Alien vs Predator is a 1994 First-Person Shooter for the Atari Jaguar, and one of the first games developed by Rebellion (who would later go on to develop the 1999 PC game Aliens versus Predator (1999) and the 2010 PC/console game Aliens vs. Predator (2010)). The game features grid-based levels similar to Wolfenstein 3-D, and 2D enemy and weapon sprites similar to Doom. The game features digitized graphics, with texture-mapped levels and character sprites based on digital scans of real actors and sculpted monster models, similar to the early Mortal Kombat games.
Alien vs Predator takes place in the Golgotha space station training base, which is in the midst of a xenomorph outbreak. A Predator ship has docked with the station, with the Predators beginning to hunt both humans and xenomorphs.
Players take the role of either a Marine, Private Lance J. Lewis, attempting to escape the station; an Alien trying to free the Alien Queen from the Predator spaceship; or a Predator out to hunt the Alien Queen and take her skull for a trophy.
It's notable for its Wide-Open Sandbox level design, with the player having essentially the run of the entire ship from the start of the game, though limited by having to acquire better weapons before tackling tougher areas as the Marine or Predator, having to find keycards to access restricted areas as the Marine, and being unable to use elevators and thus having to navigate a semi-linear path from vent system to vent system as the Alien to get to their goal.
This game provides examples of:
- Absent Aliens: Averted, unlike most other Aliens media. The med bay computer lists several other known intelligent or semi-intelligent alien species other than the Xenomorphs, including rock-men and tentacled blobs.
- Adaptational Wimp: While Facehuggers are typically a One-Hit Kill in later Aliens vs. Predator games (as they are in the films), here they just drain your health and can be shaken off by pressing left and right rapidly on the gamepad.
- Air-Vent Passageway: Both Lewis and Alien will have to navigate the web of air vents on each level of the station to get around locked doors or find key items.
- Apocalyptic Log: While playing as Lewis, log entries on computer terminals found throughout the base gives notes on how the situation escalated to its current state, as well as hints on where to find key items.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The shoulder cannon plasmacaster is the last weapon unlocked for the Predator, and the most powerful. It kills Marines and Aliens in one shot, deals splash damage that can one-shot if close enough, and is so powerful it can kill the Alien Queen in just 15 shots or so. However, because it's fired from behind your head, the projectile launches at head height and tends to randomly hit the ceiling and explode in your face, damaging you. The projectile also tends to get caught on corners, again causing it to explode and damage you if you fire from around a corner. Since the smart disc also kills Aliens and Marines in one shot, just about the only reason to use the plasmacaster is to kill the Alien Queen.
- Beef Gate:
- Level 1 of the space station, where the Predator ship is docked and where Security Key 7 and 1 out of 2 pulse rifles is located, is a wide open area with several dozen Aliens wandering around. Trying to go there before acquiring a decent automatic weapon is a good way to get swarmed and killed immediately.
- The Predator can head straight from the Predator ship to the Alien ship where the Queen is, but doing so at the start of the game will just get you killed since you only have your wristblades. You need to hunt enemies throughout the station to level up and acquire better weapons before you're ready to fight through the Alien ship and battle the Queen.
- Bloody Murder: It wouldn't be an Alien-related product without it. Killing an Alien too close to you causes you to take damage from the initial acid spray, and they all leave behind a corpse which damages you when stepped over. At least it never eats through the hull of the station.
- Boss in Mook's Clothing: Enemy Predators are a lot tougher than Marines or Aliens (they can take about 10 shotgun blasts or a couple dozen pulse rifle rounds to kill, compared to 3 shotgun blasts or several pulse rifle rounds to kill an Alien). They also have a variety of powerful melee and ranged attacks; a wristblade slash or combistick stab, a plasmacaster shot, and a disc throw. They can also cloak to vanish from your sight. When you find one, it's often better to avoid or run away from it rather than fight it. A few Predators aboard the Predator ship are even tougher, being about 3 times as tough as a regular Predator.
- Bottomless Magazines: The game was made before reloading became a standardized feature in FPS games, so you can keep firing a gun until your ammo pool is gone.
- Cool Versus Awesome: It's not quite the first game to pit the Aliens against the Predators with the Colonial Marines caught in the middle (the arcade game and a couple side-scrollers for the Super Nintendo and Gameboy came out first), but it is one of the earliest and most prominent of early Aliens vs Predator media.
- Damage-Sponge Boss: The Alien Queen has a huge health pool and requires your entire max ammo supply of Smartgun ammo (which kills even Predators with just a tap or two) to kill. Trying to kill her with anything less than the Smartgun or Plasmacaster is essentially pointless (for context the Predator's next best weapon, the disk, takes around sixty shots to kill the Queen). She's also fought at the center of the Alien hive surrounded by a couple dozen facehugger eggs and several Alien attendants.
- Digitized Sprites: Private Lewis's weapons are displayed on screen as an actor holding/firing them, while the various enemies are CG rendered models.
- Downer Ending: While the Alien and Predator both get what they wanted with no strings attached (freeing or killing the Queen, respectively), Lewis manages to flee in an escape pod, but notices they have "stomach cramps".
- Early Game Hell: The Marine and Predator start off armed only with a very basic weapon (slow-firing shotgun for the Marine, melee-only wristblade for the Predator) and have to acquire better equipment over the course of the game, the Marine through finding them around the station and the Predator by earning points via "honorable" kills. Walking into the wrong section of the station before you get properly tooled up is a good way to get swarmed and killed.
- Emergency Weapon: Averted for the Marine; they have no melee attack or other emergency weapon, so if they run out of ammo for all their guns (which is quite easy to do without proper planning) and are unable to find more without being swarmed by Aliens, they're pretty much screwed. The Alien and Predator, in contrast, have regenerating ammo/stamina for their weapons and melee attacks.
- Enemy-Detecting Radar:
- Lewis can acquire a motion tracker with a 15m radius, which is extremely helpful in telling you that enemies are around the corner, since Aliens are otherwise generally silent until they're actually slashing at you. It can be found fairly early on, located on Level 5 near the elevator you first spawn near on Level 3.
- The Predator has an oscillating "noise detection meter" that increasingly vibrates the more ambient noise is in the environment. It can be used to tell if enemies are nearby, but doesn't tell you how many enemies there are or which direction they're coming from.
- Fan Remake: In 2020, a man named Shane Ruetz made an attempt to port the game to Unreal Engine 4, as part of learning how to program. The result, available on Moddb.com, is unfinished (Predator enemies have not been implemented, you can only play as the Marine, healing items haven't been implemented, and the game can't be completed), but does allow you to fully explore the space station, acquire all weapons, and fight aliens. The remake features the game's original graphics and sprites, but running in a true 3D environment with modern hardware acceleration and higher resolution graphics as a result. After a moderate hiatus, Shane seems to have resumed work on the project, with plans to implement a multiplayer mode.
- Fragile Speedster: The Alien moves much faster than the Marine or Predator, but can take much less damage and can't restore their health. Instead, they can cocoon Marines and will respawn as a new Alien from the cocoon when killed.
- Gang Up on the Human: Enemies from different factions aren't actually coded to fight each other, and will focus solely on killing the player. This can result in situations such as you failing to notice a facehugger crawling around as the Predator (especially in Predator vision mode) because there are Marines patrolling the room. In fact in some areas, such as the Med Bay cells, you can see Marines and Aliens just hanging out together chillin'.
- Hitbox Dissonance: The hit detection on close-range melee attacks is kind of wonky, with a slash from the Predator wristblades or Alien claw often missing at point blank range. Fortunately, longer range melee attacks such as the Predator combistick or Alien tail or bite have better hit detection.
- Invisibility Cloak: The Predator starts out with their wristblades and their signature cloaking device. The cloaking device gives you "Predator Vision" and makes it much harder for enemies to spot you, but killing enemies while cloaked is considered dishonorable and will lower your score. To increase your score and unlock better weapons, you need to uncloak just before attacking.
- Invisibility with Drawbacks: The Predator's cloak makes it so Marines can't see you until they're within a few meters of you, but killing anything while cloaked is considered dishonorable and will lower your score, which you need to level up to earn better weapons. You strategy is to use the cloak to get close, then decloak before attacking. The cloak also doesn't work on Aliens, who can see you regardless.
- Late to the Party: The Marine was in the cryostasis brig for striking a superior officer; by the time their sentence is completed and they're automatically revived by the base computer, they find the rest of the base personnel have been wiped out and the station is infested with Aliens and the occasional Predator.
- Loads and Loads of Loading: Despite being on a cartridge, the game takes a considerable amount of time to first load up the game scenario, and then any level changes after using the elevator or air ducts.
- Mêlée à Trois: The whole concept of the game, with Marines, Aliens, and Predators battling each other aboard a space station. Averted in actual gameplay, as enemies from different factions aren't actually coded to fight each other (though they can accidentally kill each other with stray fire).
- More Dakka: The Smartgun is the strongest weapon available to the Marine, and powerful enough to shred a Predator in about half a second of fire. Ammo is very rare, though, mostly only found in the 2 Armories, with a stockpile in a side room on Level 2 and some in the Training Maze on Level 4.
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Nintendo Hard: Not too surprising since it comes from the era of Nintendo Hard. The maze-like grid-based levels have few landmarks and can be very hard to navigate unless you have a good memory or draw your own map on graph paper (thankfully nowadays you can look up a map online in a FAQ), Resources Management Gameplay is in full effect for the Marine and even somewhat for the Predator, and overall the odds are stacked pretty heavily against you. - Not Quite Dead: If you kill the Alien Queen as the Marine, she'll just get back up again after you pick up the Level 10 security card she's guarding. At that point it's best to just run past her and escape, as it's unlikely you'll have enough ammo to kill her twice.
- Offscreen Start Bonus: When playing as the Predator, you start out in the airlock of the Predator ship and can enter the space station immediately. However, there are 3 medikits scattered around the Predator ship on dead scientists; turning around, going back into the ship, and finding them gives you a very significant leg up at the start of the game as you can fully charge your healing device, which otherwise starts the game empty.
- Resources Management Gameplay: Resources such as ammo and health aren't spread evenly throughout the station, but rather tend to be found in specific areas, so as a Marine you'll often have to backtrack to a known stash before you run critically low on ammo or health. Pushing forward blindly can often lead to you running out of bullets and dying. The Predator is a bit more self-sufficient (their ammo regenerates automatically), but still needs to acquire health pickups (though unlike the Marine, they can store health pickups as healing energy for later use).
- Respawning Enemies: Enemies will respawn when you load a saved game, which means it's generally a bad idea to save a game in the middle of a wide open area or when you're far away from resources and low on health or ammo.
- Respawn Point: The player Alien can't restore their health, but can cocoon Marines to serve as a respawn point for when they die. However, it takes a couple minutes for a cocoon to fully mature into a usable state.
- Road Runner PC: Notably averted; the game came out during the days of Wolfenstein 3-D, Doom, and Duke Nukem 3D, when players moving at the speed of a car on the freeway was the norm. Alien vs. Predator stands out with the characters having much more realistic movement speed. Gameplay-wise, the player's speed is likely balanced around the cramp space station interiors and the Jaguar's render speed. Rebellion would later ramp up the speed considerably for Aliens versus Predator (1999) on the PC, with characters having a default movement speed of about 25 mph.
- Scoring Points: You earn points from killing enemies. These are purely for bragging rights for the Marine and Alien, but actually matter for the Predator as you have to reach specific scores (through "honorable" kills) to unlock the Predator's various weapons.
- Sequence Breaking: The Marine campaign is designed for you to collect the 9 security keycards in order. However, some keycards just unlock the door to a computer terminal which gives you a clue as to where the next keycard is, and since each keycard gives you security clearance for all keycards below it, you can just skip straight to these keycards if you already know their location.
- Shotguns Are Just Better: Averted with the Marine's starting weapon, a SPAS-12 shotgun. The rate of fire isn't terrible, but it's quite slow compared to everything else and it takes 3 shots to kill an Alien with it (the pulse rifle takes 6 shots but has a much higher rate of fire). You also can't carry that much ammo for it. Not so bad against one or two Aliens, but against swarms of several at once (which can be quite common) you'll want at least a pulse rifle or something even heavier. It at least averts Short-Range Shotgun, due to firing a single projectile instead of a wide cone spread.
- Shoulder Cannon: Predators have their iconic plasmacaster as one of their more powerful weapons.
- Skippable Boss: In the Marine campaign, the Alien Queen guards the final keycard you need to access the escape pods, but you don't need to actually kill her for it. You can just run past her, grab the card, and run away, which is probably the best option since she takes quite a lot of ammo to bring down.
- Survival Horror: The Marine campaign is much more of a Survival Horror game than a Doom style shoot-em-up power fantasy. Ammo and health are limited, and you need to navigate a maze-like non-linear environment and locate stockpiles of resources while dealing with overwhelming Nintendo Hard odds.
- The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The Alien ship (which seems to be a Pilot/Engineer vessel) is the final destination of both the Marine and Predator, and is a huge maze filled with Aliens, facehuggers and eggs, with the Queen waiting for you at the end. Fortunately, even though the map is very winding with some branching dead ends, overall the path forward is fairly linear so you won't get too lost trying to get to the center where the Queen is. The Alien, in contrast, is trying to make their way to the Predator ship, which although much smaller and less maze-like, can still be a challenge since it's occupied by Predators who are tough opponents and also cannot be cocooned to create a respawn point.
- Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Generally averted; the flamethrower fires a steady stream of projectiles and does decent damage, killing Aliens with just a few hits (each individual projectile does the same damage as a shotgun blast). The only big drawback is that ammo is quite rare, generally only found in the Armories on Level 2 and Level 4 where the 2 flamethrowers themselves are stored.
- Wide-Open Sandbox: The game notably gives you access to all 5 levels of the space station (via the elevators) from the start of the game as the Marine or Predator. The Marine is limited by having to locate weapons, ammo, and keycards (which the non-linear level design can actually make much worse), but the Predator has free reign and can go anywhere killing everything that gets in his way as he levels up his weapons. The Alien's campaign is more linear, since they can't use the elevators and thus have to take a semi-linear path from vent system to vent system in order to get from Level 5 where they start all the way up to Level 1 where the Predator ship is.
