An darkly atmospheric and hugely enjoyable FPS (Aliens Versus Predator (PC))

Member Name: Burning_Darkness

Product:	Aliens Versus Predator (PC)
Date:	20/10/09 (16 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great visuals, faithful to the franchises, varied gameplay styles, good sound

Disadvantages: gameplay can grow a little repetitive

Released several years before the rather dire film of the same name, Aliens Versus Predator is an atmospheric first person shooter that allows you to play as either a heavily armed, gung-ho space marine from the Aliens film, one of Giger's agile, insectile alien drones or as a Predator- a ten-foot tall killing machine with a range of bladed and high-tech projectile weapons at its disposal.

There are seperate campaigns for each of the playable species, with the marine campaign seeing you wandering through the dark, dank corridors of the abandoned colony on LV426 from the Aliens film(amongst other locations), and taking out face-huggers and drones with weapons from the film including a pulse rifle, waist-mounted smartgun and flamethrower whilst employing a tension-building motion-tracker device to locate your advancing foes.

The aliens are incredibly fast and posess the ablity to able to climb walls and ceilings, and when playing as one of the aliens you can employ this feature yourself, stealthily tracking your human prey through the darkness in space stations and ships (the latter brilliantly recreating the feel of the original Alien film), biting off people's heads with your retractable jaws and tearing them limb from limb with your long tail and razor-sharp claws.

Playing as the Predator is equally fun, the game allowing you to cloak yourself and switch between different sight modes, including the heat-seeking vision mode from the films, with weaponry including a spear-gun, plasma-pistol, shoulder-mounted plasma-cannon, and a nasty set of arm-mounted curved-metal blades.

FMV sequences are worked into the game to progress the story, appearing on video-screens throughout the levels, and the level-design is both varied and hugely visually impressive, as is the presentation in general. The polished, 3d-accelerated graphics still look great, and the game does a brilliant job of capturing the feel of the films from which it borrows, whilst the animation is slick and the controls are responsive and intuitive. The sound effects are also faithful to the films, whilst the tense, alternately bombastic and ambient music is well-executed and reminds strongly of composer James Horne's excellent score to the Aliens film.

The gameplay does eventually grow a little repetitive, but the game is so atmospheric and fun that this doesn't really matter very much, and remains the best game to make use of either film licence to date. A polished and well-executed shooter that remains a must for fans of the Aliens and Predator franchises.

Summary: A must for Aliens and Predator fans