Alien vs Predator

Developer: Jorudan Co.    Publisher: Activision     Released: 1993     Genre: Beat em up

Alien vs Predator is one of those concepts that is literally a match made in heaven. The ultimate hunters’ vs the ultimate prey. When the alien skull was among the many trophies in the predator ship in Predator 2 everyone knew it was on. And while the long delayed movies were awful we did get some good comic books out of it. Eventually we would get some games out of it too. Alien vs Predator for SNES is not a good one however.

One the planet Vega IV human colonists find a nest of Alien eggs. These quickly hatch and the newborn aliens overrun the planet. But not before the colonists manage to send out a distress signal. Predators looking for their next hunt pick up their signal rather than Earth. Sensing worth prey the Predators head to Vega IV looking for a fight with the humans being an afterthought.

Let’s get this out of the way now; this is not the beloved Capcom arcade game that finally received a home port a few years ago. Alien vs Predator predates that game by a year and is long forgotten. Honestly it is easy to see why. It has the look but fails to be interesting with its mediocre gameplay. It is baffling as to how many of the Alien vs Predator products are so bad. How? Why was it so hard to capitalize on such an easy concept? But I digress.

The game nails the look and feel of Predator which is about the only praise I can give it. The Predator is large and can use its signature weapons like the plasmacaster, combistick, and smart disc. The plasmcaster is the strongest weapon but needs to be charged first, leaving you vulnerable. The spear and disc drop from enemies but feel powerful. The rare cloaking device makes you temporarily invincible and lasts a surprising amount of time. Too bad they did not include the wrist blades as that would have been awesome.

If you are wondering why I am focusing on the weapons first it is because the basic gameplay is weak. You have a bare bones assortment of attacks even by beat em up standards. The predator has a basic punch combo, a jump kick, a throw, and a slide kick. Even the original Double Dragon gave you more tools to work with. By 1993 games like Streets of Rage 2 and Super Double Dragon were upping the ante and making combat legitimately fun by giving you so many options. It is even worse in this game as most enemies either fall in one hit or are hard to grab, making the simplest enemies tedious. By the game’s midpoint enemy waves grow in number which makes it worse.

The combat system is just one of the game’s many problems. Alien vs Predator is flat out boring. Aside from your limited move set the game has little enemy variety. Prepare to fight the same three alien variants for nearly the entire game. I get that aliens are the main draw but seriously? They couldn’t come up with anything more than that? The game desperately needs more enemies as the ones present have braindead AI. I will admit that the bosses are cool. These aliens are variants based on the creatures they spawned from. There is a massive shark bat, and gorilla alien bosses that are extremely creative. But that level of attention needed to be lavished on the rest of the game. Any joy derived from facing these bosses quickly fades once you realize these encounters are nearly ten minutes long due to their massive life bars. Just awful.

Someone on the development team had to have realized that the game was boring as weapons drop from nearly every enemy. The smart disc and Combi stick have a limited number of uses but are dropped so frequently you will spend little time relying on fisticuffs. These weapons are a god send as they make short work of enemies. It relieves the tedium of trying to bash enemies to death, at least somewhat. But if the game wants you to avoid beating up enemies in a beat em up why does it exist?

In Conclusion

Alien vs Predator is a colossal disappointment and deserves its obscure status. Luckily Capcom would crush the buildings with this license the following year, making this game a footnote. Forget this one exists, there are better titles using the license.