Alien vs. Predator Review

Here folks we have one of the biggest disappointments in my game playing history. Alien Vs. Predator is a well-known franchise now, but it’s been around for quite awhile. I wasn’t even aware that it existed for the SNES until a friend of mine was dumping some games and I got a hold of it. I should have asked myself from the outset why he was getting rid of it, but let me explain for you why that likely was.

Alien Vs. Predator doesn’t really manage to show off what the SNES can do graphically. The animations feel really wooden and the layout of the game looks too bland. I mean, there’s detail, but they did a lot of palette changes and there’s a lot of repetition. Some arbitrary pipe drips in the background is about as much depth as this game has to offer. The cliff level, to give another example, is the same area over and over again as you face the same aliens time and time again. The predator is probably the worst feature of all, which sucks since that’s who you’re playing. It doesn’t necessarily look bad, it just doesn’t really capture the feel of the character, it has almost an unlicensed look. If only that were so I could give a bit of credit. At least the movies parts are kind of cool, but it just looks lifeless most of the time other than a few aliens that have some pretty cool detail going on.

The music and sound in Alien Vs. Predator isn’t what I’d really call much of anything either. The music is lackluster and rarely provides any sort of atmosphere that even vaguely reminds you of any of the films. Plus, the sound effects are horrid. Not only are they sometimes arbitrarily placed, with alien insect-like sounds just thrown here and there with no real connection, but some of them are laughable. Your laser cannon, for example, literally sounds like a child’s toy. The boss music sounds out of place, it’s just all-around sad. There is in all only one boss track for the final two that actually perks your ears up a bit, but that’s it.

But if that wasn’t enough, the gameplay is where this game just utterly falls to pieces. I could have lived with the so-so graphics in Alien Vs. Predator, and I could have even dealt with the blah whatever music and sound, but the gameplay just shows why you’ve never heard of this title. I was hoping for an arcade port (great game by the way), but the result is dreadful. As it stands, Alien Vs. Predator is a simple arcade-type game. You control your predator and move through different levels while killing aliens with a variety of weapons that you can pick up along the way. That’s it, it’s really basic and functions just like any other Final Fight or Streets of Rage style game out there. Just throw in predators and aliens and you call it Alien Vs. Predator instead of Final Fight. Check it out a bit:

Now, don’t get me wrong, the controls in this game are easy to learn and very fluid, so no complaints there. It’s easy to pick up and use weapons and you’ll figure it out in seconds. Where Alien Vs. Predator sucks is in the layout. First off, this is probably the most boring damn platform fighter I’ve ever played. There is little variety other than walk, pick up weapon, kill alien, continue. That’s seriously all you do, there’s nothing else. Second, I don’t think I’ve seen a game like this where you can use a single move and kill everything without even come close to losing a life. In Alien Vs. Predator, do the sliding kick and usually nothing can touch you. You just keep going, killing, and facing no challenge whatsoever through the early levels. Then it gets even more atrocious. The third and final problem with Alien Vs. Predator is the difficulty. It starts out freaking easy. You’ll nearly fall asleep as you level everything in your path, including the bosses. Then, you get to the cliff level where you face the gorilla-alien hybrid and suddenly it becomes a lesson in ‘first punch, first kill’ unless you stocked up on items. Seriously, there is no strategy to this boss other than hope you have saved up enough lives and just lay into him until he’s finished. After this it’s back to bore central. I’ve played some bad games, but this high on the list. What a shame, this was such an awesome license to waste. Is this going to be like the Superman game curse or something because I’m starting to wonder…

Alien Vs. Predator is about as non-creative as it gets. Not only did the programmers totally avoid the gold that was the arcade version, they just took the most basic format for a platform fighter and generally lifted it. This might as well have been Rival Turf, which is probably the most tame fighting action game ever made for the SNES or otherwise. To see a game like this with such an awesome license abused and turned into something worse than what came years before is unacceptable. Creativity to the floor with this one.

I will never play Alien Vs. Predator ever again after completing it. There’s absolutely nothing here, even if you’re a fan of the comics, movies, whatever, you’ll likely even discard it after one go, it’s too damn boring. I suppose the length would be okay, if it weren’t for the fact that almost anyone can speed run the majority of Alien Vs. Predator the first time they try it. Seriously, a sliding kick? Wow.

Alien Vs. Predator is a horrible platform fighter and easily one of the worst ever made, if not the worst for the SNES. I used to think Rival Turf was the most boring thing ever, but I have to give that game a little credit because it came out earlier. This, however, came out much later when programmers should have had a clue about how to make good titles. Alien Vs. Predator clearly was trying to milk the then blossoming popularity of the comics and other games (especially the original PC masterpiece), thinking that players would assume what they were getting would be awesome regardless of what kind of game it was. And with the arcade version out there and the ability to pull it off on the SNES, it’s shocking to me that this is what came out of this license. I really want to find the guys responsible for this one and punch them in the face while they play it, because I pretty much feel like that.