flash-hammer's Full Review: Alien vs. Predator: The Last of His Clan for Game ...
It was the duel so many Sci-Fi fans clamored for, the clash of the titans that lovers of both serious looked forward to. Sadly, few mediums that have pit the aliens of Ridley Scott's classic horror in space movie against the Predators from the movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Glover have came out successfully. The concept of pitting the two against one another originated, I believe, in the pages of Dark Horse comics, who at one point published both Aliens and Predator comics. They combined the two series into one, ultra-violent and ultra-successful series, and subsequently countless spin-off comics, toy-lines, lame movies and video games have spawned from the premise. The latter field is one where the battle has come out mostly positive, from a pretty awesome Capcom Beat 'em Up sadly released only in arcades, to the First Person shooters released for the Atari Jaguar and PC, the gaming realm seems to be the best ground for pitting Aliens against Predators.
When I purchased Alien Vs. Predator: Last of His Clan for the Game Boy, I was pretty young. The game was released somewhere in the first half of the 1990s, accompanied by a Super NES game, both of which were from Activision. Having played the excellent Capcom game on holiday in Monaco, for some reason I figured that the Game Boy game would at least be somewhere as good, a mistake which to this day I regret. I paid full price(about £25) for this game, which really never lived up to any of my expectations.
First of all, we will clear up the rough story of the game. Predators, the most feared hunters in any universe, constantly hunt for sport, hunting the most lethal prey possible. In the name of such sport, the Predators found a remote mining planet inhabited by a decent amount of humans, and distributed Alien eggs accross it. As I'm sure you know, out of those eggs come face huggers, which implant a seed in human hosts which grows into the fearsome and slimy beasts with the long black heads. A Predator hunting party descends on the planet to claim some prizes, but to their shock there are far more aliens than they expected. Somehow, an Alien Queen has appeared on the planet, and the Predators were horribley outnumbered and eventually overpowered. All but one that is. You take control of the last remaining Predator from the clan, and it's your duty to kill the Alien Queen, and any of her underlings you encounter, for not only the sake of survival, but also for the honour of the clan.
Ok, so first problem, the story, while on the surface decent enough, is actually complete crap when you think about it. Surely the Predators would have dropped enough eggs to infect the human population right? ok then, that is their prey. However the Alien Queen appears and lays all these eggs, but who exactly did the face huggers that spawned from them infect? Im being overly critical I know, especially when Im wasting good time and text that could be used to slag off the game itself.
Now, near enough every 'Adventure' or 'Action' game for the Game Boy was a 2D Side-Scrolling Platformer/Beat 'em Up or Shoot 'em Up hybrid. AvP is no exception, and falls into the category of the former, although you can equip weapons that make it more like the latter. This is not a problem for me. There are plenty good games like this for the Game Boy, many of them licensed from movies, comics or cartoons. Oh no, my problem with AvP is that it's just a plain crappy game.
Basic idea of the game is to walk from one end of level to other, find the exit key and exit, killing any enemies that cross your path. Sounds straightforward enough doesn't it?
I'll start with what is good about the game, because it shouldn't take me long. You do get access to a number of the Predator's weapons, as seen in the movies, your default attack is a slash with the wristblade, but you can pick up power ups to use his razor-frisbee, homing gun and bombs, as well as turn yourself invisible for no real reason. I thought this was actually a pretty cool way of actually making the game seem like you were playing as the Predator, not just a standard GB game with a Predator likeness slapped on the sprite.
As for the bad...well we could start with the fact that you are actually the fattest and slowest Predator ever. One has to assume the reason he didn't get killed with his clan was that he was eating lunch at the time. He doesn't jump, not as I know a jump anyway, he performs this odd sort of bunny hop that more often than not sends you crashing into an alien instead of jumping over the gap in the floor you were attempting to cross. Coupled with the fact his wrist-blade attack appears to be nothing more than him raising his arm to look at his watch...but occasionally catching passing aliens(as in those right next to him) with the blades attached to it, your Predator is not the sleek and lethal killing machine depicted in the movies, but more a bloated moron who is impossible to control in any effective manner.
What makes this worse is that amongst the generic corridors that all look identical, you will be fighting Aliens, face-huggers and new born Aliens that move at the speed of light, and hilariously do more damage with one hit that you can.
Trying to play this came is somewhat akin to headbutting a cactus for 6 hours, sure you may eventually beat it, but it's an altogether painful experience. It only has under 10 levels, all of which look the same anyway, and is quite frankly one of the most boring and frustrating games ever. You only really have 2 buttons, attack and jump. You press select to go to the menu to choose which weapon or ability the attack button will activate. Not that you will ever use all of the abilities, because chances are you will turn the game off as soon as you complete your first 'jump'.
Worst thing is, the graphics are terrible as well. The Predator does not even resemble a Predator as we know it, it's like a chubby guy in tights wearing a Dinosaur mask. The Aliens look fairly accurate...accurately like the horrendous attempts at rip-off Aliens I once saw in a terrible movie called Dark Universe. What adds to the insult is the disgusting animation that allows the Aliens to move without any movement of any body part and forces the Predator to walk by shuffling along.
As I mentioned, the stages are all terribley generic corridors of a research facility thing and could easily have appeared in any Science Fiction themed game released for the Game Boy. The one saving graphical grace is the sprite for the boss that is the Alien Queen. Rather over-sized, but it's still the most accurate depiction of anything from the movies to feature in gameplay(the pictures in the opening sequence and item select menu are pretty well done). It suffers from bad animation as well, but it actually looks good if you take a still of it, which is more than can be said for the rest of the game.
The sound in the game is comprised of horrible, muffled sound effects, the noise used for the Predator jumping sounds like someone sitting on a leather chair, yet very muffled, and the necessary for Game Boy high-pitched bleeps that drive all the neighbourhood dogs crazy. Oh and we can't forget the music, which starts out quite decent in the menu, providing a cool air of mystery that instantly turns to crap the minute the game begins, and the admittedly decent, tension building music starts as you hobble along and bump into an alien before dieing. The tension music should maybe be saved for when you are trying to build up tension. Not for the 'walking down a corridor full of aliens' bit.
To be honest, there genuinely isn't anything to recommend this game upon. The Game Boy saw it's share of generic adventure games, but this is easily one of the worst, and one of the most depressingly bad uses of a license I have ever witnessed in a game. It is complete crap, and it isn't recommended to anyone. About the only good to come of it is that the box-art is well drawn, and it actually succeeds in making the movie look good. Leave this on the shelf/in the bin.
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