Aliens vs Predator 2010

  I had no idea there were so many games in the Alien universe, 61 so far, starting from 1982! Like four games for every movie, although that also counts expansions of existing games. The fact that they have very similar names doesn't help. And these are the official games. There is an Alien based board game from 1979! Age 7+ LOL! Gotta love the '70s!

  Aliens vs. Predator 2010 is visually impressive, but it's basically a first person shooter. And you don't feel any satisfaction in terms of story, except when playing the Marine. I actually played the original AvP game, the one with the ridiculous graphics from 1993 - at least I think it was that one, it was a long time ago. Anyway, that game made you feel different when playing the various species: you got the special field of view of the alien, the speed and wall crawling, the almost sensual way in which it would embrace its victims, relish in their terror, then bite their heads off. You can probably guess that was my favorite to play. Anyway, this is lacking from this game. 17 years later the story and visuals are amazing, the actual feel is gone. A personal peeve of mine.

  The story is another Weyland-Yutani installation that is overrun by xenomorphs, you have to escape from and that explodes at the end. This Weyland guy sucks when it comes to work safety, huh? Anyway, I liked that it kind of explained what happened with Karl Bishop Weyland. Spoilers: he had cancer, so he uploaded himself into androids. In a lot of games you meet Weylands that seem to be the real deal, only to shoot them and see them bleed white, but you assume that there is a real one somewhere. Well, it's bishops all the way down.

  There are also audio logs that show the drive of the guy. He's basically Elon Musk, wanting to achieve maximum progress, profit and immortality.  One of them says "Obsession is the only path to progress. We forgive many things to great men, as long as they achieve their goals". It's true. It's the role of the rebel scapegoat who can either save the system when it gets too complacent and its decaying, or fail and be blamed for it. Ha! I finally understand The Architect from Matrix! Rebels are not outside the system, they are its safeguards.

  Anyway, the sets were nice. There were even jungle arenas, which made for interesting visuals of aliens jumping and walking on trees. However, I decry the lack of exploration of the concept. All the species in the jungle should be infestable, right? What about plants? How would xenomorphs adapt to and then change a fully functional ecosystem? There were fatality-like kills, even if some were kind of reused for the xenomorphs and predators, which looked nice, but got old fast. And the only alien thing I liked is when it held its victims for face huggers, almost caringly.

  Bottom line: an interesting foray into the combined Alien and Predator universe. Personally I think combining them was dumb, but we're there already, so let's hope for the best. The story itself is not very complicated, this being a shooter and all, but all the gameplay and cinematics combined made for an entertaining movie.