Alien Vs. Predator
Format: Cart Size: 4 MB cart (holding 150 MB compressed)
Genre: 1st person
Players: 1
YOR: 1994
The screen is black. You hear a muttered sound of a heart-beat begin. Then the creepy music begins and "ALIEN" scales
across to it's place on the title screen as the rest of the screen fades in. You are playing Alien Vs. Predator, the Jaguar version.
The first Jaguar game I ever played was Alien Vs. Predator.
At the time(late '96) I was looking into the Jaguar after hearing about it when I first started getting on the internet, and rediscovered Atari(as a kid, I was a HUGE Atari fan, but as other people changed so did I). Until that time I'd never seen anything like it before.
Anyways, about the game. You have the choice to play as three
different characters from the movies "Aliens" and "Predator". The game's story is mostly based upon the "Alien" series with some of the "Predator" movies thrown in. It takes place on Camp Golgotha(fitting name ,eh?)Colonial Marine Training Base. The game you play is a simulation of what happened to the base.
It was a routine day when they detected an unidentified vessel somewhere in proximity to the base. After repeated negative hails, the Captian orders the ship to be brought into dock(first of many mistakes). As soon as a team enters the ship, weapons fire is detected, and unidentified lifeforms are detected on Sublevel 5. This is where the infestation begins.
Almost immediately, they begin sending out a distress signal.
Soon afterwards, another unidentfied ship enters range, but heads straight for the station, overrides the computer, and docks into the bay at Sublevel 1. If things were looking bad before, they were just getting worse.
You can be the Alien, the Predator, or lunch(j/k, the Marine) . I'll try to give a good description of each scenario.
Alien
As the Alien, it is your job to release the Alien Queen from captivity, who has been kidnapped by the Predators. The Alien is very fast, and has three forms of attack; claw, double-jaw(bite), and it's tail. The jaw attack is the most lethal, killing humans with one bite, and Predators in three(quite a mouthfull there). You can cocoon humans too! This is a pretty cool feature in the game. Because the Alien is unable to heal itself, the only preservation it has is too create other little Aliens like yourself. You can cocoon up to three humans at a time. You can watch their progress as well on your HUD. It starts as a little one cell egg and multiplies until it forms into a full grown Alien. When you die, the first Alien you have ready(if it's full grown) will start where you cocooned the Alien. This is helpful at times.
As the Alien, you can't use the elevators however, as the Marines have jammed them to keep others like yourself from further infesting the base. This make it so you have to crawl through the airducts to get to where you need. This scenraio has it's considerable difficultly to it(although not as hard as the Marine's).
Marine
When you start as the Marine, you find yourself alone, with no guns, and no idea of what's going on as you find a dead marine
outside your cell. You had just came out of hybersleep as you fully completed your sentence for striking a superior officer. Fortunately, you find a shotgun off the marine outside your cell, so your not completely defenseless.
In this scenario, you follow more of a storyline of what went on before you awakened through entry logs within the ships computers. I won't spoil it for those of you who have yet to play
the game though, hehe=)
This scenario is the hardest of all three scenarios. I believe it's the best one however. No one else has the smartgun, hehe.
Predator
The Predators came to the base because of the distress call. But what they found was more than they were looking for. Infested eveywhere within the ship are the fiercest and most lethal warriors in the galaxy. To hunt and kill them would mean more honor than the average Predator could imagine. The ship is full of youthful Predators however, perfect chance for training and gaining honor. Your main objective as the Predator is to gain honor, and to ultimately capture the Alien Queen.
While this is the easiest scenario(that is, for me anyways, individual results may vary ;), it has a lot of cool things to it. One of them is the ability to make yourself invisible! And while your invisible, you can change to different visions as well. These effects are stunning. Remember that if you kill while invisible, you will lose honor points. And if you lose honor points, that keeps you from getting really cool weapons, such as
the Combi-Stick, the Smart Disc, and my personal favorite, the Shoulder Cannon.
Rankings!
Graphics- A+ - These graphics amazed myself(and many others) the first time, and they still do to this day. The game engine is like the Jag version of Wolf 3D on acid. The enemies have been digitized well, and are very detailed. Over 65,000 colors, transparencies, and a high resoultion are there too. I don't see why anyone complained that objects get to pixellated when up close(GamePro for example) because it's really not that bad. It's a lot less noticeable than pixellization you see on games like Quake.
Sound- A+!
- The sounds of the game are unbelievable. Some are taken from the Alien and Predator movies. And they sound just like them to, in crystal clarity. The Predator's whispers add a more frightening effect to the game, especially when you have a motion tracker(beep, beep, beep, hehe). The marine's comments when you pick up guns (such as "I'll tell ya about killin'" and "You can run but you can't hide") are really cool as well. Showcase sound engine I believe.
Control-
B+! - This is because it can be a little hard to grasp for some at first, especially if you're the Marine. It's really well-balanced however, and is very responsive.
Fun Factor- A+! - Hello? How can't this game be fun? It has a very high replay value, even for those of us who have practically memorized the levels. It's really fun to play in the dark, it'll scare the crap out of ya.
By Adam Pratt
Graphics- A+ - These graphics amazed myself(and many others) the first time, and they still do to this day. The game engine is like the Jag version of Wolf 3D on acid. The enemies have been digitized well, and are very detailed. Over 65,000 colors, transparencies, and a high resoultion are there too. I don't see why anyone complained that objects get to pixellated when up close(GamePro for example) because it's really not that bad. It's a lot less noticeable than pixellization you see on games like Quake.
Sound- A+!
- The sounds of the game are unbelievable. Some are taken from the Alien and Predator movies. And they sound just like them to, in crystal clarity. The Predator's whispers add a more frightening effect to the game, especially when you have a motion tracker(beep, beep, beep, hehe). The marine's comments when you pick up guns (such as "I'll tell ya about killin'" and "You can run but you can't hide") are really cool as well. Showcase sound engine I believe.
Fun Factor- A+! - Hello? How can't this game be fun? It has a very high replay value, even for those of us who have practically memorized the levels. It's really fun to play in the dark, it'll scare the crap out of ya.