – thanks to their radars – but if you’re careful you can often get the drop on them, making it easier to get through. At the same time, your energy levels still need to be monitored, so it’s not a strategy you can always rely on.
Most of the storytelling, while simple, is done in game, as was becoming the style at the time – Unreal being a prime example of this as seen a year earlier. It’s effective, although that’s in part because it can rely on what you know – in large parts similar to the stories of other games. Especially for the marine though, the disjointed communication works well to communicate your goal without becoming intrusive.
There are lots of shades of brown in the game, and the textures used in some places (especially alien spaceships) make it difficult to find your way sometimes and it felt an odd reason to get lost sometimes – sometimes tunnels were simply impossible to find. A lack of minimap didn’t help here, with the levels being just confusing enough to make that a problem.
In the end though, this rarely becomes a major problem (except in case of the aforementioned Alien campaign, where it adds to the difficulty). The three different game modes, and the way they mix, is interesting and really makes for a fun game, still worth the wait.
Final Thoughts
To be honest, remembering its contemporary write-ups, I wouldn’t have expected Aliens vs Predator to end up on this type of list. Playing it now though, the reasons do become clear, with some compelling gameplay in each of the three modes of the game. The closest example I can think of is Starcraft, another science fiction focused RTS where its three races can be mapped to the three in this game with relative ease.
In effect you get three (shorter?) games in one, with crossover between the enemies and in multiplayer. That seems quite enough already to hook you into the gameplay. The other details are just (delicious) icing.