Predator: Concrete Jungle is a 2005 videogame released on the Xbox and Playstation 2 based on the Predator franchise.
The game follows a lone Predator, who, after failing a hunt in 1930's New Way City, is exiled by his clan to an alien planet, where he is left to survive on his own. A century later, the clan retrieves the Predator (now nicknamed "Scarface") and offers him a chance to reclaim his honor by going back to Earth and killing Hunter Borgia, the son of the leader of an Irish mob (whom Scarface killed during the failed hunt) who has rewritten history by utilizing alien technology left behind during the previous hunt. Scarface must battle various mob factions and retrieve the lost technology as the player progresses through the game, as well as collect trophy skulls and complete optional missions. The game featured a number of unlockable items and costumes, as well as many references to the Alien and Predator franchises.
Has nothing to do with the 2015 Puzzle Game Concrete Jungle.
This game provides examples of:
- Alternate Continuity: The game is a What If? story that disregards the events of the films in favor of its own mythology. Although, there are references to the Alien series.
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Isabella was in love with Bruno Borgia, who was pretty much a gangster combination of Al Capone and Conan the Barbarian and, much later, she falls in love with Scarface. It seems to run in the family as Lucretia is implied to have feelings for the leader of the Machine Men, Viktor.
- Asshole Victim: All of the Predator's designated victims in the plot are dangerous criminals, sociopaths, sadists or any combination of the three.
- The Atoner: Scarface is trying to retrieve the gear he left behind and undo the unfair advantage he unintentionally gave humanity.
- Authority Grants Asskicking: Averted, as in real life this trope doesn't always apply. Some leaders are simply the person in charge, no better equipped than their subordinates and sometimes defenceless.
- Bad Boss: Implied with Lucretia, as she planned to punish Baby Blew's failure with the loss of one of her eyes and both of her hands. Scarface killed Baby Blew before she had the chance however...
- Bare Midriffs Are Feminine: Many of the female enemies.
- Boldly Coming: Isabella admits to an unnatural love for Scarface and lusts after him for more than just his "power" though he violently rejects her proposition.Isabella:...You are the father of Neonopolis... as I am its mother. Can't you see why I brought you here, like a flower brings a bee? We only had that one night, but I never did get over you.Scarface (through a distorted audio recording): I promised you a night to remember baby. Didn't I promise?!
- Cluster F-Bomb
- Continuity Nod: Isabella Borgia is known by her codename, MOTHER, a reference to the computer system used in the original Alien. As is Lucretia after Isabella's death. King Willie and Weyland/Yutani are also mentioned.
- Corporate Samurai: Lucretia has three that serve her personally. They team up with Scarface to fight Hunter after Hunter kills Lucretia.
- Cosmetic Award: Players can unlock various costumes by completing specific objectives in certain missions.
- Crapsack World: Neonopolis makes Basin City look tame. There are zones where the police refuse to accept emergency calls from, even if other emergency vehicles are in trouble! Criminal gangs and organised crime are rife with all sorts of crime taking place in broad daylight in front of witnesses. In fact, the ruling government IS simply the most powerful criminal empire, led by the Borgia family. Parts of the city being abandoned, run down or destroyed is no longer unusual.
- Cyberpunk: Neonopolis is heavily flavored this way.
- Daddy's Little Villain: Lucretia Borgia. Possibly a deconstruction as their relationship is strained due to the nature and demands of running a criminal empire and he eventually nearly kills her.
- Dark Lord on Life Support: Isabella Borgia is MOTHER, and after her death she is replaced Lucretia.
- Elite Mooks: The Machine Men for Lucretia.
- In the later levels, you face Super Soldiers, given a number of cybernetic modifications by Borgia Industries. Also, the Xenomorphs fought in the second-to-last level.
- Enemy Mine: At the very end of the game, Lucretia's Ronins help Scarface defeat Hunter. (Though keeping them alive is difficult.)
- Enemy Civil War: As Scarface takes out the other gangs, the up and coming Juvenile Pack-9 gang takes advantage of the power vacuum to move on the Don's remaining territory with the aid of a hijacked Ulysses mech. In fact, you help them break into the Don's estate, then either sit back while cloaked and let them fight it out with the Don's Dragon and security, or use the skirmish as an opportunity to assassinate the Don in secret.
- Equal-Opportunity Evil: Neonopolis' gangs run on this.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Lucretia is horrified when she discovers Isabella's plan and angrily denounces it. Later on, she
actually vomits when she sees her father after his genetic engineering. - The Exile: For failing to kill his target, failing to commit ritual suicide upon failure and getting the technology captured by humans, Scarface is exiled to a Death World indefinetly though the exile lasts a century before he is recruited to track down the technology and redeem himself.
- Eye Scream: Isabella Borgia shoots him in the eye with a pistol, taking the eye and giving him his name.
- Fanservice: Lucritia with her revealing dress and Baby Blew with her disguise in just her underwear. Her henchwomen wear pretty revealing outfits in their disguises as well. The female dead men members wear midriff-baring outfits too. Heck, some of the male enemies are shirtless.
- Flaying Alive/ Stealth Insult: Scarface can do this to criminals at certain points in the game, and he does to many, including El Hongo. It's an insult because flaying is the fate of unworthy prey, while opponents who put up a good fight get their skull and spine ripped out.
- Gang of Hats: This is played fairly straight, Les Serviteurs are a voodoo gang, the the Dead men are drug addled goths, there is a classic mafia, the Matadores are dressed a luchadores, and the Working Girls are ex-porn stars hookers dressed in fetish outfits.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: Lore-wise, the Yautja only capable seeing the world through thermal vision. Here the game also features normal vision for convenience of the player.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Hunter, through a mix of accidentally ingesting Scarface's blood, as well as genetic and cybernetic modifications.
- Handicapped Badass: Scarface is missing an eye after he left New Way City.
- Hollywood Cyborg: The Machine Men and the Predator Hybrids in the laboratories of Borgia Industries.
- Imported Alien Phlebotinum: In Scarface's equipment, which was accidentally left behind on Earth.
- Interface Spoiler: The trophy screen obviously displays Predator skulls.
- Irony: Lucretia has no idea what life has in store for her.
- Lady Swears-a-Lot: Lucretia Borgia.
- Light Is Not Good: The setting for most of the game is Neonopolis: City of Light... advanced technology aside is a flat out Crapsack World, with Dystopia Justifies the Means the kindest way to describe it.
- The Man Behind the Man: Scarface starts out hunting street gangs before being led to their leader, Lucretia Borgia, and she defers to MOTHER, who is actually Isabella Borgia, kept alive be life support systems and the blood the Predator spilled on her way back in 1930, and then onto her son, Hunter.
- Meaningful Name:
- The Big Bad is named Hunter. Not hard to see the implications when you play as a Predator.
- The crime family which rises to control the entire city is called the Borgias. They have the same name as an Italian noble family which gained considerable power during the Renaissance, including two popes being from the family. The Borgias were famous for their ruthlessness, using whatever means necessary to achieve their ends.
- Mirror Boss: The premise is that you're tracking down and destroying the tech that was stolen on your last hunt. Expect it being used against you. Even with that in mind Hunter, note the name, takes this to disturbing extremes. Upgraded and empowered with Predator blood and equipment he even decorates his armor with a Predator skull on the opposite shoulder of Scarface's.
- Mook Horror Show: As you pick off their help survivors get more and more panicky and scream out.
- Ms. Fanservice: Baby Blew. She is (or was) a famous porn star and Co-Dragons with Viktor for Lucretia. Lucretia as well, given her costume.
- Narrator All Along: Isabella Borgia aka MOTHER is the narrator of the story. What's even weirder that she is killed in the last three chapters.
- Older Than They Look: Hunter Borgia looks like a middle aged man when he is actually a hundred years old. Apparently it is an effect of a Predator's blood that splattered on him when he was only an infant.
- Offing the Offspring: Hunter throws his daughter Lucretia across the room in a blood rage after she interrupts his genetic engineering process. Subverted as she doesn't die but the intent was still there.
- Pragmatic Villainy: The reason the Borgia family allows a police force to exist; maintaining some order in Neonopolis and providing an obstacle for other criminal gangs.
- Poirot Speak: Several of the crime bosses engage in this, particularly El Hongo.
- Pregnant Badass: Subverted, Isabella shoots Scarface in the eye, successfully protecting herself and her baby minutes after giving birth. Still impressive considering trained soldiers have been Curb-Stomped in fights with one.
- Really 700 Years Old: The game establishes that Predators can live more than a hundred years old. It is through his blood that Hunter Borgia and his mother can still be alive a hundred years later.
- The Reveal: Isabella is still alive and she is the AI that controls Neonopolis as her body is interfaced with a computer. Also Isabella was intentionally luring the Predators to Neonopolis, and even implied to have deliberately made Neonopolis a crapsack world to attract them, with the intention of taking their technology and blood to increase their Borgia family's power.
- Stock Scream: The enemies have these.
- Stripperific: Lucretia Borgia wears a dress where the top half is just an upside-down "V" of cloth. Baby Blew's disguise is just her in her underwear, as well as several female enemies in the game.
- Super Drowning Skills: If you fall/jump/lean in the water you instantly die, only to reappear seconds later a few feet away from where you descended to a watery doom. Possibly Justified, since with his armor and all, the Predator isn't buoyant enough to swim.
- Timeline-Altering MacGuffin: In Concrete Jungle, Scarface leaves behind several pieces of his clan's technology during a hunt in New Way City. When he is recovered from the planet he was exiled to (a century later), he learns that he unintentionally kickstarted an entire technological revolution that has resulted in cyborgs, flying cars and much more.
- 20 Minutes into the Future
- Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: Heavily equipped hunter from the stars or not. Get into a straight fight with heavy weapons and you'll learn firsthand why the jungle hunter fled from a minigun.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: Part of the game's charm is that you can do just about any move any of the titular creatures did in the films: taunt them from high-up ledges and watch as they freak out, execute any one of a dozen different finishing moves - while their teammates look on, hang bodies up to scare NPC's or pick off enemies before retreating and watching them freak.
- Villainous Breakdown: Hunter has one after Scarface plays his mother's last words, as she spoke derisively of her son.
- We Can Rule Together: Isabella was trying to lure the Predator back so she could use him to help her and her criminal empire. Scarface rejects her offer and shuts her down permanently.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: Isabella is implied to secretly not think much of her son.Isabella:"Mighty Bruno Borgia fathered a stunted weakling who should have died in his mother's arms..."
- With This Herring: Justified. In the prologue Scarface dropped his equipment after getting injured from a failed hunt. Afterwards he was barely given a second chance so he's sent with the bare essentials for a Predator.
- Unexplained Recovery: Its a miracle that Scarface somehow power through the explosion on his ship and live. It is later revealed that Hunter and Isabella Borgia had too survived.
