Aliens are terrifying, certainly the ones conjured up by James Cameron and let’s face it, the Predator is an unrelenting killing machine. The Marines, well, a more macho bunch of heavily armed adrenaline junkies would be hard to find in this or any other universe.
And those are the three sides you can choose from in Aliens vs Predator (we have no idea why the Marines get no headline billing either). Each species has their own strength and weakness to consider when going off into the game.
The Aliens are the melee specialists, the Predator has stealth and the Marines have range – so each has something of an edge or disadvantage compared to the other.
Game wise the action takes place 30 years after the events of Alien 3. The Weyland Yutani corp has set up one of its mining operations on the snappily named planet, BG-386 and its not long before a batch of alien eggs are found.
But in finding the Alien eggs a Predator intruder alarm has been tripped. When the Predators arrive they destroy a Weyland Yutani vessel, that sets off a chain of events that leads to the Aliens being let loose amongst the colonists with a pretty predictable outcome.
From this point the single player game kicks off. You can choose which of the species you want to be: Choose a Marine and you will arrive on the planet 2 weeks after the events described above. The colonists are pretty much Alien meat. Chose to be a Predator and you will be sent to find out what happened to a bunch of young Predators previously sent to the planet to earn their hunting spurs and chose Alien and you will start out as a captive specimen.
The game comes with sound effects that Fox have supplied Rebellion with to make sure the atmosphere of fear and impending doom is maintained and the claustrophobic corridors, dimly lit and often obscured by steam, add to the sense that danger is lurking…