Aliens versus Predator is a 1999 3D First-Person Shooter for PC, developed by Rebellion, who had previously made the 1994 Alien vs. Predator for the Atari Jaguar. The game has 3 separate campaigns in which you play as either a Colonial Marine, Predator, or Xenomorph. Each campaign consists of 5 story levels and 5 bonus levels inspired by various settings from the Alien and Predator films.
In 2000, an Updated Re Release "Gold Edition" of the game was released, which added pistol, dual pistols, and a skeeter launcher weapon to the Marine campaign, as well as replacing the live-action in-game FMV cutscenes with new ones with slightly higher production values and starring the development staff at Rebellion. This version of the game was re-released digitally on Steam and Gog.com in 2010 as Aliens versus Predator Classic 2000, with code tweaks to allow it to run smoothly on modern systems with modern resolutions, just a few months before the release of the 7th gen Aliens vs. Predator (2010) video game, also by Rebellion.
This game contains examples of:
- Air-Vent Passageway: The Alien will be doing a lot of crawling around through the vents to get around locked doors and other obstacles as well as to ambush humans. The Predator will also be doing their share of cutting through the air vent systems to bypass locked doors.
- Anti-Frustration Features: The enemy Aliens are much noisier here than they ever were in the films or other games, constantly shrieking and growling whenever they appear, basically to give you a heads-up that they've spotted you and are on the attack. Given how fast and deadly they are as it is, making them as silent and stealthy as they are in canon too wouldn't have been even remotely fair for the player.
- Awesome, but Impractical:
- The rocket launcher and (in the Gold Edition) skeeter launcher are slow-to-reload, single-shot weapons that fire a powerful explosive rocket that deals heavy damage with a large blast radius. Impressive, but not generally useful in a game where 99% of your enemies have low health but are extremely fast and deadly and can close to melee range within a second or two of appearing. Even the Predaliens and Praetorians move too fast for the rocket launcher to be practical against them. The launchers mostly exist for you to instantly delete a Predator or Xenoborg that gets in your way. Fortunately, since the game does not have a Limited Loadout, carrying one around is simply a case of "better to have it and not need it rather than need it and not have it".
- The physics and graphics of the flame effects of the Marine's flamethrower were very impressive for 1999, but not very useful in combat since they only set enemies on fire instead of dealing direct damage, and Aliens can run around for several seconds while on fire before dying, during which they can still attack you. Predators, meanwhile, can extinguish themselves with their wrist device. The flamethrower is mostly only useful for killing facehuggers since it disables their leap attack and the wide arc makes it easier to hit them since they move so fast.
- Bullet Time: The "John Woo Mode" unlockable cheat causes the game to go into slow motion whenever an enemy attacks you, creating this effect.
- Cheat Code:
- The game has various unlockable cheat modes that are earned by accomplishing certain tasks (such as beating a level in under 4.5 minutes or using only 20 shots) and can be used to replay levels with various effects, such as enemies on fire, Bullet Time, making all enemies lose their legs, etc.
- Being an earlier PC game, there are also developer debug commands which can be used for various effects. Besides the standard god mode, all weapons, etc. you can also spawn in Marines, Aliens, and Predators into a level and have them all fight each other.
- Convenient Misfire: The pulse rifle and smartgun will periodically jam during firing; it really sucks when this happens while a xenomorph is bearing down on you.
- Cyborg: The Xenoborg is an attempt by Weyland-Yutani to weaponize the xenomorphs by converting them into armored cyborgs. The result is equipped with dual beam cannons that can cut you apart in a split-second, and heavy armor that can withstand insane amounts of damage unless you use a rocket launcher or target a glowing red weak spot on their head, but moves at a snail's pace and loses most of the natural advantages of the xenomorphs.
- Developer's Foresight: Synths can reload their weapons one-handed if you cut off one of their arms.
- Downer Ending: The Alien and Predator come out of their campaign winners, while the Marine manages to eject the Alien Queen into space, but is still stuck aboard an Alien-infested ship with no means of escape after being abandoned by the Company-controlled USMC.
- Drought Level of Doom: In the Predator campaign, the 3rd mission, Vaults, has no energy refills when playing on Hard/Director's Cut difficulty, except for one in an out of the way location near the very end of the level, which means you'll have to fight your way through the entire level without any opportunity to restore your energy. This is also the first mission in which you fight Aliens, who are much more aggressive, relentless, and dangerous than Marines.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: This game came from the Doom/Quake era of First Person Shooters and as a result has some gameplay elements from that era which can be jarring by modern standards. Most notably, the Marine character's normal movement speed is about 25 mph, with the aliens being even faster to be balanced. Running down the corridors of LV-426 at the same speed as a car on a commercial road, while battling enemies moving at similar speeds, does break immersion a little. You also can't reload your weapon in the middle of a magazine.
- Emergency Weapon: If you run out of all for all your weapons as the Marine, you can still use your empty pulse rifle as a club. If you have full health and armor, you might be able to kill one or two xenomorphs this way, but since they massively outclass you in melee, at this point you're pretty much screwed anyway.
- Enemy-Detecting Radar: The Marine has a motion tracker in their HUD, though it's disabled while in night-vision mode, and not particularly useful even normally, as it often pings enemies that aren't actually immediately near you, especially on vertical multi-story levels. What it mostly does is let you know you're surrounded by Aliens, which you knew already, and since enemies respawn you'll always be surrounded by Aliens.
- Excuse Plot: Unlike Aliens vs. Predator 2 or Aliens vs. Predator (2010), this game doesn't really have an overarcing story in any of the campaigns (other than the player going from one location to another fighting enemies), and is more about creating a scenario that evokes the feel of the films without going into specific plot details.
- Final Boss: The Alien Queen serves as the final opponent for the Marine and Predator, while the Alien fights a pair of Predators (fortunately, not at the same time) at the end of Gateway Station above Earth.
- Fragile Speedster: Aliens can't take much damage, but move at ludicrious speed and can move along walls and ceilings.
- Game-Breaking Bug: In Aliens vs Predator Classic 2000 on Steam, the game crashes to desktop without saving your progress when you finish the Tyrargo level, preventing you from advancing further in the game. This happens because the Rebellion coding used to port the game to modern OS systems was done in a hurry, and used lots of bit and pieces from an earlier fan-made port without testing. The bug can be gotten around by pressing ESC to restart the mission instead of any key to continue, at which point it will save your progress.
- Game Mod: Aliens versus Predator Classic Redux is a massive graphics mod for the digital Classic 2000 version of the game, overhauling the game's graphics with HD textures and models, making it appear several years more current than its original 1999 release. It also has more movie-accurate weapon sounds, slightly larger Aliens and Predators to be more in line with the scale in the films, and makes some small level changes such as adding friendly Marines to the beginning of the 3rd and 4th Marine levels (which is a largely cosmetic change since they get killed fairly quickly). Probably the most major change is it changes the Xenoborgs into Exosuits with cyborg Predator heads, which are much more durable than the original Xenoborgs. It includes an optional mod that replaces the Large Ham live-action cutscenes featuring the Rebellion staff with more serious redos of the cutscenes. The one drawback of the mod is that the game almost always crashes at the end of each level since the amount of textures and polygons loaded into memory is way more than the engine was ever designed to handle; as a result, you need an already completed save file before installing the mod if you want to be able to select every level with it.
- Gatling Good: The Marine's minigun cannot be fired while moving (attempting to do so causes your aim to shoot straight up into the ceiling), but it fires powerful armor-piercing bullets at an insane rate of fire, and can shred all Boss in Mook's Clothing enemies (Predators, Xenoborgs, Predaliens, and Praetorians) with just a second of sustained fire. It also doesn't have any spin-up time, though again you have to be careful not to shoot until you stop moving.
- Glass Cannon:
- The player Marine dies after only a handful of hits even with full armor and health, but packs an arsenal of extremely powerful More Dakka weaponry that in many ways outclasses the higher-tech but more deliberate weapons used by the Predator.
- Marines with miniguns go down just as quickly as any other human, but they can shred even a Predator in just a second or so of fire.
- Guns Akimbo: The Gold edition gives the Marine a cool new pair of pistols, that pretty much do fuck-all against the enemies he faces (they can kill Aliens with headshots or several body shots and dismember slightly better than the pulse rifle, but otherwise are inferior to the pulse rifle in every way due to the lower rate of fire and reduced magazine capacity). Also included: a goofy, if logical reload sequence that takes an extraordinary amount of time - the pistols attach together, simultaneously drop their magazines, are reloaded simultaneously with a pair of magazines, and are then separated.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: The Alien heals by headbiting enemies, and can also restore a small amount of health from eating their dead bodies.
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Training = Easy, Realistic = Medium, Director's Cut = Hard.
- Imported Alien Phlebotinum: The skeeter launcher in the gold edition appears to be a rocket launcher modified with Predator smart disc technology to fire a bouncing disc that ricochets off walls several times before exploding.
- Incendiary Exponent: Being set on fire does nothing to stop Xenomorphs from continuing to attack you, and when they finally die from the flames they'll explode into a huge cloud of acid and fire right in your face. Predators, in contrast, will run off for a couple seconds to extinguish themselves using their suit's built-in anti-fire systems. Just about the only opponent that is neutralized immediately by being set on fire are the facehuggers, which are unable to attack while on fire.
- Invisibility Cloak: The Predator has their signature Visible Invisibility cloaking device. However, it automatically turns off if you attack with any weapon other than the wristblades or shoulder cannon. Cloaking also uses up a moderate amount of energy, while remaining cloaked slowly uses a small amount of energy. In keeping with the films, the Predator's cloak has Visible Invisibility, and doesn't let you sneak past enemies, but merely makes them take longer to spot you at long range.
- Invisibility with Drawbacks: Simply activating the Predator's cloak uses up a small burst of energy, so you can't decloak between shots then recloak like you could in the Jaguar game or in Crysis, as doing so will drain energy inefficiently. The cloak also uses up a small amount of energy to maintain (and obviously your energy doesn't regenerate while it's active), and demonstrates Visible Invisibility, so it doesn't completely hide you from enemies even at long range, but merely makes them take longer to notice and shoot you. Firing any weapon other than the wristblades or plasmacaster will automatically decloak you. Also, Aliens see right through it with their pheremone vision.
- King Mook: Predaliens and Praetorians are a lot tougher than regular Aliens (each requiring a few dozen pulse rifle rounds to bring down), while still being fast and maneuverable enemies. However, the Predalien is a bit slower than the regular Aliens, and the Praetorian is too heavy to crawl on walls. They both also deal very heavy damage and can kill you in just a couple of leaps.
- Kung Fu-Proof Mook: Synths are civilian-class (similar to Ash or Bishop), and thus aren't as heavily armed or gung ho as the Marines, but have a number of advantages over human enemies; they don't feel fear and will never panic, they don't show up in the Alien's pheremone vision or Predator's human-detecting vision mode, and the Alien cannot headbite or eat them for health. They also often carry shotguns, which can still deal good damage at close-range, especially against the frailer Alien.
- Large Ham: The game's original live-action cutscene actors at least tried to give a straight-faced performance. The replacement cutscenes from the "Gold Edition" or "Classic 2000" version instead have the Rebellion staff completely chewing the scenery.
- Lightning Bruiser: The Predator player is fast, can take a lot of hits, is immune to acid damage, is equipped with an assortment of powerful high-tech weaponry, and can spend energy at any time to heal themselves. Their only real weakness is all their technology is dependent on energy, which recharges very slowly or can be refilled with energy charges found throughout the level.
- Luck-Based Mission: When you start a mission, the exact locations and preplaced enemies are randomized, (in addition to the random nature of the enemies that will constantly spawn in) this is especially egregious for the Predator and Alien, where instant-kill chaingun Marines are sometimes randomzied while the Marine will sometimes have an near-continous horde of Xenomorphs on him, which can be bad if you're in a corner.
- Mêlée à Trois: Humans, Aliens, and Predators will battle each other in a 3-way fight. In the Predator campaign, this is most noticeable in the bonus levels, particularly the 2nd bonus level which is a running fight between humans and escaping xenomorphs inside a research lab. There are also the occasional Xenoborgs, which are hostile to all factions.
- Mighty Glacier:
- NPC Predators are quite a bit slower than Aliens, though they still move at a brisk jog. This is most noticeable on the ones armed only with combisticks/wristblades instead of a plasmacaster or shock pistol. However, they can take quite a lot of gunfire before going down (requiring almost a full 99 round mag of pulse rifle fire or several rifle grenades to bring to their knees) unless you use the rocket launcher or minigun.
- Xenoborgs walk at about the same speed as a slug, but they're very heavily armored and equipped with dual beam cannons that can melt you in less than a second.
- More Dakka: The Marine specializes in powerful, high-rate-of-fire full auto weaponry, in contrast to the Predator who carries harder-hitting, more damaging single-shot high-tech weaponry that requires more precision due to lower rate of fire and dependence on energy.
- Night-Vision Goggles: The Marine has a grainy, monochrome green pair of goggles. Because they're light amplifiers, any light source could be blinding (including the muzzle flash of your guns). The Predator's alternate vision modes could also count. The PredTech vision mode in particular is mostly only useful for brightening very dark areas, since you're not going to be fighting any enemy Predators in the campaign.
- Praetorian Guard: Praetorians typically appear near where the Alien Queen is currently nesting; in the Marine campaign they appear in the 2nd half of Tyrargo just before the hangar boss fight with the Queen, and in the Predator campaign they appear around Fury 161 and in the 2nd half of Caverns just before the Queen Final Boss fight.
- Puzzle Boss: The Alien Queen fought at the end of the Marine campaign is technically killable, but you're not given nearly enough ammo to do so (it takes several thousand rounds of pulse rifle fire to kill her). Instead, you have to find a way to use controls found around the environment to flush her out into space. You can kill her by using cheats to give yourself more ammo, but this causes the game to glitch once she runs out of health.
- Ranged Emergency Weapon: The Pistol fills this role, it was mainly added since Specialist Marines can only carry their starting weapon in MP, so (with the default server settings) all Specialist Marines now start with a single weak infinite ammo pistol so they're not defenseless if their primary runs out of ammo (Replacing them inexplicably having a Pulse Rifle that they could only use for melee attacks if they run out of ammo completely, which returns if these options are disabled.), in the campaign, it has limited ammo and has to be found but comes with 9 spare magazines for if the Marine finds himself out of ammo for his other weapons.
- Remixed Level: Each campaign has 5 bonus levels consisting of remixed versions of levels from the other two campaigns, redesigned for the new character. For example, in their bonus levels the Marine and Predator receive a jetpack and grappling hook, respectively, so they can navigate levels which were designed for the wall-crawling Alien.
- Respawning Enemies: Enemies continue to respawn as long as you remain inside the level. The fact you could never safely clear a room and thus had to keep moving to avoid being eaten is part of what makes the Marine campaign so terrifying and the Alien/Predator campaigns will still require you to keep aware of respawning Marines, who can also get the drop on you if you're not careful, though not as frequent as the Marine campaign.
- Road Runner PC: Even the Marine moves at about 22-25 miles per hour (not a sprint, that's their default movement speed). The player Predator moves at comparable speed and the Alien is even faster. This game was made back when insanely fast player speed was the norm (i.e. Doomguy's running speed being the same as a car on the freeway). Notably, in Rebellion's previous Alien vs. Predator FPS for the Atari Jaguar the player movement speed for all 3 characters was much more realistic.
- Save-Game Limits: The original version of the game did not allow saving. A downloadable patch provided limited saves per level (9 on Training, 4 on Realistic, 2 on Director's Cut), and there's either a configuration file or command line parameter to enable unlimited saves.
- Taking You with Me: NPC Predators will drop to their knees when critically injured and start activating their self-destruct on their wrist computer. You need to quickly kill them before they finish, or else they'll laugh and explode with the force of a small nuke, killing everything on the level (including yourself).
- Unique Enemy:
- Predaliens are very rare in single-player, only 1 appears in the Predator campaign and 1 in the Marine campaign. A few also appear in the bonus levels, and they appear regularly in Swarm mode.
- There only seems to be 1 Predator armed with an energy pistol, encountered in the 4th level in the Marine campaign. He's not even on the main path, but is hanging out in a bathroom off to the side.
- Unusable Enemy Equipment: Civilians and synthetics are equipped with pistols, shotguns, and molotov cocktails. The Marine cannot use any of these weapons. The Gold Edition does add a different pistol, designed after the Colt. 45 1911, to the Marine's arsenal.
