A couple of years ago I bought the Alien: Isolation game for my Nintendo Switch after some friends had described just how terrifying they’d found it. They weren’t wrong. I could only play it for about an hour at a time; my heart couldn’t take any more in one sitting. Then again, playing it late at night in the dark with surround headphones on probably didn’t help.
Back in 1991 my first edition of Commodore Format included the UK version of the C64’s Aliens game on the cover tape. It’s very basic today but at the time its eerie atmosphere and sudden sound effects gave us the willies and jump scares aplenty. Now, I’ve added a game that lands somewhere in between the two time-wise to my growing Nintendo GameBoy collection (which began because of the Jurassic Park comic on this blog), Alien Vs Predator: The Last of his Clan from the 90s.
It’s the first game in my collection not to come with a box (because the cheapest complete set would’ve melted my debit card) so I had to download the manual from an online resource, but at least it’s still the original cartridge being played on an original machine, just like the rest. While I wasn’t expecting it to terrify me, the legacy of the 8-bit game I’d played decades before showed the potential of creating an atmosphere and using the player’s imagination against them.
Unfortunately, what we have here is a by-the-numbers action platform game instead. The advert published in the pages of an issue of Transformers: Generation 2 alerted me to the game’s existence and I liked the sound of it from the description. What a shame then, despite the ad showing the GameBoy box, the description is for the Super Nintendo home console version which has received many positive reviews online. So what did I think of this version?
Let’s begin with the plot. While I say “plot”, it’s more like an excuse for the gameplay but I won’t hold that against it, that was something we were used to back then. Basically, in wanting the ultimate hunt the Predator race seeded a few alien eggs on a desolate world and completely underestimated the numbers they’d produce. Now, playing the lone surviving Predator you must infiltrate the alien hive and kill the Queen to avenge your tribe’s honour. You know, instead of just leaving.
The first thing that struck me was the intricately detailed sprites of the Predator and the aliens. Or rather, alien in the singular sense as it’s the same sprite used for every xenomorph throughout. Not that it’s easy to make them out. While original GameBoy games did blur when scrolling, this one seems to do so way more than others, resulting in a right confusing mess on the screen.
What I did like straight away was the large map area, which draws as you explore and by playing close attention you’ll see differences between it and the main game screen, identifying fake walls to be walked through or blown up. However, the map is powered by energy cells, the same ones that run your invisibility cloak and the map constantly drains them. This adds a bit of strategy to proceedings as you have to use the map to find the weapon pick ups and the extra energy cells to keep it going. This and the bombs are really the only things you’ll need to think about, though.
The bombs can also be used to push your jumps further into the air to find more secrets. However, when you realise the amount of bombs you get per level is the exact amount you need to make it through to the end there’s no room for experimentation and strategy. One error and you’ll have to find an alien to kill you so you can restart the level all over again.
The shoulder cannon with its heat-seeking ammunition kills with one shot, but even having “only” 20 rounds doesn’t bring any thought to the gameplay because there won’t be that many enemies in any one zone, and you have to recollect fresh weapons at the start of every level anyway. So what does that leave us with? A game that pays lip service to having a bit of depth but which in practice is a simple shoot-first-and-ask-no-questions-because-the-aliens-won’t-understand-or-care kind of game.
Games like this are why
Jurassic Park stood out
I wouldn’t call it a “run and gun” either because as you can see our Predator friend lumbers along like he’s on his way to the office on a Monday morning. The fight button uses whatever weapon you happen to have selected, while the other makes him jump a preset height and distance. There are ladders which always seem to have annoying facehuggers or alien symbiotes at the bottom that you can’t avoid (until you get the heat seekers), cheekily damaging you without a way around them.
The aliens themselves come in from the same direction every play through so when you’ve finished a level you know exactly what’ll occur and when. Unlike their movie (and now TV) counterparts they’re not exactly smart. They just run at you blindly and you have a good enough reach that even with your wrist blades (the default weapon) you can just punch them a few times (more on later levels) to get rid of them.
Look, I know it’s a GameBoy game but that doesn’t mean it has to be this basic. In my collection so far I have games which show this machine could handle more complex game styles, such as the frantic platforming of Super Mario Land, the utterly fantastic conversion of Lemmings (the fact it works so well on the small screen with so few buttons is a masterclass!) and of course Jurassic Park which offers more play styles, more fun and a much greater challenge.
There are some elements here I do enjoy, such as finding the little secret areas only through close study of the map, the inventory management needed with the energy cells and the bombs, and the main sprites are certainly entertaining for a while, even if you can only admire them when they don’t move. The variety of weapons livens things up too, especially on later levels when I was getting tired of the same gameplay over and over. However, with each new level you have to go off and find them all over again, adding to the repetitiveness.
There are seven levels altogether over four different locations. You’ll find yourself traversing a warehouse, a vent, a cave and the final alien nest. Not exactly a thrilling selection and to be honest they all play identically despite the slight change in backgrounds. The criticisms I’ve levelled (no pun intended) at this game are pretty clichéd I have to say, because they’re the same traps a lot of licenced games fell into back in the 80s and 90s. They’re the reason why games such as Jurassic Park stood out.
In fact, if you replaced the Predator and alien sprites with those related to any other licence this could easily have been marketed as a tie-in for any movie, TV series, cartoon etc. The only part of the game that stands out is the final confrontation with the Queen. She takes up most of the display and it’s an impressive sight after the rest of the game. Even so, she’s not the most difficult end-of-game boss to defeat, it just takes a long time and can become quite monotonous.
The end sequence amounts to no more than a written congratulatory message and with the game playing exactly the same each time there’s no replay value once you’re finished. The day before this review was due on the blog I decided to record these videos and unfortunately I didn’t make it all the way to the Queen, and the thought of going through everything all over again was just too much, so here’s a screen grab from VG Junk’s Retrovania blog instead.
What there is in Aliens Vs Predator: Last of his Clan isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just that there’s not much of it. The first level feels like it should be the introduction to the basic controls before more complex levels and gameplay later, but it never develops beyond this initial experience, instead copying and pasting everything from gameplay to the enemy attacks for half a dozen levels.
It’s a shame, especially after the C64 showed what was possible with a limited 8-bit system. However, there could be more positive news ahead. Another game on the horizon for the Dark Horse International section of the blog is the GameBoy’s version of Alien³. It got rave reviews at the time across all formats, including the diminutive handheld. In fact, I’ve been collecting GB Action magazines from the 90s to help me choose games for my own personal collection and its review is stellar. (Aliens Vs Predator wasn’t in any of the issues I have so far or I could’ve saved myself £30.)
So watch out for more handheld horrors of (hopefully) the good kind next Halloween!
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