Aliens vs Predator (PlayStation 3)
Genre: First-Person Shooter Publisher: SEGA Developer: Rebellion Players: 1-8
Before you begin you are given the option to play as the Marine, the Alien or the Predator but you’re never really tied to any of them. You can start off playing the Marine and complete the whole thing controlling him, or you can change to one of the other species at the start of each chapter. The story and layout remain the same but you experience it from different perspectives. I first completed the story as the Marine to get a decent feel for it using a familiar character. That decent feel told me that AvP would prove to be a frustrating experience.
The cast of this title is undoubtably its strongest point. Rather than the Alien/Predator vs Scientists cast from the first movie or the Alien/Predator vs Dawson’s Creek cast from the second, here the warring ETs are pitted against a much tougher human opponent in the form of the Colonial Marine who, lacking the sharp appendages of his enemies, comes equipped with some blistering firepower. What looks good isn’t necessarily good, though.
When playing as the Marine, the combat is nothing short of prehistoric. Tasty firepower aside, you can’t actually aim down the sight of the individual weapons, except for the sniper rifle, and for some reason the developers decided to leave out an ability to duck to avoid incoming fire. Two basic yet fundamental abilities that other games have applied as standard for years.
Controlling the Predator isn’t much better. Being a massive fan of the angry Rastafarian hunter it pissed me off no end to see him being reduced to a badly-controlled character with as much combat ability as a Resident Evil zombie. You would expect him to have excellent melee abilities, but here they are reduced to a simple one-two with his wrist-blades. His high-tech weapons like the Disk and Combi-Stick are simply throwing devices and not usable in a melee while his heavy cannon, the Plasma Caster, runs out of juice absurdly fast, requiring recharging. I expected to feel nigh on invulnerable when I took control of the Predator but instead got nailed by Alien and Marine alike a ridiculous amount of times as I struggled with simply moving him.
The Alien was done marginally better. They do sound very authentic, sometimes emitting that elephantine wail when you kill them. Controlling them you can charge across ceilings and walls alike and use your tail, claws and teeth to destroy your prey. However, it’s a shaky quick fire way to kill and it takes a lot of getting used to. Employing only melee abilities you have to hit your target at speed and it’s not easy; miss and you get a pulse rifle emptied into your elongated face. The telling thing is that never, at any stage, did I actually feel like the deadly life forms that the Xenomorph and Predator are supposed to be.
Of course, any title that is going to have these characters in it must complement them with a decent setting and suitable atmosphere, so when I first started playing I was expecting a freaky ambience somewhere not a million miles away from Dead Space. At least that is what I was hoping. Instead I got something closer to Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. Playing as the Marine I admit I did feel some initial nervousness when the motion sensor started pinging to announce my first brush with a Xenomorph, and then to see subsequent pings announcing their arrival on all sides had me close to panic. But still as my murdering skills improved the intensity of the combat remained the same. Other games can throw new foes into the mix but this only had the Aliens and mildly annoying face huggers to contend with.
As for the Predator, he barely makes appearance in the whole of the Marine campaign. I really wanted to feel myself being hunted by him or watch him in action against the Xenomorphs but he remained strangely quiet. Even the Queen’s contribution and interaction with the Marine was extremely limited. Worse was to come - since the planet was a jungle world and I was expecting to have the big guy hunt me through the steaming jungle a la Predator vs. Arnie, but nothing came of it. Never in my history of gaming have I felt so cheated because of a criminal underuse of source material, particularly when it’s the franchise’s best attribute.
Where Aliens vs. Predator can pick up a few points is in the multiplayer modes. There are six of them and one co-op mode for you to get your teeth into, and they certainly provide more entertainment than single player. The co-op mode allows you and three others to enter an arena as Marines and try to beat off increasingly heavy Alien attacks. Other multiplayer modes have survived from the 1999 AvP title like Predator Hunt, where one player plays the Hunter and the others are the hunted. If one of the humans slays the Predator then they become the hunter in turn. My personal favourite was Infestation where one person plays an Alien and the others play Marines. Each Marine that the Alien kills becomes an Alien and so on until the Xenomorphs vastly outnumber the sobbing humans.
Domination, Death Match and its variations - Mixed Species Death Match and Species Death Match - round out the modes. Each has its own charms and playing against a Predator that will actually hunt you is infinitely more intense than what the main game offers. However, the control and combat problems are not improved in any way and no new abilities are offered for new levels gained. I hoped to see some new Predator weapons like the Spear Gun or Cling Net make an appearance as multiplayer options or rewards, but no dice.
I begged Aliens vs. Predator to be better but it wouldn’t happen. It had an opportunity to be an outstanding title but so many flaws with the characters and gameplay are present that even an ardent fan of both species. like I am, can’t ignore. The whole thing felt underpowered and half-hearted. Mediocre graphics, dreadful combat and an insane waste of assets and ideas leads me to believe that Rebellion must have thought that the species-popularity alone would carry the game. Devotees of both Aliens and Predators may want to check out the multiplayer but save yourself the letdown and don’t get too excited about anything else.
By Frank20 (1st Mar 2010)
I skipped away from the store enthusiastically repeating “I’m gonna have me some fun, I’m gonna have me some fun”, but Rebellion put an end to that by delivering a decidedly average title.
Twenty years ago Danny Glover, bloody and battered, wandered into a Predator trophy room and viewers glimpsed the Xenomorph skull hanging on the wall, kicking off the cult following that would pit two of Hollywood’s nastiest incarnations against each other. The Alien vs Predator phenomenon has spawned comics, games, and two instantly forgettable movies but also gave us the 1999 AvP PC game which proved a definite hit. If you are familiar with any of them then you will know that the plot for this brawler is nothing that the AvP universe has not experienced before. A Weyland-Yutani scientific team - the shadowy company from Aliens - has discovered the ruins of a Predator temple on a distant planet. Running into trouble with an Alien infestation they call in the Colonial Marines, who arrive at the planet at the same time as a Predator ship destroys the USS Marlow, leaving the platoon stranded on the planet.
Before you begin you are given the option to play as the Marine, the Alien or the Predator but you’re never really tied to any of them. You can start off playing the Marine and complete the whole thing controlling him, or you can change to one of the other species at the start of each chapter. The story and layout remain the same but you experience it from different perspectives. I first completed the story as the Marine to get a decent feel for it using a familiar character. That decent feel told me that AvP would prove to be a frustrating experience.
The cast of this title is undoubtably its strongest point. Rather than the Alien/Predator vs Scientists cast from the first movie or the Alien/Predator vs Dawson’s Creek cast from the second, here the warring ETs are pitted against a much tougher human opponent in the form of the Colonial Marine who, lacking the sharp appendages of his enemies, comes equipped with some blistering firepower. What looks good isn’t necessarily good, though.
When playing as the Marine, the combat is nothing short of prehistoric. Tasty firepower aside, you can’t actually aim down the sight of the individual weapons, except for the sniper rifle, and for some reason the developers decided to leave out an ability to duck to avoid incoming fire. Two basic yet fundamental abilities that other games have applied as standard for years.
Controlling the Predator isn’t much better. Being a massive fan of the angry Rastafarian hunter it pissed me off no end to see him being reduced to a badly-controlled character with as much combat ability as a Resident Evil zombie. You would expect him to have excellent melee abilities, but here they are reduced to a simple one-two with his wrist-blades. His high-tech weapons like the Disk and Combi-Stick are simply throwing devices and not usable in a melee while his heavy cannon, the Plasma Caster, runs out of juice absurdly fast, requiring recharging. I expected to feel nigh on invulnerable when I took control of the Predator but instead got nailed by Alien and Marine alike a ridiculous amount of times as I struggled with simply moving him.
The Alien was done marginally better. They do sound very authentic, sometimes emitting that elephantine wail when you kill them. Controlling them you can charge across ceilings and walls alike and use your tail, claws and teeth to destroy your prey. However, it’s a shaky quick fire way to kill and it takes a lot of getting used to. Employing only melee abilities you have to hit your target at speed and it’s not easy; miss and you get a pulse rifle emptied into your elongated face. The telling thing is that never, at any stage, did I actually feel like the deadly life forms that the Xenomorph and Predator are supposed to be.
Of course, any title that is going to have these characters in it must complement them with a decent setting and suitable atmosphere, so when I first started playing I was expecting a freaky ambience somewhere not a million miles away from Dead Space. At least that is what I was hoping. Instead I got something closer to Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. Playing as the Marine I admit I did feel some initial nervousness when the motion sensor started pinging to announce my first brush with a Xenomorph, and then to see subsequent pings announcing their arrival on all sides had me close to panic. But still as my murdering skills improved the intensity of the combat remained the same. Other games can throw new foes into the mix but this only had the Aliens and mildly annoying face huggers to contend with.
As for the Predator, he barely makes appearance in the whole of the Marine campaign. I really wanted to feel myself being hunted by him or watch him in action against the Xenomorphs but he remained strangely quiet. Even the Queen’s contribution and interaction with the Marine was extremely limited. Worse was to come - since the planet was a jungle world and I was expecting to have the big guy hunt me through the steaming jungle a la Predator vs. Arnie, but nothing came of it. Never in my history of gaming have I felt so cheated because of a criminal underuse of source material, particularly when it’s the franchise’s best attribute.
Where Aliens vs. Predator can pick up a few points is in the multiplayer modes. There are six of them and one co-op mode for you to get your teeth into, and they certainly provide more entertainment than single player. The co-op mode allows you and three others to enter an arena as Marines and try to beat off increasingly heavy Alien attacks. Other multiplayer modes have survived from the 1999 AvP title like Predator Hunt, where one player plays the Hunter and the others are the hunted. If one of the humans slays the Predator then they become the hunter in turn. My personal favourite was Infestation where one person plays an Alien and the others play Marines. Each Marine that the Alien kills becomes an Alien and so on until the Xenomorphs vastly outnumber the sobbing humans.
Domination, Death Match and its variations - Mixed Species Death Match and Species Death Match - round out the modes. Each has its own charms and playing against a Predator that will actually hunt you is infinitely more intense than what the main game offers. However, the control and combat problems are not improved in any way and no new abilities are offered for new levels gained. I hoped to see some new Predator weapons like the Spear Gun or Cling Net make an appearance as multiplayer options or rewards, but no dice.
I begged Aliens vs. Predator to be better but it wouldn’t happen. It had an opportunity to be an outstanding title but so many flaws with the characters and gameplay are present that even an ardent fan of both species. like I am, can’t ignore. The whole thing felt underpowered and half-hearted. Mediocre graphics, dreadful combat and an insane waste of assets and ideas leads me to believe that Rebellion must have thought that the species-popularity alone would carry the game. Devotees of both Aliens and Predators may want to check out the multiplayer but save yourself the letdown and don’t get too excited about anything else.
6.5
Single Play
6.0
Friend Play
6.5
Multi Play
8.1
Graphics
5.7
Sound
7.1
Challenge
6.4
Entertainment
6.0
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Aliens vs Predator
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Aliens vs Predator (PS3)
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I've read a shitload of the AlienV Predator comics and some of the story lines in them are outstanding. Why they could not have used some of them for the games or better yeat the friggin movies is beyond me.