Good day everyone! A couple of months ago I decided to remember the old duology Aliens versus Predator – a couple of my favorite childhood games, and in the end it resulted in the beginning of a whole story. In the first part of the AvP Series History, I covered the first three games (including 1994’s Aliens vs. Predator) based on this crossover universe, as well as the expansion Primal Hunt. In the same post, I will continue my story and talk about three more games, the events of which unfold around the confrontation between two of the most sinister and, without a doubt, cool aliens, into which homo sapiens is trying to get in between times… In general, enjoy your reading or viewing (I am attaching a video version here):
Survival of the fiercest
If you look at the situation with the Aliens versus Predator setting at the time of the release of Primal Hunt, then there weren’t that many game crossovers based on Aliens versus Predator. But even if we include here projects based on the separate universes of “Alien” and “Predator” (of which there were VERY few), there will not be a single strategy among this list. Well, of course, what, but sculpting a strategy in the Aliens versus Predator setting is incomprehensible! I couldn’t even imagine it, but there was a group of developers who not only came up with such an idea, but also took root there, was nurtured and eventually implemented in a computer game. And the next fact turns this savagery into just a triple COMBO: not only did these devils cross the universes of “Alien” and “Predator”, not only did they make a real-time strategy out of it, but they also developed it exclusively for consoles. RTS exclusive to consoles, Karl!
In general, if we put aside thoughts about all the madness of this idea, then quite good prospects open up for such an idea: with due attention to each of the parties to the conflict, with their competent elaboration, balance, and the atmosphere of AvP, in the end we could get a rather interesting and unusual product. But this is only in theory. Alien versus Predator: Extinction, released in 2003 on PlayStation 2 and Xbox, like nothing else, it showed how different reality can be from what was planned.
The setting is the planet LV-742, and if you, like me, are bad at remembering these kinds of names, then… in short, this is not the planet on which the events of the films and games took place. But as soon as I thought that Extinction would be original in terms of plot, I immediately felt like a fool. Remember the plot of the story in Aliens versus Predator 2 and Primal Hunt? Take away the ancient artifact of predators, the certainty in the timelines and all the subsequent plot twists associated with the characters, and you get Extinction.
Somewhere in the indefinite future, earthling colonists discovered an inhabited planet (also known as LV-742), landed, started making fun of the colony, and accidentally found a dormant hive there, which suddenly woke up and killed the colonists; then a marinade landed there, and now he is trying to take control of the situation. At this time, predators land on the planet… For what?? As always, to hunt, and since the most “interesting” living creatures on the planet in their understanding turned out to be aliens and humans, the predators set out to collect precisely their skulls. Well, then as usual: “Weyland-Yutani” experiments with aliens, captures the Queen, breeds new creatures and tries to catch predators; predators shred everything that moves, roar loudly and try to exterminate the predaliens, and strangers indulge in love, breed and multiply, simultaneously trying to transfer their eggs to other planets in order to enrich as many living worlds as possible with their gene pool.
Can such a plot be called exciting?? Well, this would probably be possible if we had not seen this in almost all other games in the crossover universe, and if this plot had not been presented in meager snippets of text in the background of loading screens.
Every time representatives of VYu consider themselves the smartest, but in the end they become food and incubators for new alien individuals… or trophies for predators
In fact, calling this game a real-time strategy game is an insult… for an RTS of course. Strictly speaking, base building and production setup, which are usual for the genre, are absent in this game. What we have in front of us is not even a strategy, but rather real-time tactics. At the beginning of each mission, we are given a set of certain units, with the proper management of which we must complete the assigned tasks. In the process of completing them, we collect a single resource (each race has its own) and with this resource we hire (although this word is not entirely appropriate here) troops. There is literally no construction in the game at all, a certain trace of this strategic aspect can be traced in the alien campaign, when we can sit the Queen in one place and she will begin to scatter eggs, splashing dark liquid around, like StarCraft’s zerg. And consider that the Queen is the main building, and the eggs… well, let’s call them farms, thanks to which we can create new aliens.
This particular race, in my opinion, has the most interesting gameplay. If, playing as people, resource extraction comes from exterminating evil spirits and repairing lighthouses, and when playing as predators, it involves collecting skulls, and then killing too; and both of these races can, with the wave of a joystick, call droppods with reinforcements to the battlefield, but the Aliens have a more difficult time. These aliens receive resources only for killing, and at the same time they also need to collect bodies so that the facehuggers hug the faces of the captives and give birth to little breastbreakers. And therefore, playing for them, I often had to stop to scatter a couple of eggs and join the ranks of those who like to drool from the ceiling. And for this it was necessary to scour the map in search of biomass for processing and not forget to protect the queen, opponents here like to not only suddenly appear out of thin air, but also constantly attack the nest in small groups.
An interesting detail: facehugger cocoons can be dragged by manually controlling the drone
Each race has a whole list of possible recruits, or conscription, or birth… call it what you want… units. These are 8 or 9 different guys, who can also be improved. And again, the aliens’ situation with this is more interesting: in order to create aliens of a certain type, they need to drag into their, let’s call it “camp,” a certain type of body, which will become carriers of larvae. Marinade can only join the ranks next to special beacons with the help of a signalman, but Predators carry a platform with them for calling their brothers and they don’t need to bother with anything at all. Space marines, as in films and games based on them, rely on the combat power of their guns; strangers carefully manicure their claws in order to attack all non-Orthodox people in close combat; Well, predators… predators, as always, are good at everything.
The game itself is traditionally divided into three separate campaigns, each with 7 missions. Not so much, but if you like to play only for a certain race, and hate others with all your heart, then 7 missions is damn little. Actually, that’s all that can be said about the gameplay of Aliens versus Predator: Extinction.
Yauja, we have problems!
It seems that after such a story, you may get at least a good impression of the game, but that is just an illusion… Extinction has many more disadvantages than advantages, and these disadvantages once again make it clear how good it is that you missed this game. They are mainly a consequence of the game being flawed. Either the publisher pushed it, or the developers cheated, but it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that during the game you are constantly faced with the fact that your units cannot overcome certain obstacles without problems, sometimes they can even stand still due to the fact that the trajectory of their movement was blocked by another unit. They often get stupid in battle and because of this they die like flies. You constantly have to keep an eye on them, no matter where you send your troops or individual detachments, because these cretins move around the map in very strange ways and always have to be controlled.
This is followed by balance problems, which are identified quite quickly. Literally on the second or third mission you begin to understand that predators are an all-powerful imbecile (of course, this is not surprising, they are still a fairly advanced race according to the lore), and aliens are just some kind of husk. Parallels with StarCraft’s zergs arise against one’s will, and yet they do arise, and the games’ films (thanks to Cameron) show that aliens, just like the zerg, take numbers. But in view of how long it takes for the aliens’ armada to gather, and with what difficulties this business is fraught, such tactics are doomed to failure, because nothing prevents both the predators and the marinade from making a zergrush in the same way and easily killing your entire lovingly grown hive. Yes, no matter what campaign you choose, the tactics of the artificial intelligence playing against you will be the same: crush with numbers.
A crowd of aliens is good… it’s good when you are not opposed by units with guns that hit the area: aliens in AvP: Extinction tend to cluster almost pixel by pixel, and it will hurt everyone
The problem with AI could be solved by multiplayer, but it is absent in Extinction, and I think it’s clear for what reason: the same notorious balance. Well, the final touch can be considered the absence of the very spirit of Aliens versus Predator. Developers from Zono Inc. very skillfully transferred certain lore features of each race into RTS (okay, pseudo-RTS), but looking at Extinction I got the impression that it was some kind of cheap second-rate strategy/tactical game (in no way related to AvP), for which some crazy fan decided to make a mod with models of aliens and predators, and at the same time stole all the sounds from the films and previous crossover games.
In general, there are a lot of reasons why many might not pay attention to this game or even hear about it at all. The fact that it was a strategy game for consoles was also off-putting. What did the developers and publishers expect?? Extinction received very mixed reviews, there were critics who more or less liked the game, and there were also those who tore it to smithereens. One thing is clear: since then, the universe of Aliens vs. Predator has sunk into oblivion for several years. In terms of games, of course.
But filmmakers, on the contrary, were inspired by the cult duology of 1999-2001., decided to bring the idea of a collision between two of the most famous and coolest aliens to the screens. The year after the disastrous Extinction, a film was released "Alien vs Predator" by everyone’s beloved and revered (no) Paul Anderson. And after another 3 years an even more disgusting one comes out "Alien vs Predator: Requiem" Strauss brothers With Shane Salerno as a screenwriter. I’m ashamed to admit, but at one time these two films seemed incredibly cool to me, just the sight of strangers and predators made me delighted, and I’m not talking about their fights at all. But over the years, I began to understand that something was rotten in the kingdom of “Aliens vs. Predator”… But this is not the point, I bring all this to the fact that almost simultaneously with Requiem in 2007, a game of the same name was released, developed by the studio Rebellion, that is, those guys who created the very first serious (that is, not an arcade beat-‘em-up) game based on the AvP universe in 1994 (see. History of the AvP series Part I), then the first part of the legendary duology, and which will announce themselves a little later, in 2010, showing the world a not so successful restart, but more about that later.
Requiem for a Dream
Aliens versus Predator: Requiem became an exclusive for the PlayStation Portable, and it supposedly follows the plot of the film, but in this regard, the developers were allowed to freely fantasize about the topic (and in vain). But in order to understand the essence of what is happening, I will briefly remind you of the events of the films.
So, in 2004, scientists found out that somewhere in Antarctica, under a huge layer of ice, there is an ancient pyramid (note: read in the voice of the announcer of “Incredible Stories” from RenTV). Upon arrival at the excavation site, they discovered that someone had drilled a tunnel in the ice that led to the pyramid, and despite the fact that people do not have the technology that would allow them to do such cool things, scientists do not hesitate to go down. Already on the way to the pyramid, they accidentally activate a mechanism that brings the alien queen dormant in the depths of the structure out of stasis, and she begins to breed. It turns out that the civilization that built this wonder of the world worshiped predators that flew to the planet once every hundred years to hunt strangers. That’s what happened this time. Predators begin to fight with strangers, as a result of which everyone dies. A ship of predators flies to the island to pick up their boyfriend, who was so cool that he almost single-handedly swiped the Queen. And it so happened that he was the one who was infected by the facehugger.
The alien is born as a https://winxiocasino.co.uk/games/ hybrid breastbreaker right on the ship, the young alien predator begins to create chaos and the ship crashes right near a small town in Colorado. The hybrid remains alive (along with several facehuggers, whom the predators apparently transported for experiments), escapes to the city and begins to reproduce. Predators spotted the wreck of their ship and sent one of their own to investigate the circumstances, so that he could cover his tracks, track down the godless creature and send it to the scrap heap. This is where the game starts, however, unlike the movie Requiem, there is no rumor or spirit of any alien predator here.
Finally some variety. In all AvP games, we always fought in the setting of the distant future, on other planets, with futuristic space infantry with smart guns and the mega-corporation Weyland-Yutani, which in its villainous plans is trying to get aliens for experiments. Here we are fighting at a time when the VU, even if it already existed, was, let’s say, at minimum wage, and the alien guests were confronted by ordinary police and American soldiers typical of the 2000s. However, this time we are offered to play only as the Predator. In his sexy skin we will have to overcome from 7 to 15 missions, and, frankly, 15 boring missions.
One of the few advantages of the game: the predator looks great in stealth mode, almost better than in all other games
After the first introductory episode, we are given a choice which task to complete next. The 12 tasks following the tutorial are divided into 3 branches, and to gain access to the final two, you only need to complete one of these branches. And I wouldn’t whine to you here, but it makes absolutely no difference whether you follow the first path, or the second, or the third. The whole gameplay boils down to the fact that we wander around a huge labyrinthine map, exterminate strangers and, optionally, people, and destroy traces of aliens in the form of pieces of a crashed predator ship and dead facehuggers, so that humanity does not get their hands on them. And so in every mission. Yes, sometimes you need to press a button to remove electricity from a puddle, lay a mine, turn the valve to drain the tank, go down into it and dispose of a dead facehugger, but this looks like an extra hassle unworthy of the paws of a predator.
It’s interesting to go through the first few missions, you just master this mighty alien warrior, crush aliens into meat… But when it doesn’t get any development, it doesn’t represent absolutely any challenge, and 15 episodes are repeated over and over again, which you go through without ever straining at all, it’s very difficult not to fall asleep, or not to give up on this game and not start it again. There are glimpses when, for example, a dozen creatures are thrown at you at once, or when a new species of aliens appears, or we are given a new weapon, but in general this does not save the situation. You quickly get used to the crowds, the new type of aliens is practically no different from the old ones, and the new weapons are useless. Moreover, there is no music at all in the background, and this only increases the despondency.
Until the stranger is sure that the end has come for his brother, he will not attack his worst enemy. In this game, honor is not only inherent to the Predator.
A predator who sympathizes
Even the last two missions are no different from the previous ones, except that in the hospital, which has turned into a hive of strangers, the scenery is more interesting, but even there we repeat the usual actions, and at the very end we are greeted by a boss helicopter. After something like this, “Requiem” can arouse fierce hatred. To hell with the helicopter, but where is the epic fight with an alien predator, or at least with the Queen?? After so many dull missions, getting such disappointment is not something you would recommend to your enemy.
Before the start of each operation, we are offered a list of available weapons to choose from and only 2 slots for them, but it’s worth saying, no matter what you choose, clearing the map will be easy in any case, even run through it with claws alone. Yes, you’ll have to deal with the Praetorians a little longer, but it’s quite possible to take them down without additional high-tech toys. And they are represented by a spear, a shoulder cannon (and a double one), a throwing disc, a shuriken and a futuristic pistol. We also still have at our disposal the traditional three visor modes, an auto-targeting system and an invisibility device, which, like the shoulder cannon, works due to the energy reserve. But our predator was not awarded an artifact to restore it, and the strip is restored by itself.
Shooting in Macedonian style in AvP style: only in this game the Predator can shoot from two shoulder-mounted plasma guns at the same time
For killing strangers and armed people, honor points drop into the bank account of our alien gentleman, for which we can improve weapons between missions. It looks strange that the game pushes us to save civilians. Question: why the hell would a predator give up?? When he kills unarmed people, our points are taken away, but when strangers eat a couple of passers-by before his eyes, these points are also taken away. Why!? In my opinion, the predator should not care about them at all, but apparently Rebellion decided that this city needs a new hero who will save everyone from strangers, regardless of gender, race and religion!
In general, “Requiem”, as a game for the PSP, is not bad, but as another game in the setting, it may not be the worst (hello Extinction), but it is very much for everyone, and even if you had a pocket Sonya and you missed Requiem, then there is nothing particularly to regret. Actually, this is roughly how critics rated this game: not bad, but not good either, just a mediocre game. Well, it matches the movie. However, the owners of the rights to the franchise were not at all upset by the fact that some toy failed on the PSP, just like Rebellion themselves, and the big shots from SEGA the very next year gave the go-ahead to the developers to create a new, but already full-fledged game for all three major gaming platforms (which, by the way, was why the release was postponed Alien: Colonial Marines).
Last try
Let’s decide right away. Aliens versus Predator The 2010 game is very controversial and some people liked it, but others didn’t, and that’s putting it mildly. There are a lot of both of them, so I won’t try to talk about it in some general way and will tell you purely about my own impressions..
It’s unclear where and it’s not clear when, guess who discovers a certain planet on which the ancient “temple” of the civilization of predators is located, where these powerful aliens underwent an initiation rite into elite warriors. One very well-known insidious and sinister corporation is setting up its research base near these places, where, in addition to studying artifacts of predators, scientists are also experimenting with strangers: they impregnate unwanted workers with facehuggers, and then harvest them in the form of alien babies. And this whole thing continues until a particularly intelligent female is born. Karl Bishop Weyland watched her especially carefully, and now the baby grew up, and Weyland himself finally managed to open the gates of the temple. And at this moment, an electromagnetic pulse sweeps through the corporation’s base, the alien breaks out of the mechanisms holding it and begins to tear and throw. Other experimental subjects are also released, and together they strive to free their queen. Thus begins the alien’s campaign.
The main “heroine” of the alien campaign was not even born like everyone else
The base sends an SOS signal and the Earth sends a detachment of marines to help, but along with them a predator ship also enters the orbit of the planet. With a couple of salvos, he destroys the human ship, but since the landing module managed to undock from it shortly before, the Marines still get to the surface of the planet. True, they were covered by a blast wave, which is why the main character of the Marine’s plot gets hit in the eye by a box that fell off a shelf, and because of this he loses consciousness. The hero comes to his senses much later, when his squad was scattered and eaten by acid, and he himself found himself completely alone and now must find his. This is how the Marine’s plot begins.
Meanwhile, predators also managed to land on the planet, but as a result of a collision with the Weyland-Yutani soldiers and aliens, almost all of them die, and the only surviving alien must now find the bodies of his brothers, dispose of them and complete the initiation rite. This, accordingly, is already predator campaign plot.
Well, all further events are quite predictable: the alien exterminates people and hunts the predator, in order, through intercourse with him, to bring out the alien predator; the predator, after organizing a wake for each of his brothers, returns the artifact stolen by the corporation to pass through the temple and ultimately kills this alien predator; and only a nameless Marine named Cadet tries to figure out what is happening, but in the end it all comes down to the fact that he kills the aliens’ mother, kills the predators, kills Wayland and escapes from the self-destructing temple.
Perhaps this is the only dark-skinned character who lived to see the credits and did not die the death of the brave, covering the retreat of his guys. Bravo Rebellion!
The hardest thing here is to understand the connection between each of these plots, because these connections are sewn with white threads. Yes, they have common events, and, oddly enough, they are common only for some two of the three campaigns, but not for all three at the same time, but much more often the question remains open: what is the character of this or that plot doing at the moment when you go through another scenario, why the results of his actions are not visible, as if all this is happening in parallel universes with selective intersections.
Wake up Private!
The plot of the Marine starts quite abruptly, but excitingly, however, the further development of the story, presented in complete confusion, does not catch on at all, and this is also true for the heroes of predators and aliens. Already at the end of the first mission, not counting the training from the predator, I already stopped delving into the story and just went with the flow. You are left alone, run and find the others; oh, the power supply is broken, go insert the battery; oh, finally yours! What a pity, after a couple of minutes everyone died… Well, there’s no point in making noise here, there’s another squad nearby, just run there, pull the lever and here, too, get into the composter and poke your fingers into the keyboard. And so, throughout the entire plot of the action for the Marine, the predator and someone else’s affairs are absolutely identical. That is, in essence, the story as such, any actions regarding the characters, any major events – there is almost none of this! Is it worth talking about the characters who are also missing??
I almost started to worry about Tequila, who was infected by strangers, and we had to have time to save her, but this asshole the bad Wayland did not allow the good android Katya (who wanted to become human) to safely remove the larva from the officer’s chest. But my experiences were more likely caused by purely gentlemanly motives, well, to sympathize with a lady in trouble… Well, you understand. Tequila itself does not induce you to sympathize, and it looks so-so..
Even Sigourney Weaver did not survive the xenomorph infection, but Tequila remains alive at the end of the game
When I was sent to kill the Queen already on the second mission, I was simply stunned – this is… this is a bitch, a traditional AvP boss! Well, or one of… And then after a couple of episodes, without any plot background, we are confronted with the only predator in the game and stupidly dumped. By the way, there is still an episode or two left until the end, in which there will be Praetorian mini-bosses, and another seemingly full-fledged boss in the person of Wayland himself, but he also gives up after a 10-second fight. It’s a shame to end the game when all the most worthy opponents are lost in the middle.
The campaign for someone else is about nothing at all. As I already said, there is not even a hint of a plot in it, and it was especially offensive to start the game immediately as a large individual. It would probably be blatant plagiarism to repeat the start of someone else’s campaign from 2001, but it would be better if Rebellion stole the beginning from the Monoliths game than to give out what they actually gave out.
Another negative point is the locations, and it’s not that they are somehow crookedly arranged or there is nothing to see in them, the game has no problems with this, but damn it, going through each of them 3 times is already too much. Moreover, there are no changes to them at all, you just play as a different character, even the opponents are the same every time. That is, all those shields and batteries that we hacked and dragged for the Marine are still there, but when playing as an alien, we break the whole thing, and for a predator… we also break. Well what can I say, game of the year (2010), next gen!
How scary it was once to play AvP as a Marine, the first part from the same Rebellion, and the second from Monolith… However, the restart does not live up to the suspense
But in the xenomorph story, not one, but three predators were introduced, although they suddenly appear at the very end of the very last episode. This bossfight was already more noticeable than the fight with Wayland, I would even call it difficult if played on hardcore. I wish I could also talk about the fight with the alien predator in the predator storyline, but… I quickly discovered that by running around energy-storing pillars on indestructible platforms, and using only a shoulder cannon, dealing with this creature turns out to be very simple.
No matter how much I love the Predator, I still liked the Marine campaign more than the others, and yes, I liked it. It doesn’t shine with variety and doesn’t instill such wild horror as the game of 99 once did to me, but it’s too short to get boring, so as a short, beautiful and rather cheerful joker with a hint of horror, the story of the Marine really delivers. The same cannot be said about either the alien campaign or the predator campaign.
End of dreams
And the reason is that I cannot call the gameplay for these aliens comfortable. It was unusual for me to use their abilities and features in a new way, and I could never get used to them, it was simply unpleasant for me to play. As a stranger, I was mainly annoyed by the fact that penetration into all sorts of cracks now occurs by pressing a certain key, and at the same time you need to stand so that a hint appears on the screen that they say you can get in here. And since you have to climb these holes very often, you just had to come to terms with it.
The bird is about to fly out.
The predator has a special, or rather, especially inconvenient guidance system screwed in: and it is useful if you need to suddenly and quickly attack an enemy or select an enemy to use a voice decoy. But just as an alien often needs to dive into the sewer, a predator often has to make enhanced jumps, and in order to jump higher and further, you need to aim so that the corresponding marker appears. And this shit worked so crookedly that I couldn’t stop swearing, this thing is so inconvenient. Why couldn’t the jump be left free, like in AvP 2001?? Right there, even if purely theoretically you could jump onto some object, if the marker doesn’t appear – to hell with you.
The second problem of the predator is similar to the Marine – a heavily cut arsenal. But for a Marine this was not so critical, because even in the old Aliens versus Predator you did not use all the guns presented in the game. But with a predator, at first you only have access to blade-bracers and a shoulder cannon. Then they will give you mines, a throwing disc – something that is not particularly effective in battle, and finally a spear, and you know what you can do with it? Throw. Here you throw a disk and it bounces off obstacles and comes back, but the spear doesn’t… no… the spear TELEPORTS in a second or two. But they cannot fight in close combat, only throw. Of course, you can’t argue with the “firepower” of a spear, but reducing its role only to a throwing weapon is very strange.
The most enjoyable thing about playing as a predator is tearing off heads along with the spine
In addition, throughout almost the entire passage, the predator has only access to a thermal imager, that is, a vision mode for hunting people. The mode in which aliens are marked becomes available at the very end, and the mode for searching for predator technologies, which was previously used as night vision devices, has completely disappeared somewhere. They also took away from us the artifact that replenished energy, so now we have to wander around and look for human batteries to draw energy from them.
And from now on you can no longer collect the heads of defeated enemies. Of course, they added a very spectacular and bloody system of finishing moves to the game, but a predator doesn’t hang skulls torn from the spine around his neck, just as infecting a person with a facehugger when playing as a stranger also leads to nothing and one wonders why this was added to the game, especially where does the stranger get these facehuggers from his pocket? Finishing moves also infuriated me because they are carried out slowly so that you can have time to enjoy them, but when at the same time you are fired at from all sides by hominids or bitten on the ass by xenomorphs, you take damage, and they kill you in AvP 2010 quite quickly at high difficulty levels. You cannot speed up or cancel the finishing move, nor can you move from the spot. And you shouldn’t neglect finishing moves, because if you don’t have time to grab a knocked-over enemy, he will jump to his feet and throw you away with a blow from his butt.
Aliens versus Predator introduced a system of blocks, where you not only parry an opponent’s attack, hiding behind your claws or the barrel of a rifle, but also throw him back, making it impossible to attack in the next second. A very useful innovation, and at the same time, surprisingly, of course, but bots also actively use it! To break through the defense, you need to use a powerful attack that requires a one and a half second swing, and then timing comes into play: while you are swinging, the enemy can have time to remove the block and make a light attack, knocking down the uppercut of your predator or the tail of someone else. The thing is interesting and adds zest to clashes in hand-to-hand combat. After all, the developers can bring something new! Unfortunately, this is the only innovation in AvP 2010. But at the same time, this is not the last thing we can praise the game for.
AvP 2001 is a fucking game, I want to return to it even now, but the older you get, the more you corrupt your eyes with new graphene games, the more painful it becomes to look at the classics. And in this regard, Aliens versus Predator 2010 made me incredibly happy. The game was very beautiful in its time, and even now it looks fine, but its visuals at that time could not be called top-notch, the wooden animations are striking, the faces of the characters were especially damaged, but to hell with them. But it’s still very nice to look at the xenomorphs, the predator, and the local architecture and nature. And yes, this is that rare case when you want to return to the game for the sake of the local beauty, rather than in order to relive the impressions of the plot and gameplay.
The most effective barrel is, as always, a shotgun
Partly, I understand why the game could cause so much negativity: all because Rebellion made it as a restart of their own game, and not a continuation from the brilliant Monoliths, and therefore it would be more correct to compare AvP of 2010 with the game of 1999. In fact, this is what happened, the developers did the same thing they did 11 years ago: a minimum of plot that practically does not fit between the campaigns for each of the races, and simple dynamic gameplay without any frills. That’s how it is, but in 1999 it was cool, and presenting exactly the same thing only in a new candy wrapper ten years later is no longer a noble thing. And it turns out that apart from the juicy picture, the game doesn’t catch anything, there’s nothing in it that makes me want to be nostalgic and return to Aliens versus Predator 2, which in 2001 offered more ideas than AvP in 2010. And this is sad, because the restart was the last hope for the revival of the series, but, alas, it failed, and the new AvP line died before it was born..
Even after the first part, many of you were indignant that I didn’t say a word about multiplayer, and it seems that now history may repeat itself. The fact is that I don’t like multiplayer, I don’t like online games, I don’t like co-op, although I once played CS 1 before.6 and Lineage II and much more, but I have never experienced the multiplayer modes in Aliens vs. Predator, and therefore I think that I shouldn’t get into it and talk about what I haven’t experienced personally. Each of you has many of your own interesting stories related to AvP multiplayer, how you once played with friends online, and maybe you still do… Tell me your stories in the comments, let’s share nostalgic memories with each other; tell us how you got acquainted with the Aliens versus Predator series – was it a movie or a game – and what place did this or that game from this line occupy in your gaming life.
Well, my History of the Aliens versus Predator game series ends here. Of course, this could also include games released on Gameboy, SNES, mobile phones, smartphones, but for me this is all trash, unworthy of attention, let’s be honest, and therefore I don’t want to and won’t consider them.
Thank you all for reading and watching! If you liked it, I recommend checking out my other posts:
– A Brief History of Horror Games
– History of the Divinity series
– History of the Might & Magic series