It's a fun blaster and worthy of a download or bargain bin buy. Just don't expect to be playing this long!
Sometime during the mid 80's in the midst of a military exercise in distant Vietnam the first recorded sighting of these hunters were roiled onto tape. Out of ten or so top notch Johnnies only 1 survived. He went nuts in the end and never recovered. Now in the early 90's the Predators are back and they've brought the family!
You play the part of Lieutenant Michael P. Harrigan, who is played by Danny Glover in the movie. Your task is to save all the tied up hostages who will otherwise be blown by the evil E.T. These aliens seem to have a thing for collecting skulls of all types of life forms. Now your mission is made harder due to the fact that the Predator is hanging out in some real low life ghettos that take some courage just to look at. Your first weapon is a normal pistol but it isn't long before you run into some grenades, scatter guns, sawed-off shotguns and machine guns to play with. You can also pick up the Predator's weapons if you're lucky. These are a spear, flying disk and a net, and these are the only weapons that will kill the Predator, conventional weapons will only stun.
The game play is a sort of Gain Ground on steroids, or maybe a Rambo III returns idea, where you run and shoot anything Commando style. There are seven levels, each with its own digitised screeny to give the low-down on your whereabouts. The game has a password feature which is now becoming popular in new games (about time) and also several difficulty settings.
From the E-PROM version we've got which looks just about complete, we've seen some fairly bloodthirsty horrors (especially when the Predator lines up a hostage with a grenade!) which adds a bit of excitement and humour to the game. The sound is good with some nice meaty machine gun effects, as well as some speech to top things off. Unfortunately though the music is sorta average. As for the graphics well they look all right with nothing special except the digitized screens. First look at the game gives a crap title sequence which I hope they change, but once you play you'll find a great shoot 'em game with heaps of lastability. It has complex rounds without losing that arcade feel to it which allows onlookers to keep on looking without boredom. In the end if you thought that Rambo III could have been better if it was an 8 Meg blaster then you’re after Predator II. Keep an eye out for a November release! Let's hope for some more titles in the same aroma as this baby!
BRIAN COSTELLOE
As printed in Megazone Oct/ Nov ‘92
NOTE: Must have been on happy gas when reviewing this! It's a fun blaster and worthy of a download or bargain bin buy. Just don't expect to be playing this long!