Rock, Paper, Shotgun

BRING ME ALIENS VS PREDATOR. BRING IT TO ME NOW.

We’ve seen the Predator at play already – and in fact I sat through a live demo of ol’ crab-face in action just last week. In short – he’s a lot more agile, a lot more outdoorsy and a lot more assassiny than the tank-like role he took in Rebellion’s original Aliens vs Predator. Also, the spinal cord-removal death move is one of the most gruesome things I’ve ever seen a videogame do. Even so, I don’t really give a single facehugger poo about the Predator. Always thought there was something oddly boring about him, at least when he’s not wrestling with Arnie. For me, AvP is about the age-old conflict between the Aliens and the Marines. The latter may be the most vanilla of the three races, but survival horror always suited this IP better than anything else – so Marine is the campaign I know I’ll be playing first. Bidee-bee… Bidee-bee… Bidde-bee…
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Okay, most folk have known about this for a little while already, but today’s the day official word and oh-gawd-so-pretty pictures spill into the public domain. It’s Aliens! It’s Predators! It’s by Rebellion, creators of the still-splendid original AvP game! Admittedly, Rebellion have been churning out rubbish for the last couple of years, but I’m quite sure that, with this, they intend to reclaim their crown as one of the most accomplished FPS developers in all the world. Y’know what this is? This is redemption. Information, pictures and frothing follows.
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A quick note on two two new word-pustules I’ve affixed to the internet’s mottled hide. First, Eurogamer’s new MMO channel is foolish enough to let me celebrate my beloved City of Heroes character, The Entomologist, for 2000 words. In theory I’m talking about how COH’s character editor and class structure offers a degree of self-expression no other MMO can touch, but mostly I’m jaffing off about my 4ft tall, power-jumping energy blaster. I also rope in comments from Jim and Kieron about why their COH characters warm their heart-cockles, and say things like this:

“Alright, so your Level 70 WoW Night Elf means a lot to you. He represents all your time in the game, a visual and statistical incarnation of all your achievements. His armour is his battlescars, a sign for other players to respect or fear him. But he isn’t you. He’s just a template someone else made. The Entomologist is me. I made him. From his appearance to his powers to his nebulous personality and back to a thousand new appearance tweaks later on, Ento is my proudest MMO achievement.”

Meantime, PC Gamer throws up an Aliens vs Predator retrospective I wrote some time back, this one focusing on the game’s dismemberment physics and the timeless nature of the Alien as a foe.

“That’s why playing as the Marine, which on paper seems to be defaulting to a stereotypical FPS experience, is the smart thing to do in AvP. The blip of the motion tracker, the trustiness of the Pulse Rifle, it’s like genetic memory, an experience utterly familiar and all the more effective for it.”

I’ll attempt to counterbalance my recent whining about Aliens with some celebration of Aliens.

I have only foggy, slightly disappointed memories of Aliens vs Predator 2 – handled by FEARmeisters Monolith rather than the first game’s Rebellion – so, hungry for Gearbox’s upcoming Colonial Marines, I though it was about time I revisited it. Specifically, to talk about its one moment of genius.
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