Aliens Versus Predator

The Good
Aliens Vs. Predator captures perfectly the feeling of the Aliens movies, especially when played from the perspective of the Colonial Marine.

I still recall the first few times I played this game, in the Marine demo version I downloaded from the net. It was intense. For the first time since my rookie days as an FPS player, I was really just trying to survive. As I entered the darkened corridors of a wrecked human colony, my pulse rifle at my side, I truly felt the complete lack of security the Marine would. I saw the intermittent blips on my motion sensor. I could hear them, the aliens. They were everywhere. In the half-dark, climbing over walls and ceilings, hunting me. I felt alone and weak.

By the same token, as an Alien, I was given the sense of the stealthy beast of prey infiltrating the human strongholds. And as the Predator, I was the ultimate combat force, cloaked from human vision and armed with lethal and precise weapons. I gave only passing interest to their gunfire, which concerned me little unless it was particularly fierce. Only their toughest weapons gave me pause.

And right there is reason enough to buy AvP. Even at full retail price, though you needn't pay that much now that it has aged some. You can easily get the Gold edition at around $10 or $20. This game's atmosphere, the experience of just being each race is done artfully well.

But other aspects of the game rock as well. As the Marine, your range of weapons is very nice indeed. You have access to the smartgun, flamethrower, grenade launcher, mini-gun, pistols (single or dual), and a couple of rocket-launching devices. But the highlight weapon, which you will use the most in the game, is your standard pulse rifle with built-in grenade launcher. This sweet and versatile weapon will get you through almost any scrape and ranks, in my opinion, as one of the coolest sci-fi weapons ever conceived.

The Predator's weapons are awesome, too. The wrist-blade will be your work-horse weapon, taking down most enemies with a single swipe. But other weapons such as the spear-gun and the lethal disc are well implemented, each with a real strategy to its use. And, of course, the med-comp for healing those nasty wounds is great and essential when combating aliens.

As The Alien, you are a weapon. Period. The implementation of this and the Alien's wall climbing abilities is near flawless.

Other cool aspects, like different vision modes for each race would take to long to get into. But, suffice it to say, there's still more to this game, and it's good. I leave it to the reader to find out for themselves.

The Bad
There are minor problems. Mainly, the plot, such as it is, can be rather thin. That didn't bug me much, though.

I know some people will complain about the limited saves (and, if I recall, it originally had no in-mission saves, which was fixed for the Gold Edition apparently). I understand where that can be frustrating. But I personally found that it aided the desperate atmosphere when playing as the Marine.

The Bottom Line
An experience for any fan of sci-fi. This game is one of my favorite FPS's and I recommend it without qualification.