Sunday, October 18
A classic reimagined
The original Aliens versus Predator game is one of the two FPS games I truly enjoyed, the other being Delta Force 2. The creepy atmosphere of both the Colonial Marine and Alien campaigns were incredible. Needing to use non-infinite flares to light your way through dark corridors with that classic *beep* *beep* of the motiontracker, starting to panic when you hear the skitter skitter of a fachugger somewhere nearby... Rushing through complexes as an alien, going up and down walls & ceilings as easily as the floor, to the point where you'd sometimes would let go of CTRL (the stick to walls button) and fall sideways to the right rather than straight forward as you were expecting. Trying to kill everyone using the special timed headbite attack, e.t.c.
The Predator campaign was great to if in a slightly different way, that was mostly about the cool different weapons you had at your disposal. Something a lot of people got from generic FPS games, but for me those always ammounted to bigger is better. The Predator's weapons were about finesse, and bagging trophies.
Multiplayer was fun too, with different game modes like Hunt the Alien (Called Feeding Time for the Alien) to a co-op Mission where you and your Marine buddies would have to defend a bunker from horde after horde of Aliens until you ran out of ammo or they tore the bunker apart and then you. Yes, Valve stole that concept and made a whole game out of it.
The AVP2 game tried to be more of same with obligatory extra's like bigger guns, badder aliens preddier Predators which ultimately failed. It's a game where being true to the original material (not talking the AVP Movies here actually) but the Alien and Aliens movies works the best. So maybe this reimagining of the concept will allow us to recaputre some of that sheer terror of the COlonial Marine, the stalking hunter of the Alien and that of the Bad Ass prowling Predator in a true to concept manner.
The second
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Hmm, your post ends a bit weird. As if the alien got you. Let's hope that is not it.
ReplyDeleteYour post is gripping. It does contain that excitement that makes playing games so much fun. But I know I won't really enjoy it like you did. FPS is not my thing in the first place, and I can't play horror games past the first half hour. I tried. Most memorable was Fatal Frame II were I didn't have to kill anything. Just take pictures. But I got too freaked out, and simple couldn't get myself to move forward. It is amazing a game can bring out such feelings in us.
Let's hope there will be many more brilliant pieces of amusement and delight being developed in the future. Gaming is following the footsteps of movies. It is all about bigger is better, and rehashing existing successes. But there are still great movies being made, and great games as well. Sometimes just hard to find the good ones.
That 'The second' was the initial start of the last paragraph, which now starts "The AVP2 game". No idea what happened.
ReplyDeleteThe AVP game is to me one of the best movie-to-game translations. Along with the Star Wars: X-Wing, TIE-Fighter & X-wing vs TIE-Fighter series in that they actually delivered on the promise of putting you in the place of a Colonial Marine or fighter's pilot seat.
In general I'm not a fan of horror movies, Alien(s) being an exception because the Xenomorph is simply so fascinating and plausible. I never got into the Horror genre as computer game either.
Horror is also not my favourite genre. So much so I have to admit I haven't seen any of the Alien movies from begin to end. This is not a conscious decision like with StarWars, but simply because I never bothered. It is on my list of films to see before I die though. Thus still plenty of time, I hope.
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