Aliens Versus Predator

aka: AVP, Aliens vs. Predator
Moby ID: 1127
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Description official descriptions

Aliens Versus Predator is a sci-fi first-person shooter based on the associated two film franchises. The game has three playable species, and each has its own single-player campaign with different missions and plotlines.

  • Aliens - Their only weapons are their own body parts: claws for close combat, their deadly tail, and their inner mouth that can crack through an enemy's skull (for an instant kill) if close enough. They are deadly at close range, and can heal by eating corpses or the heads of unsuspecting enemies. They can't be hurt through falls, and an alternate vision mode allows them to see clearly ahead through darkness. Their strength lies in flexibility and speed, and an ability to cling to walls and run along any surface - allowing a skilled player to escape or ambush from literally any 3D direction.
  • Humans - U.S. Marines, as portrayed by Michael Biehn in the film 'Aliens'. Marines have strong firepower that ranges from the self-tracking SmartGun, all the way to rocket launchers and devastating six-barrel miniguns (as seen in 'Predator'). The Marines are the most familiar species to play as, with the gameplay style of typical FPS hero. However, their frailty at close range, and missions that leave them stranded, alone, surrounded by bloodthirsty extraterrestrials, make their experience closer to survival horror.
  • Predators - Their power is their strength, and their sight. They have at least four ways of seeing the environment - standard vision, heat vision (highlighting Marines), electromagnetic vision (highlighting Aliens), and "Pred-Tech" (for highlighting fellow Predators and their technology). Their weapons are the most precise, deadly, and ranged of those in the game, being ideally suited to stealth-based gameplay. Predators also have the ability to zoom their view in and out when seeking someone, thus allowing them to snipe from afar. Their cloaking ability also renders them nearly invisible to enemy Marines.

There are several multiplayer modes. For a difficult game, you can pit all the players against the horde of computer creatures (which includes experimental robotic Aliens and tough Predalien hybrids). Alternatively, players can choose their favorite species and face each other in an arena-style deathmatch.

Spellings

  • 异形对铁血战士 - Simplified Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

116 People (64 developers, 52 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 86% (based on 38 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 69 ratings with 6 reviews)

Great capture of each movie's feel, but get the sequel if you want a solid game.

The Good
Possibly the coolest "new" monsters to have sprung out of hollywood in the 80's and 90's, both aliens and the predator managed to get themselves into lots of movie-licensed crap that tried to cash in on their popularity, yet in the world of videogames, it wasn't until this game came out that a true emulation of each movie's feel and ambience was reached. Not on the original AVP, not on Alien Trilogy, and certainly not on the old NES Predator game.

The game is filled with visual and aureal hallmarks from each movie, with trademark sounds like the familiar hiss of an alien, the whirrrr-like sound of the colonial marine's pulse rifle, the predator's weird jaw-clenching sound and a graphics engine that delivers really good graphics with great lightning effects (a must since the game puts a heavy emphasis on dark locales and the use of alternate viewing modes).

The game offers three well-defined playing styles for each species, making for a nice premise in which to develop a game. The Marine is the most average character and plays like a standard fps character, with standard weapons health/armor indicators, etc. However playing with the marine will be anything but a soothing experience even to experienced players thanks to the game's disposition to put you in completely nerve-wrecking situations. You'll fight through dark corridors swarming with never-ending hordes of super-fast aliens that pop up from anywhere (like that nice little vent above you) with a perfect re-creation of the movie's motion detector to add to the tension and rather ineffective night vision aids to help spook you out. It's Doom 3 baby!!

The alien plays like an assassin-like character, with a simple interface and low health, but with a lightning-fast speed and agility, and the ability to climb on ceilings and walls to remain undetected. Certainly offering the game's most original and entertaining gaming experience, while the Predator plays like a souped-up version of the standard fps character, with additions like vision modes for every situation, cloaking capabilities, auto-targeting weapons, etc. etc. Clearly the most cheater (though satisfying in it's superiority) character to play with.

Furthermore, the game gives you multiplayer options, a skirmish (aka survival) game mode, and the chance to play the other species levels as a bonus when you finish with each character as well as an option to unlock secret cheats that change gameplay by say, putting all your enemies on fire, put disco music, give every character a giant head, etc. etc.

The Bad
As good as the gameplay premise and the capture of the licensed material's spirit is. The game feels like an empty shell to me. First of all there is no story whatsoever to the game, there is some garbage about getting out alive for the marine, avenging a fallen comrade for the predator and protecting your hive as the alien, but it's merely a sketchy excuse to tie the levels together.

Fine by me, right? At least the gameplay's good! Sorry but no.

The gameplay may be intense, but save for the case of the alien, it grows boring pretty fast. Both the marine and the predator are nerve-wrecking corridor-crawling, and sniping-sneaking experiences sure, but there's no npcs to interact with, no Half Life-like set-pieces, no clever level progression, no-nothing, gameplay boils down to just go flick the switch/get the key, exit the level, and try to survive in the middle. And the additional gameplay modes only dwell in the same concepts.

Such a throwback to the ancient ways of fps gaming led me to believe that the designers focussed on creating a near-perfect emulation of the movies, but when it came down to put that "spirit" on a game they just run out of ideas! That is why I feel this game is like a soul without a body, a diamond that has yet to be cutted, an idea without a game. Guess they just didn't have time and saved the "game" for the sequel.

Also, on a minor note for those that are really picky, there are some still not-perfect things when it comes down to the rendition of the movies, like the predator's view-mode change, or the lack of some of his weapons (spear, netgun, etc.) plus while I understand that the level design focuses on the Alien trilogy of movies due to the more identifiable landmarks (Nostromo, Sulaco, Fury41, etc.) I don't see why they didn't try to capture any of the jungle-hunting that made Predator so good. There's no jungle to speak of in the game, and they failed to emulate the predator's hopping and jumping around like in the movie.

Regarding the lack of an in-game saving option I am just going to say that the developers have some nerve to release a game like this (where it can all be over in a couple of seconds just because you didn't see that cloaked predator or an alien got the drop on you) without one, and NO, I'm not happy with the patch, stop trying to tell me when or how I should save my games, you stupid a-holes!!!!!!

The Bottom Line
When you focus so much on a certain aspect of a game sometimes you tend to leave things out, and that's just what happened to this game. They concentrated on the graphics and sounds and whatnot and they left out... well, the game!! Don't get me wrong, the game offers solid entertainment, but lacks that cohesiveness that makes a game a unique experience.

However there is a solution for this: Aliens Vs Predator 2, which does remember to include a unique gaming experience to ensure it's worth.

Windows · by Zovni (10504) · 2002

A truly pulse-pounding gaming experience.

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.

Windows · by Steelysama (82) · 2002

Get past the message-boardish title, and you'll find possibly the best movie-to-game conversion ever.

The Good
"They're all over us...get that transport here now! There's to.....any of them! They're swarming..... What the?! Why are they....treating!? Shi........" The above static-filled radio message illustrates two things. First, the dramatic, sweat-drenched tension that defines both the movies (Alien, Aliens and Predator) and the game. Second, of course, a chance encounter of the game's three sides; the xenomorphs (aliens), marines, and the predators. Although the game's title may sound like a never-ending message board debate (or gamespy grudge), these two famous sci-fi universes blend together almost seamlessly. Main changes are that now the Corporation’s genetic experiments now include the vicious predator, creating the somewhat slow but unbelievably durable PredAlien. Besides that is the addition of the minigun the marine's arsenal, and a few logical modifications. Now, on to gameplay. The game is divided into three campaigns, one for each race. Each is about five or six missions long (doubled in the gold edition, which includes a save feature and added missions for each race based on missions from one of the other races campaigns). The missions are fairly large and the game is long enough overall to be quite satisfying. They are also well constructed, properly re-creating the claustrophobic, almost maze-like environments of the movies. They are, naturally, quite dark (light wise), but, thankfully, each race has an appropriate solution. Speaking of the races, each is authentically recreated from the movies with a few logical additions to allow for fps play, but all are designed to be appropriate for the race. This quality also applies to the HUD/interface for each race. The alien interface is extremely simple (just a blue-white health bar at the bottom of the screen), helping with the natural killer feel. The marine's is more conventional, sporting health, armor, and ammo meters in the usual spots. Finally, the predator has a sort of tribal feel to it, but still sci-fi. But how do the races play? Very well, thank you. All of the weapons are here (from alien head bite to predator shoulder cannon), plus a few extras. They are both well modeled and well balanced. The races themselves are fairly well balanced, but the predator is naturally the easiest, followed by the marine, and finally the alien, with their (relatively) delicate nature, can challenge even the most experienced fps player. Gameplay style varies appropriately for each race, along with mission styles, which are strung together in a loose but still interesting campaign. Finally, the graphics. They are excellent for the era, and still look good today. All of the special effects are quite good, especially the different visual modes. The colours and textures are pretty drab, but I suppose they fit in with the environment.



The Bad
Without in-mission saves (you have to download a patch or buy the gold edition), it can be extremely tough to beat. Also, the FMV mission briefings are indecently bad, particularly the marines ones, which give the distinct impression the Lister from the sitcom Red Dwarf is your CO. The enemy AI is tolerable, but the predator tends to just stand there and attack intermittently. Aside from that, there really isn't much to complain about.

The Bottom Line
Bottomline: A good game for anyone, but a great game for any serious fan of the two movie series.

Windows · by Ben Swan (2) · 2002

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Free on GOG.com for 48 h chirinea (47504) Oct 15, 2014

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Aliens Versus Predator appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Demos

There were three different demos released for the game before it was released, a seperate demo for each of the three species.

German Version

Banned in Germany for extreme violence.

Multiplayer

Unlike most First person Shooters at the time, Aliens vs. Predator uses a peer to peer system for multiplayer instead of a client / server system. This particularity has been known to cause quite a lot of problem with online gaming, even if the game played fine on a LAN.

Predator Vision

The game's system for the predator's multiple vision modes, where they can see humans or aliens but not both at the same time, was eventually adopted into the feature film Alien vs. Predator.

Soundtrack

The second, "soundtrack" disc of AvP is actually an expanded version of James Horner's soundtrack for the movie Aliens. In addition to several unreleased pieces, there are also alternate and extended versions of tracks that are on the official movie soundtrack. The full listing for AvP disc 2 is:

1) Main Title (4:01)

2) Bad Dreams (5:28)

3) Dark Discovery/Newt's Horror (4:10)

4) LV-426 (5:11)

5) Combat Drop (5:03)

6) The Complex (4:45)

7) Atmosphere Station (4:33)

8) Med. Lab (5:42)

9) Newt (4:17)

10) Sub-Level 3 (3:56)

11) Ripley's Rescue (5:33)

12) Face Huggers (3:45)

13) Futile Escape (5:39)

14) Newt is Taken (5:11)

15) Going After Newt (4:35)

Information also contributed by ClydeFrog, Cochonou, Kalirion and phlux

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by MAT.

Additional contributors: Trixter, Alan Chan, Cochonou, Unicorn Lynx, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack.

Game added March 23, 2000. Last modified February 19, 2024.