PC Review

Aliens: An insect-like species that reproduces through parasitic means which terminates host subject. Extremely agile and fast creatures with a tough skeletal structure and razor-sharp appendages. Notably silent creatures that tend to hunt in packs when engaging their prey. Also known to use their stealth and speed when hunting alone, which makes them just as deadly. Usually avoiding full frontal assaults, the creatures tend to be crafty and devious foes. Generally attacks by aliens occur through their sneaking up on prey by tracking the pheromones emitted by the creature. Defensively aliens are very weak and extremely vulnerable against ranged weapons. In a close-up, knock-down, drag-out fight, however, they have no equal. On top of that, these creatures also have highly caustic acid for blood, which is so concentrated it can eat through the reinforced steel plating of a ship's hull. All of these factors make this species a very deadly opponent that takes no prisoners except for the purpose of continuing its species. Definitely something you would not want to meet in a dark alley - not that you'd ever see it coming.

Predators: A reptilian, warrior-like race that lives for the sport of killing and collects trophies from its victims. Predators have a strange code of honor and will not attack unarmed, non-hostile beings but would rather have something more of a challenge to hunt. Armed with sophisticated weaponry operated off of a renewing power source, these creatures can be virtually impossible to destroy. Often through the use of a cloaking device that bends the existing light around them, predators can become nearly undetectable to the naked eye. Finally, using different spectrums of light to see, they can specialize their vision to hunt for specific kinds of prey or to navigate dark areas. Aptly named, this beast is the ultimate predator.

Colonial Marines: A fighting force trained to be the best of the best at doing the worst of the worst. Although these humans pack quite an impressive arsenal and bulletproof body armor, their weakness lies in their humanity. All emotions come into play while fighting and affect the Marine's nerve. Although it can sometimes save a life to follow your instincts, fear can keep a man second-guessing his gut reactions. This species has been tempered by centuries of fighting wars and have become quite masterful at its arts. As far as conventional warfare, these marines are the best attack dog the human race can provide. They act when called upon and do their best to make the enemy dead.

What do you get when you take two of the most horrific and deadly creatures to ever come from the human imagination and put them into a game? Aliens Vs. Predator, of course. From the comic books, to the movies, and now to the PC these monsters have come a long way. The developers at Fox Interactive and Rebellion have definitely outdone most of the other first-person shooters on the market today. They have taken the surreal and creepy atmosphere from these two classic sci-fi trademarks and put it into a game. And they have taken it a step further by allowing the player to become what scared them the most.

The game starts off for each race inside of a research lab the humans have set up to do biological experiments on the aliens. Basically, your job in the game is to kill all the other species you encounter. If you're a Predator you kill the humans and aliens. If you're a Marine you kill the predators and aliens, and so on. To master the art of killing with all three of your available choices you must really work at it. The humans are limited in strength, but can build up an awesome arsenal of weapons. They are your basic FPS character. The main problem with them is that when they run out of ammo it turns into a pathetic situation leaving you with only your pulse rifle to bash away at your enemy. Other than the measly pulse rifle you can obtain a flame-thrower, gattling gun, and even smart weapons which track your targets. The aliens' acidic blood tends to be extremely damaging to the marines whose body armor offers little protection. To heal yourself from these attacks you must find first-aid packs along the way. As with the movies, marines are given a motion detector that works no matter what happens to be around you and will always detect motion. So even if the enemy is moving only the slightest bit it will come over the sensor. You are also given a light amplifier, which is without a doubt one of the most important tools you will use, considering that most of the areas in the game are dark as hell with some even being totally without light. The drawbacks that come along with this neat little gadget are that 1) You can't use the motion detector and amplifier at the same time because they draw off the same power source, 2) The smallest amount of light can wash out most of your line-of-sight or blind you entirely.

My favorite character in this game was the Predator. This creature has got some of the coolest weapons I have ever seen. Even as a little kid playing with my friends I used to pretend to be one of these awesome hunters. That's how cool they seemed to me, and I'm sure that there were kids all over America doing the same thing. Not only do you have the ability to cloak yourself in the game, but you also get the Predator's sweet vision modes. You can see multiple spectrums of light. One lets you hunt warm-blooded creatures and another one seems to make the aliens in the game glow in the dark. There is also a night vision for the Alien that seems strictly for navigation. This vision mode is very much like the Marine's light amplifier, but is not affected by outside light sources that I've noticed. The Predator character is bound by a kind of honor that will only allow it to use certain weapons and remain invisible. The only two that you can use are the wrist blade and the shoulder cannon. As the Predator you can also obtain the recallable disc blade and carry a spear gun for good measure. Almost all of your weapons are powered by an energy source that slowly, but constantly regenerates itself. This operates each of your weapons except for the deadly close-up wrist blade, spear gun, and the disc. You can heal yourself as many times as you need to with this energy. Even staying cloaked draws upon your power.

Gameplay as the Predator tends to rely on your sneaking about while fighting marines in cloak or just plain old stealthy playing. The main key is moderation in using your weapons. While you have unlimited energy, it takes a while to build back up. During that time you are vulnerable and can be easily dispatched. While using the different vision modes your shoulder cannon can track your target automatically, and when fired, will connect with deadly accuracy. The Predator seems to be the creature in the game that can deal the quickest deathblow from a weapon, and can survive many brutal attacks before succumbing to an onslaught of explosive-tipped shells or razor-sharp exoskeleton.

Finally there is the Alien perspective of the game. By far this is the most difficult aspect of single player. To play as the Alien, blatant destructive force is not the answer. Actually fighting out in the open is a good way to wind up a smoldering pile of acid and metal on the deck. You have to be a sneaky individual who is as cunning as you are vicious. The Alien only has three attacks in the game, all of which are extremely powerful, but can only be used up close, which is a bit of a drawback. You are armed with your talons, your whip-like tail, and finally your vicious double jaws. The rapid-fire claw attack will shred most marines and predators fairly quickly and your incredibly powerful tail can deliver blows that kill ordinary men. The kicker is that while playing as the Alien the only way to recover from wounds suffered is to use your jaw attack on an enemy. At times this can be a very difficult thing to do, especially when there are about 6 marines standing in the same room together. One good blast from a pulse rifle and you're dead. The only option you have when spotted is to run as fast as you can to avoid weapons' tracking devices. You are able to see your prey from a distance since whatever you are hunting gives off naturally occurring pheromones. These come out of their bodies as a type of aura that surrounds them. It illuminates them for you to see from a long distance away. This allows you more than enough time to plot your course to the enemy and plan how to execute the maneuver sealing his death.

Out of all three points-of-view to play, I'd have to say the Marine is the most well-rounded for single player. Although his weaknesses can be exploited, if you play it smart you are usually going to prevail. A single Predator or Alien can take you out, but you can most likely avoid them, hunt them, and finally kill them. The multi-player games of AvP seem to make the Marine kind of obsolete. Between the speed of the aliens and the invisibility of the predators, marines become cannon fodder or ripped up entrails, depending on what attacks them. While playing as the aliens in the game, you are constantly called upon to use your intellect to outsmart the intelligent humans or the powerful predators. The only problem with doing this is that it is quite a difficult task. You are outmatched as far as firepower goes and it is relatively easy to be seen. It's not out of the ordinary to end up dying a lot while initially trying this creature out. Once you are interested in sneaking around, it extremely difficult to get that head-shot in to rejuvenate yourself. Until you master all its movements or at least see an example of how the computer-controlled aliens fight this is definitely for the more advanced player. Finally, playing the game as a Predator was definitely a fun experience. If it were possible for the Predator to scale walls like the Alien it would be the perfect character to play in this game. With its advanced weaponry, the Predator can become a nearly unstoppable force of nature and it quite often hands out mass damage without receiving any in return. It hides well and it has a zoom-in feature that allows for an extremely high amount of precision when firing upon targets that are largely hidden by terrain. The Marine may be well-rounded but the Predator seems the way to go if you want to just have some good old-fashioned fun.

I'd be lying if I said the gameplay was easy. To be honest this is probably one of the most challenging games I have played in years. You really need to use your head when confronted with a problem. There are three levels of difficulty- Training, Realistic, and Director's Cut. Even the training difficulty is not that easy and must be played a few times by novices to get the hang of the movements you can make and how to use your weapons properly. The number of enemies you face are small compared to playing in Director's Cut. It also seems that you are prone to dying a lot since your characters are not the strongest in the world. The only fact I liked about this was that, other than making it very easy to die yourself it gave your enemies a correct amount of damage they could take before they died. The Alien character seems to be given the hardest difficulty no matter what level you play at. One good burst from a pulse rifle will kill you, which makes the lack of an in-game save feature a bit frustrating. It tends to get quite repetitive dying, then going all the way back to the beginning of a board, just to go back and possibly die at the same place. The Alien is also limited because it needs a living being to take its energy from if damaged. Once you've killed most of the people in a complex and you are wounded it becomes a hunt for some poor sucker to sink your teeth into, and finding that person can sometimes be the death of you.

This is unlike many of the first-person shooters I have played before due to the fact that it literally scared me. To play this game as a human, Alien, or Predator is to actually climb inside the monsters that brought you so much terror, and experience it for yourself. For a long while the soundtrack and the atmosphere of the game made me totally on-edge. I caught myself firing off rounds as I went around dark corners that I didn't know the layout of.. Most of the time I caught nothing but air and still continued to do it. I think the reason for this Quake-like game being so scary is that there is a background to it. The fact that the monsters in the game are from the movies, and that those movies were suspenseful and horrific, brings the actions you make in the game a little closer to reality. Yeah, yeah, I know. I was scared by a game. What a wimp that must make me sound like, but if this wasn't the most realistic first- person shooter I'd ever played I would have been fine with it. Tribes and Quake have their fans, and with good reason, but Aliens Vs. Predator just seems to have that ability to put the player inside the movies without having to have any acting capabilities.

Sound and scenery really do make the game worthwhile. The graphics are wonderful and the characters are all really brought to life. It runs really smoothly and without any visual problems. I was really impressed with how the aliens and predators looked when you were fighting them, but the marines left a bit to be desired. They just seemed to look really plain with little variety. The different vision modes work superbly and really add another level of cool to the game. The background music and the sound effects are quite awesome and at times can be altogether eerie. It gave me goosebumps to hear that clacking sound of chitinous exoskeleton right down the hall from me. I just knew an Alien was going to jump out at me. It was either that or the bird-like chirping of a predator on the hunt just keeping my senses on extra alert. Without the soundtrack the visuals just wouldn't invoke the same response from the player. There seems to be a little bug involved with certain cards that gives you an error while exiting the game. You can find out if your system might suffer from this by reading the documentation.

Aliens Vs. Predator has got to be one of the most impressive games I have ever had the privilege of playing. The fact that it gives the player the abilities of the characters in the movies is one of the most impressive aspects. The graphics were quite detailed and allowed you to really feel like you were walking through the dank, dark corridors. The game does tend to be harder than most FPS, but it is well worth the fight. The realism really did the movies justice and just plain rocked. There are no other terms that I can think of to describe it. I could try and describe everything about the game and why it was so good, but to do so would leave little to the imagination and that's where this game really takes its toll. Rebellion and Fox Interactive have definitely come up with a winner here.

Written By Werewolf
(While not writing for this magazine, Werewolf daydreams that if the Colonial Marines had some form of lycanthropy, they'd kick the aliens' and predators' asses)