Alien vs. Predator

"Aliens take over humans. Predators get mad. Predators take over aliens. Humans take over Predators."

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Intro
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Take a rather popular game from other systems and put it to the form of a beat em’ up side scroller and then you’ve got yourself Aliens Vs. Predator for the Super Nintendo. While the Super Nintendo is known for some great beat em’ ups like Final Fight, Double Dragon, and even Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Lost in Time, Aliens Vs. Predator comes nowhere in the lines of those games. Aliens Vs. Predator is a true example of a good game gone bad.

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Story
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The game’s story takes place at a time when evil and strange-looking aliens have invaded the planet Earth. The aliens have killed many and are now hunting down many. Now the humans set a letter of response asking someone for help. Then atop of Planet Earth a space craft lurks. The space craft is the home of strange-looking predators. These predators have wanted to attack the humans for a long time, but with this letter that they have received, they now know that someone is much more stronger than the humans and that is the aliens.

As you, the predator, progress you learn more about the story’s background and more about the story overall. You also learn more about the aliens and how they’ve also planned to attack the predators soon. In fact the story is one of the few great points of this game and is one of the reasons why games like this usually become pretty popular.

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Game Play
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This game plays very identical to many beat em’ up side scrollers that have already appeared on the Super Nintendo. In fact this game looks and plays a lot like the Super Nintendo beat em’ up called “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Lost in Time” game.

The main premise is to beat the living crap out of all the enemies in the area or level. This game features many enemies in just one level. This increases the difficulty of the game ten-fold. Now enemies come out of nowhere and attack you till your dead. Also enemies constantly regenerate themselves and use to many attacks, way too often. When you finally knock down the enemies, the enemies will get back up and then constantly they will keep on jumping on you. This can not only kill you, but it can also not give you a chance to attack your enemies.

The game follows an easy control pattern and an easy to learn control configuration. All your character does is punch, a type of dash, and a jumping maneuver. Your character can also pick up weapons and equipment by pressing the punch button. However, how come at times when you use the dash move your character dashes the wrong way, how come when you want to punch you instead block? What is this, I mean, come on.

Since I’ve mentioned how hard the normal enemies are, just wait till you get to the bosses. These alien bosses provide all sorts of different challenges and they are just damn near impossible to beat. The first boss in fact hides and then appears on your screen. You must hit him when he appears on your screen. And then when you go to attack him, he attacks you and most of the time he can definitely kill you. How cheap is this?

Aliens Vs. Predator also falls to when it comes to two player modes. Why? Because it doesn’t even have any, that’s why. A two player co-op mode would have definitely been nice and it might have given you really good chances of actually destroying the aliens. Unfortunately, Aliens Vs. Predator’s only feature is a totally mundane single player mode.

Aliens Vs. Predator for the Super Nintendo is actually a port of the Arcade title. The Arcade title however, featured great fighting tactics, more characters, more weapons, more equipment, easier difficulty, tons of options, 25 cents admission. How come none of this is in the SNES port. This is perhaps something no one will ever find out.

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Graphics
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One of the shining points in Aliens Vs. Predator is the game’s graphics. While it has some bad colorization, it does however have some good character designs. Both the aliens and the lonely predator have been done well. Another way great graphics can help a game like this is by providing good hand drawn enemies. Examples for this come with the bosses and many of the 2D esque looking backgrounds. However, the missing game play detract from the experience and can overall kill the gaming experience for this game. See, another example of how great graphics still don’t do many games justice.

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Sound
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The only thing that you can end up saying about the sound is that it is just crap. The sound would have been blank and it would have at least been good for Christ’s sake. The sound here is composed of some small MIDI music and it shows just how poor this game is. Also the sound effects are hastely done and sound as horrible as possible.

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Overall
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Aliens Vs. Predator for the Super Nintendo is a weak Arcade port that gets mixed up all the way making it to the Super Nintendo. This beat em’ game also features no fun for you to replay it and with no two player co-op matches, where the hell is the fun? Once again Aliens Vs. Predator is a true example of a good game gone bad.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 02/03/02, Updated 09/03/02