"*yawn* Oh look, another Doom clone......"

First-person shooters. Most of the time, I loathe them. Occasionally, there have been a few good ones I manage to enjoy, such as Doom, Duke Nukem, and Metroid Prime. Alien vs. Predator, however, is not one of these games. First of all, it is a blatant Doom clone. Second, this game is not what I expected. What I was expecting was a port of the ever-fun arcade game that bears the same title. I was quite disappointed. Despite my misgivings about this game, and first-person shooter's in general, I will try and review it for what it is.

Story: 4/10
If you're the human or the predator, your mission is to locate and kill the queen alien. If you are the alien, your mission is to rescue the queen and implant eggs into people along the way. Not exactly a gripping, emotional drama.

Controls: 8/10
The controls are not great, but they are very basic and easy enough to figure out. There are a couple of attack buttons, and you move around with the directional pad. The attack buttons can be a little slow to react sometimes.

Sound: 2/10
The sound effects are mediocre at best. The mono screams of impaled humans is just what you'd expect in a cheap game such as this. Screeches from the aliens and predators sounds similar to what you'd get in other predator/alien games, although it is quite muffled out and low-quality. Even the gun shots and various other attacks just don't sound right.

Music: 7/10
Very average FPS music. I don't know what it is about music in these horror/first-person shooter games, but they all sound exactly the same. For the most part, the music is hardly noticeable.

Graphics: 2/10
Graphics wise, this game looks horrible. I won't blame it on the Jaguar either; I've seen much better graphics on this system in several games. It seems they ripped off Doom in more ways then one. Doom didn't exactly have superb graphics either, and it seems Alien vs. Predator took those graphics and took it down a couple of notches. The coloring is overly dark and smudged. Shading is done very poorly. The sprite rate is just atrocious. The levels use about 3 colors. The only reason it doesn't get a 1/10 is because I love the title screen art.

Gameplay/Fun factor: 3/10
All in all, this game isn't very fun. You don't have a large array of weapons to choose from. Enemies are scarce. It seems like the enemies don't even attack you, they just stand and look as you kill them. In fact, you seem invincible, as there is no energy meter anywhere. I tried doing nothing and dying, but I was able to walk in there unopposed. Who wants to play a game where you can't die or lose?

Rent/buy/download?
Don't bother. Just avoid this one.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 06/16/03, Updated 06/30/03