If you’re a typical game player, you already know the story and
concept behind Aliens versus Predator. You’ve seen the movies, read the
comic books, played with the toys, and maybe even helped Jesse Ventura
become governor of Minnesota. In 1994, Rebellion software created what
is generally considered to be one of the ill-fated Atari Jaguar’s best
games and the definitive use of the license to date, Alien versus
Predator. Five years later, the company has remade the game for the PC,
bringing half a decade of technology and gameplay advancements to bear
on its previous effort, and the result is excellent.
On the surface, Aliens versus Predator is a 3D action shooter of the
old (pre-Half Life) school: Armed with a variety of weapons you
doggedly, repeatedly move from point A to point B, killing anything in
your way, riding on elevators, and flipping lots of switches. Where the
game deviates from the norm, and succeeds beyond expectations, is in its
rendering of three distinct viewpoints and its effective re-creation of
the film series’ unrelieved sense of dread.
Each of the game’s three characters – the titular Predator and Alien,
and the hapless human Marine – has his own plot, composed of six levels
(five in the case of the Alien). The story portion of these campaigns,
though, is virtually missing; the levels have little continuity between
them, except for a vague sense that you are traveling from one connected
place to another, and equipment acquired on one level does not carry
over to the next. Luckily, a lack of coherent plot is not as much of a
liability for Aliens versus Predator as it would be for almost any other
game, because the history and motivation of each main character are
understood implicitly, as they are simply part of the pop-culture
landscape. The entire game is essentially a series of set pieces
designed to evoke a mood of anxiety and lurking terror. And this Aliens
versus Predator does very, very well. Emerging from a cramped hallway
into total darkness, scattering a few flares around to discover that
you’ve entered a five-story hangar containing a huge alien ship, then
hearing your motion detector scream to life as something starts to move
in the pitch blackness is an experience in horror unrivaled in gaming.
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