Aliens Vs Predator - Review
To many, the concept of a first-person shooter built on the foundations of Hollywood's Aliens vs Predator franchise is certainly one that teases on the gameplay front.
The fact that the player has the opportunity to experience three separate, albeit interwoven, campaigns as a Colonial Marine, an Alien and a Predator is hugely promising.
Porting the bloody conflict of those three races and their specific skills onto a unique multiplayer platform would clearly be a blueprint for success. Aliens vs Predator should be nothing short of awesome.
It is actually quite difficult to review AvPs a single game because it is, in many ways, three separate first-person shooters existing within the same narrative and surroundings but unfolding from completely different perspectives.
The Marine campaign is a typical 'death around every corner' shooter where light, ammo and any glimpse of hope are in short supply. The Alien missions centre on cunning, surprise attacks, and unrestricted movement. The Predator campaign is a potent mixture of unrivalled agility, deadly weaponry, and cloaked stealth.
Generally, the Marine campaign does a very good job of capturing the claustrophobic atmosphere and tension of the Alien movies. Accompanied by the truly unnerving Motion Tracker on the HUD, the largely linear mission structure sees the player creeping tentatively through darkened colony buildings, a dark and dingy refinery, dense jungle overgrowth and ancient alien ruins. Luckily, as a Marine there is a decent array of weaponry, the Smart Gun being a favourite,.
In terms of dealing with the progressive enemy onslaught, the game's cloying darkness means that choosing the right weapon for specific situations becomes increasingly important as more options are located.
For example, while the Pulse Rifle spits lead at a reassuringly frantic pace, its fierce muzzle flare dazzles in close confines and makes aliens difficult to track as they leap across floor, wall and ceiling.
The faithful double-barrelled Shotgun is much better suited to cramped combat situations, while the Flame Thrower is ideal for eggs and Face Huggers, and the Pulse Rifle and its low-slung Grenade Launcher definitely come into their own during more large-scale battles.
The Marine campaign's oppressive environments and hectic set pieces fail to hide the gameplay's overall lack of freedom or that the player is often shepherded from one place to the next before being made to stay alive during scripted confrontations that usually involve the automated bypass of a locked door or the stalled arrival of an elevator.
The unfortunate shortfall of this particular portion of the narrative is that it is a perfectly convincing shooter that should have made the leap to being memorable. The game should have focused solely on the vulnerability of humans when pitted against overpowering odds and seemingly insurmountable foes.
The strength of this criticism soon becomes apparent when assuming the roles of either the Alien or the Predator, both of which are blessed with creative invention but cursed by the massive advantages they possess over the well-armed but soft-skinned Marines.
The Alien campaign revolves around using every available surface to destroy light sources, create darker environments, and gradually pick off unsuspecting enemies with the aid of a tracking vision that pierces solid objects.
The same can be said of the Predator missions, which allow the use of agile leaping, an invisibility cloak, human voice samples, heat tracking, and a charged shoulder cannon to lure Marines to their gruesome deaths.
Factor in the Alien's ability to coax enemies into the open by hissing, and the strategic advantage it gains by flanking through air ducts, and suddenly the amazing sense of fear and genuine sense of tension within the Marine campaign, is quickly replaced by an imbalanced sense of near-invincibility and a distinct lack of challenge.
Ultimately, while playing as the Alien and Predator is certainly fun for the first hour or so, it soon becomes a quite empty experience. The real gameplay disappointment here lies with the Alien, which, although able to transition across every in-game surface, is ruined by clunky, unintuitive controls that fracture the enjoyment of the hunt while enhancing a feeling of constant disorientation whenever attempting to chase or evade enemies by sprinting across walls and ceilings.
A tracking reticule that always points to the ground and denotes where the Alien can leap should have provided a sense of direction, but sadly it doesn't, leading to the execution of stealth annoyingly inconsistent chore that frustrates more than it satisfies.
Graphically, Aliens vs. Predator isn't exactly a next-gen head turner and its level design is less than inspired, but the general art design is strong, as to be expected given it has borrowed liberally from the asset bank at 20th Century Fox. As a result weaponry and spacecraft are convincing, as is interior detailing throughout the colony and on Marine and Predator armour, however character models are little less so.
The much publicised close-quarter instant kills assigned to the Alien and Predator (which saw the game briefly banned in Australia) are unnecessarily gory given that they're clearly in place for shock value and add absolutely nothing to the game beyond lashings of blood and some gratuitous dismemberment.
If you tire of the Marine campaigns and the unfulfilling Alien and Predator campaigns, the player is left with an offline Survivor mode. This is typically a Horde mode that throws progressively more difficult and populated waves of resistance at the player in a selection of relatively cramped and dark arenas. This is surprisingly thrilling, building kill combos, sprinting for ammo and first aid caches, and desperately reloading weaponry. Survivor mode is a fun addition for those not willing to sample the AvP multiplayer.
Now on to the multiplayer, anyone who tried the Deathmatch mode used as the game's pre-release demo will be unsurprised to hear that it's still awful and generally descends into mad flurries of players lining up to unleash instant kills upon one another.
While generally unimpressive gameplay also blights the capture-the-base Domination mode, the online version of Survivor ramps up the thrill factor by grouping four human players against the same ceaseless wave of mercilessly aggressive Alien bots that pad out the single-player version.
The one true multiplayer success comes with Infestation, which pits a group of Marines against a single Alien and gradually shifts the advantage in the Alien's favour by re-spawning each killed squad member as a Xenomorph. A very similar mode is made available through Predator Hunt, which tasks the single player with gathering bloody skull trophies from the decapitated bodies of opponents.
Overall, Aliens vs. Predator could have been so much the game you wanted it to be, however with the Alien and Predator campaigns are surprisingly flat additions that quickly drain the fun meter by granting the player far too much power.
The Marine campaigns are playable enough, with heaps of atmosphere and tension, but youre always left thinking that the Marine campaigns really should have been effortlessly overshadowed by the Alien and Predator campaigns. There are some good online elements, although not enough to ever really tempt the online playing crowd.
It pains me to say, but this game just isnt what it should have been.
6.5 / 10
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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