![]() Hold onto your spinal cord. Predators killing Aliens, Aliens killing Predators, and one Marine caught in the middle trying to survive. Sounds like a recipe for gratuitous amounts of violence and bloodshed.
1. Gameplay
For those of you unfamiliar with how these games go, Aliens vs. Predator is the third game to come out. Evidently since the first two came out in the 90s and early 2000s, calling this game “Aliens vs. Predator 3” simply wouldn’t do. Either way, the game is broken down into three campaigns. As a Marine, the player will be introduced to a seemingly abandoned colony that clearly has a serious bug problem. The player’s main goal is to survive while finding some way to destroy the colony and the xenomorph infestation. The player can then move onto the Alien (xenomorph) campaign, where the player will have to basically kill all of the humans. That’s really the only objective throughout the campaign. As a Predator, the player will have to find a way to recover the Predator technology that the humans have stolen while taking care of the Alien infestation. The story is a bit boring. Humans have discovered a Predator temple and somehow managed to not only release a bunch of Aliens onto an unsuspecting nearby human colony but also alert the Predator home world to their trespassing. It’s all been done before so anyone familiar with the films will feel like they’re in familiar territory. However, the combat is smooth and the characters are all well done which made up for a lot. Each character has its own strengths and weaknesses. Marines are the weakest, but have a good arsenal of long-ranged weapons. Aliens are short-ranged but great at stealth and can crawl across pretty much any surface. Predators are a sort of combination, but with some absurdly overpowered stealth technology. While some small things dinged the overall experience, my biggest problem by far was that there simply wasn’t enough content. Each campaign ended on a cliffhanger, which seemed so out of place considering how short the campaigns were. I felt like stories and characters could have (and really should have) been much more developed. If they had, everything would have felt more compelling. It felt like I was just beginning to enjoy each campaign when they abruptly ended. As I will mention later in detail, the multiplayer was completely empty when I tried to play it. So that further decreased the amount of time I spent playing this game. It was worth picking up and playing, but try to find it at a discount.
One of the primary features was the multiplayer game modes. Players could play as Marines, Aliens, or Predators in a three-way team deathmatch scenario. Supposedly it could get pretty crazy and was a lot of fun. Notice I am talking about this feature in the past tense. That’s because evidently either the servers were removed or no one plays online anymore. I checked numerous times to see if anyone was playing online, but the multiplayer game mode was completely empty. This may be different for the Xbox 360 or PS3 versions of the game, but I am unable to verify if those versions still have a working multiplayer.
Unfortunately, the audiologs would stop playback if someone spoke to my character over the radio. It was unbelievably frustrating to be listening to a man describe his fears over the work he was doing when suddenly my “guide” would interrupt to say “I told you to do this!” (which I was already working on doing). The audio file would not resume from where it was cut off, so I would have to choose between either restarting the entire file and hoping it wouldn’t get cut off again or just skipping the file completely and consider coming back to it later. I usually picked the latter. The other somewhat frustrating aspect to this game wasn’t necessarily horrible. It was just so unbelievably illogical that I couldn’t help feeling somewhat frustrated at the unbelievably poor design of the feature. As a Predator, the player can distract humans by sending a radio transmission from a selected source to a particular human. The annoying bit was that the humans would always investigate whatever the source of the radio transmissions alone. Let’s consider a hypothetical scenario. You are in an environment where you know hostile aliens are trying to kill you. You have a team of two other people with you (you’re all armed) when you hear a radio transmission from what sounds like a human coming from the other side of the street that you’re on. What would you do? You might choose to stay put and ignore the transmission (an obvious trap), or you might choose to investigate. Would you ever investigate alone? Would you ever fail to mention the radio transmission, asking if anyone else heard it? If someone else started to wander off, wouldn’t you ask where they were going? Unfortunately the Marines never asked any of these basic questions, choosing instead to investigate rogue transmissions that originate from dark corners with no escape routes. What was even more frustrating was that the Marines would investigate these transmissions even if they had already seen me, knew that I was around, and had attempted to kill me. They wouldn’t even be cautious about it. They’d simply walk calmly over to the source of the transmission and to their ultimate demise. This feature (bug?) wasn’t frustrating because it was difficult but instead it was frustrating because it was so unbelievably bad. It completely ruined any realistic effect on the part of the AI. I mean, the AI wasn’t the best I have ever seen, but their actions were for the most part acceptable except for this glaringly obvious problem. It seemed like such a simple problem that could have been solved easily, but was either missed or (more likely) ignored. 2. Parental Notices
The player can shoot the limbs and head off of Aliens if enough firepower is concentrated on the specific area. Enemies can also be lit on fire using a flamethrower or other environmental objects (such as gasoline canisters). The player will encounter humans who have been “impregnated” by the Aliens. While the process of impregnation does not involve sexuality or violence, the “birth” is extremely violent. The Alien spawn bursts from the chest of the host in a bloody explosion, leaving behind a gaping hole. However, it isn’t until the Alien and Predator campaigns that the violence reaches absurd heights. The alien campaign opens with two human colonists who have been purposefully impregnated and held captive by scientists who want to study the Alien species. As the cutscene unfolds, the player watches as Aliens bursts from the chests of the colonists in graphic detail. The Alien and Predator campaigns both allow the player to “execute” their enemies, killing them in a slow but fatal manner. The specific executions will depend on a number of factors, but they are almost all extremely violent. For example, one of the Alien executions has the player grab the human and drive the Alien’s spiked tail through the human’s eyes, creating huge, bloody, gaping chasms. The Alien also has an execution where he comes up behind the enemy and slits their throat. Blood gushes but the player can also see the human’s severed trachea. The Predator campaign is even more violent, even if that may seem impossible. As a Marine the player can find bodies that have been completely skinned by the Predator. The Predator executions are even more gruesome and violent than the Alien executions. The Predator can use two long wrist-blades to stab out the eyes of human foes. Much more frequently, however, the Predator will decapitate the human. One method of decapitation is simply twisting the human’s neck until it snaps, then ripping the head from the body by hand. In doing so, the entire spinal column separates from the body and is removed along with the head in a single gorey piece. Occasionally, the Predator will even caress the severed head somewhat tenderly. Seriously, it made me shudder involuntarily. Occasionally the level will require the Predator to open a locked door. The locks are all activated using a retinal scanner. So how would a Predator force a human to open an eye-based lock? Simply cut off the human’s head and carry it around. Place the severed head in front of the retinal scanner and voila, instant key. These executions aren’t scarce either. They can (and often do) happen frequently throughout the Alien and Predator campaigns. They’re one of the fastest, easiest, and often quietest ways to kill enemies. I ended up employing them frequently as I played.
The Predators have a somewhat similar system, except that health comes in a weird sort of pill-shaped rock. The player pulls the rock apart, revealing two pairs of spikes, which he then drives into his chest. The player is instantly healed by the process. Alcohol is clearly included in one small section of the Marine campaign. The strip club previously mentioned also includes bottles of what appear to be some sort of beer. The player cannot drink these bottles though and never sees anyone else consuming them either.
3. Other Factors
As an Alien, the player is able to climb up walls and along ceilings.
The beginning of the game sees a somewhat similar event. The temple, having been opened by one of the human / android characters, explodes into a blue energy that shoots up in a column that reaches into space. This may be some sort of telecommunication that alerts the Predators to a breach in the temple’s defenses, but this is never explicitly stated.
The human scientists that work for the Weyland-Yutani Corporation have a habit of treating humans as test subjects for experiments that often reach fatal conclusions. The player gets first-hand experience at this during the Alien campaign. As mentioned before, the opening cutscene shows two colonists that have been impregnated with Alien embryos and the subsequent violent birth of the Aliens. The Alien campaign’s tutorial involves the lead scientist forcing humans into a room with the Alien player so that the player can learn how to do simple things like attack. All of the human subjects end up dead. Execution
While the previously mentioned experiments could count as a form of execution, there is one other more obvious form of execution that happens briefly during the Predator campaign. The Predator player watches as combat drones execute scientists outside of a laboratory. This is presumably to keep the research conducted in and around the temple a secret from the general public, but this is never explicitly stated.
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