HANDS ON GUIDE

And Number 01....

"I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure." xxx

ALIENS VERSUS PREDATOR

Rebellion, 1999

Many things can make a game difficult. Bugs, bad game balance, or as we’ve seen from the other titles listed it could just be a great game with a solid challenge behind it. Aliens Versus Predator manages to be something else; it manages to go well beyond the spookiness of games such as System Shock 2 and is difficult by being frightening. So how does such an old and comparatively ugly game manage to be so oppressively uncomfortable to play that most gamers will never be able to finish it?

Firstly is the use of lighting. AVP was an early adopter of dynamic lighting, and it's used to terrifying effect. If there’s a light source in the game you can take it out. As an Alien this works to your advantage as you can kill the lights and attack in darkness, and for this reason the Alien storyline isn’t nearly so tough as the human levels. As a marine you find yourself taking out lights by mistake with grenades and so on, with the net result that you spend a hell of a lot of time in darkness. Solutions to this are twofold: you either throw down signal flares which burn bright white for a short period of time or you use night vision goggles that are so sensitive that your vision whites out the second you start firing.

The second element to AVP which really piles the pressure on is the spawn system. Most games have you fighting enemies that are placed on the map or scripted to appear as you enter an area. AVP mixes this approach with a sadistic use of spawn points - usually holes in the floor or walls - where aliens attack from. The aliens that come in from these points know where you are and come for you, constantly, whether the hole is in front or behind you. This means you’re almost never in the clear, especially in the later levels, and if you sit still they will come to get you.

The third element that spooks you is the enemy themselves. AVP exploits the richly unpleasant imaginative territory already staked out by the movies perfectly. As in the films, when you see the beasts up close you can see the effects aren’t quite perfect, but in the oppressive gloom and dark in which much of the game is played they look just about perfect. You hear the pulse of the motion tracker first, then you hear the skittering, then the hissing, and then they’re on you. Aliens attack not only along the ground but can also crawl along the ceiling or walls, at speed, just as in the ‘Aliens’ movie. Not only do they look and act the part but when they do get hold of you, they kill extremely quickly. The face hugger aliens are also a highlight, as they’re very hard to hit and inflict an instant kill if they pounce on you successfully.

Patched to its latest version, the game will let you save during levels – a feature totally and completely absent in the original retail version – but you get a limited number of saves based on the game difficulty, so you don’t get to save after every big kill.

1 | 2

Latest Hands on guides

These are the most popular features articles over the past three months.

Broadband Dongles

Compare prices

Fastest, cheapest 3G mobile broadband dongles from 3, Vodafone, T-Mobile and Orange
from just £10/month