10 Years Ago This Weeks: Aliens Vs. Predator
Aliens Vs. Predator (released May 25th, 2009) represented a notable attempt by development studio Rebellion to increase the variety of play in first-person shooters through the use of widely different player characters. Although it was successful in this regard, it became an inexplicable dead-end in FPS design—save for its vastly superior sequel.
It’s not often that a licensed game gets to be genuinely innovative, but Aliens Vs. Predator actually introduced one fascinating new addition to the first-person shooter. In the game, the player experienced the story from the points of view of all three factions—and since Aliens, Predators, and Space Marines are all unique beasts, this resulted in a game that almost felt like three different games. When the player got to be the Predator, the game played more or less like a standard FPS. Like the protagonist in most other shooters, the Predator was stronger than most of the foes it encountered, and the use of effects like stealth camo and Predator vision give him additional advantages. By contrast the Space Marine was a frail organ piñata in a crunchy shell, which gives his campaign a more frightening, survival-horror feel. The Alien was the most different of all: as a fast melee warrior with the ability to stick to walls and ceilings, playing its campaign was a vertigo-inducing experience unlike any other.
This variety of play made the single-player campaign of Aliens Vs Predator a continuously compelling experience that reviewers embraced, but it also worked double-duty in making the multiplayer deathmatches completely asymmetrical. Unfortunately this experience was dampened by a technologically deficient matchmaking system.
That’s not a major problem these days though, and doesn’t change the fact Aliens Vs Predator introduced some interesting new concepts to the language of game design. The only problem with going back to it today is that these concepts were implemented in a much-improved way in Aliens Vs Predator 2. Still, if you want to see Rebellion’s ideas in their original form (before Monolith polished them up for the sequel) it’s still worth going back to. It’s extremely strange that this style of first-person shooter, the kind with multiple protagonists that share almost no common abilities, has disappeared from the modern world. One would think that with the prior work done, and with so many FPS titles dying to differentiate themselves on shelves, such a game would have a place in the modern market. Perhaps designers see the inherent difficulties in telling a single-player story from three different points of view, but its not like current shooter tales are typically great shakes anyway.
Aliens Vs Predator has never been remade for modern systems, and its original release is tough to find on the aftermarket. The Gold Edition of the game, which includes a few new weapons and levels, has seen some reprints in non-American regions as a budget title, just expect to pay the budget price for a new game to get it.
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Tags: 10 years ago this week, aliens, aliens vs predator, facehugging as recreational activity, first-person shooters, joe keiser, pc games, predator
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i like this so much too