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Today we are going to look at Alien V Predator 2 for the Pc. Back in 2001 this was possibly
the first game that actually managed to scare me.
To review this game we are going to be looking at each of the 3 campaigns individually, the
marine campaign, the alien campaign, and the, Predator campaign. As each of these is vastly
different from the others. The Marine campaign starts off very slowly
with the first couple of missions having no ecounters with Aliens or Predators at all.
Instead you set down to explore a supsected hostile planet and along the way come across
a few jump scares, a pipe collapses in front of you from the ceiling. You find skinned
humans left by the predator, you even see plasma caster bursts destroy an APC right
in front of you. And yet the game still keeps it's enemies
out of sight, beyond your reach. This makes for an incredibly well done atmosphere as
when you finally ecounter a xenomorph it is quite the event, your motion trackers bleeps,
and you hear that infamous hiss of a creature coming out at you from the darkness.
As the marine you will constantly be battling your foes in low light conditions, you will
ha ve a hand full of flares that you must use sparingly, and a flashlight that can actually
only be used in short burst as it will drain power and have to recharge much like the flashlight
in Deux Ex, or Half Life. This makes for a truely sweat dripping down the back of your
neck experience, especially when you hear the bleep bleep of the motion tracker and
see that something is coming at you from just a few metres away, but what's that your out
of flares? Your flashlight energy is running low?
It's time to break out one your trusty weapons. The Shotgun will do a lot of damage but has
a nerve rackingly long reload time, and will cause a lot of acid spray. The pistol has
plentiful ammo but it is weak, the flamethrower will take some time to cook your enemies,
and the heavy weapons like the minigun don't come about until later in game. So it's best
to use the classic pulse rifle! It only takes a few shots to take down a xeno but then again
will you be able to fire in a short controlled bursts to save ammo and reduce recoil?
Add to this experience a soundtrack that is almost worthy of an Alien film, and you have
a very tense experience indeed. Each of the marine campaign levels is so carefully
crafted, you will be sent into an Alien Hive, fight an Alien queen. Fight hordes of aliens
in an exo-suit, equipped with a rocket launcher,and a high powered laser.
you'll even have to face some evil human scientists, and I must say blowing apart other humans
with high powered weaponry is just as satisfying as fighting xenos.
You will fight a predator or two along the way but these ecounters are incredibly rare,
because what human could realisticly stand a chance against one of these creatures.
All in all the marine campaign is my favourite, and the story is probably the strongest here
with voice acting and cutscenes that really urge you keep playing.
Now let's look at the predator campaign. Unlike the marine campaign there is no slow build
of tension, you will be decapting puny humans from very early on.
As the predator it is encouraged that you play with some degree of stealth, jumping
into high trees and scouting out your prey before engaging them. To do this you are equipped
with the a cloaking device, which uses up power when turned on.
Which brings us to the one the core game mechanic your power metre. Using specific weapons or
the cloak will drain power, unlike the marine however power does not automatically recharge
instead you press T to bring up your power charger, which means you basically have an
infinite supply of power. However this is balanced somewhat as when you use your power
charger it will disable your cloak and therefore expose you to any nearby enemy.
Another core game mechanic is the predator's 3 vision modes. One vision mode allows you
to see human's heat signatures. The 2nd vision mode highlights Aliens, and the last vision
mode highlights other predators. Another core game mechanic is the predators
medkit which can be used an infinite number of times as long as you've charged your power.
Despite having this ability to reheal the game does still does have some challenging
sections. Now let's talk about the meat of the predator
campaign the weapons! When you start the game you do not begin with all your weapons but
rather are given them by other predators in the field as you progress. You do of course
start of with your trusty wristblades which will kill any human in a mere swipe or two,
and soon unlock the combi stick which is another melee weapon that has longer range and does
more damage. Later you will get the speargun which actually
works like a kind of high tech crossbow, combine the speargun with your ability to zoom and
you will probably find your easily racking up headshots. To balance this your not given
too much ammunition for the speargun but you can recover spears from your dead foes by
walking over them. Which is especially fun as every time you dismember a human head with
the speargun or melee weapons the predator will let out his classic chuckle.
There is no benefit to dismembering human heads no points, nothing at all, beyond hearing
the predator chuckle, which for whatever reason feels like reward enough in and of itself.
Later you pick up the Disc which can be thrown from a distance to dismember an enemy, it
however is fairly useless as you have to retrieve the disc after each kill, and chaining kills
with it is far more trouble than it's worth. Later on you will pick up the infamous plasma
caster, which requires you to use the correct vision mode to autoaim onto the species your
fighting. The plasma caster is actually a big disappointment as it can take 2-3 shots
to kill something which is just far too weak. It is especially handy against alien hordes
you will ecounter though, as their fast movement speed make them a serious threat to the predator
unless he tries to dispatch them at long range. You also pick up the plasma pistol which is
kind of like a mini energy grenade launcher and is actually not much fun to use, I only
seemed to rely on this gun for the final boss battle.
Lastly there is the net gun which is almost entirely useless as unlike in the film predator
2 where we saw it as being lethal, the enemy human or alien can simply escape from the
net after a few seconds. There is a fair bit of variation in the predator
campaign as a whole, although not nearly as much as the marine campaign. The levels are
still well crafted and more often than not have you rely on using the enviroment to remain
hidden and to scout out the enemy. As the predator you will fight humans both outside
and, for one part of the campaign particularly, inside when you are captured for the obligatory
sequence when all your weapons are taken away. The sequence where you are captured is actually
a bit cheap as you do not have your energy recharger so if you take too much damage you
will die because you can't reheal. Despite this rather cheap sequence the predator
campaign is still generally a lot of fun, and manages to make you feel like a great
powerful hunter. The predator campaign is the shortest though which is unfortunate as
you become most powerful at the end of the game but don't have long to enjoy this.
As for the story of the predator campaign, it is for the most part as you'd expect, youre
on this planet to hunt humans, but along the way must try to save other predators the marines
have captured for their own experiments. The predator's story has a villain Rykov,
who is the leader of the marines. Rykov has been wounded, and has a particular hatred
for predators, It is not unfair to assume a previous ecounter with a predator may have
caused him his wounds? Rykov is characterised by refusing to take
his pain medication in order to maintain a knife like focus on seeking his vengance on
the predators. Although this is somewhat cliche' it actually
gives you good motivation to play through to the end of the predators story where you
of course fight rykov in an exosuit. The battle itself is actually a little disappointing
but has a great build up nonetheless.
And lastly now let's look at the Alien campaign. This campaign is by far the most unique. You
actually start out as a facehugger looking for unsupsecting human to lay your eggs in.
After this section you get to play as a chestburster and physcially bite your way out of a humans
chest! Then as the chestburster you must find something small to feed on so you can grow
into an alien drone. This section is actually a bit cheap because you have to rely on stealth
to avoid being instantly killed by the marines but there is very little space you can actually
hide in. After finding a cat to feed on, you turn into
a fully grown alien drone! This brings us to some of the core game mechanics.
As a drone you can crawl on the ceilings and walls to avoid being spotted by the marines
or sentry guns until your ready to get the drop on them. You can also crawl through vents
to avoid being spotted, and you can even destroy electical outlets so you can disable the aliens
worst enemy the air vents! How could they cut the power, man? They're
animals!" Now let's talk your attacks! The alien is
by far the least sosphicasted of the 3 three species when it comes to killing its enemies.
However the aliens attacks are so brutally efficient it dosen't need sosphication.
You have a claw attack in which the alien will swipe at his foes causing massive damage,
and killing them in just one to two hits. You have the tail attack which obviously has
longer range than the claws, but only stuns the enemy instead of killing them.
You also have the charge attack which is by far the most powerful. This attack will make
the alien leap at his foes and turn them into gibs in a single hit, this attack can even
be used to kill 2 enemies at once. Lastly you can use your second mouth to attack.
To do this you put your mouse curser over the enemies head, which extrudes your second
mouth and by then left clicking you will eat the enemies head. This attack is satisfying
but also very tactical. As the alien can not use medkits or recharge health, he instead
regains health by eating the head of his foes. Which actually isn't in keeping the films
but since its so useful you probably won't care.
The level design for the alien is good, as it really captures the feel of the movies,
you must disable electircal outlets to get through air vents, you must crawl on the walls
to avoid being hit by the marines and the sentry turrets. Unfortunately the alien levels
have a "find the exit" feel to them rather than a survival feel to them the marine levels
have, or the hunt and hide feel to the levels the predator levels have. Which I think makes
the aliens campaign the least fun, not to say it isnt enjoyable however.
The story for the alien is similar to predators in that the villain Dr. Eisenberg is capturing
and experimenting on the xenomorphs. And so you must of course seek him out and kill him
to take revenge for what he is done to your bretheren.
To conclude this review I must make one last point! That is that all 3 campaigns stories
interlink somehow,for instance the cat you ate as a chestburster you see missing from
his cage when you play as
the marine.