Aliens Versus Predator - Atari Jaguar Review

Overall Rating

Great Atmosphere
Innovative

Very difficult

Way before the highly acclaimed PC games were released, and even longer before the universally lambasted movie, the Atari Jaguar version of Alien Versus Predator was wowing the few gamers who actually owned the ill fated console.

The premise is a simple one - you choose to play as a human Marine, an Alien or a Predator and try to accomplish your mission. The mission objective varies depending who you play as - the Marine must blow up the ship the game takes place on; the Predator must kill the Alien Queen and the Alien must rescue her from the clutches of the Predator race.

The game is played from a first person view point and all 3 races differ dramatically in the types of weapons they use and also in game style. For example, the Marine doesn't really have any special characteristics - you just start out with a bog standard shotgun and have to navigate around the dank corridors and air ducts with nothing more than your on-screen map (that can be toggled on/off) and your trusty motion sensor. Because your initial weapon is so weak there is a real feeling of vulnerability when a group of Aliens attacks - and the acid pool left behind causes damage if you walk over it - especially nasty if you do battle in a tight air duct.

The Alien game seeks you take the speedy form of the perfect killing organism and you have 3 types of attack at your disposal - a jaw, claw and tail attack. Killing a human soldier with the correct combination of attacks allows you to cocoon the corpse and this then acts as a save point.

The Predator game also differs dramatically and is based upon an honour system where you must kill enemies while visible in order to gain points. The predator has a number of weapons at its disposal, but it is surely the cool 'infra-red' vision effects that set them apart from the other two characters.

Aliens Versus Predator is recognised as being probably the best game on the Jaguar and one of only about 4 or 5 games that actually hints at the systems supposed 64 bit processing power. This isn't just because the graphics were way ahead of anything on the 16 bit consoles available at the time of it's release, but because of the incredible atmosphere the cramped locales and cracking sound effects create - there is no music during the game, just the constant distant drone of the ship's engines. Very eerie.

By today's standards, AVP's visuals are pretty weak - very pixellated and jerky , and the intro screens are absolutely laughable, but for pure atmosphere even the modern PC versions can't compete.