A decent oldie but nothing special outside of the license.
User Rating: 7.5 | Alien vs. Predator: The Last of His Clan GB
I am going to make this a short review, because there really isn't much to say about this game. Starting with a bad-ass intro showing pictures of a predator and an alien in classic B&W, you get informed of an actually interesting story- you're a young predator, the last of your clan, and you have to kill off a colony of Aliens in order to redeem yourself. Sounds simple enough. Oddly though, its not. What could have been made into an interesting beat 'em up, is actually a short lived but decent adventure game. You begin with only your wrist blades- a simple punch ability that, depending on what level your on (1 through 5, the game has a short total of 5 stages), will defeat your alien opponent with bouncy, pop-slash sounding ease. If you're on level 1, it takes one hit. On level 4, it takes 4. As you go through the levels you pick up weapons such as the cutting disc, shoulder cannon, time bombs (which are also used for jumping) and can activate invisibility. Its a good amount of weapons for such a brief game, and because of the large levels and constantly respawing enemies you'll be doing your best to run and gun, conserve energy and weapons, and hitting while the iron's hot. A good praise for this would be the action is well paced. This is still one of the hardest games I've ever played, as its style almost fits into survival horror- not something you'd expect from a predator and alien centered game. You navigate large rooms with low-gravity jumps and slow, 2 frame walking. Your objective in each level is to survive, kill some aliens, and get a key to unlock a door. You have a map that helps you remember where you've gone, but it dissapears if you run out of energy. Aliens on the map are somewhat hilariously represented as T's, and to replenish energy you must find a relatively simplistic E somewhere on the ground. Its hard to tell if you're actually a predator really, because the graphics are somewhat blurry and lame. But they do the job well enough. And, as usual, the Alien Queen at the end of the game (c'mon dudes, that is NOT a spoiler!) is great looking, even if she's humongous. Perhaps the sound is one of the best aspects of the game is the music. You get one or two simple tunes (this game just BREATHES simple), but they are brilliantly composed into the little midi format that the game actually has an eerie and somewhat startling feeling to it, especially when you run into an alien. It fits the game like a glove, and truly accentuates it. Other sound effects are decent but nothing special, but this is the GB we're talking about and back then it was something we didn't worry about. So overall, if you're looking for a decent thirty minute to two hour adventure that you have to play through all at once (hey it worked for Kirby's Dreamland!) it would be ok to check out an old copy of AVP.
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