Predator
Reviewed by Amber
Arnold does it again. Predator, the movie, is an action-packed fight
to the finish in the jungle, with Schwarzenegger's muscle-bound hero
hunting and being hunted by the insidious alien menace. Predator, the
game, is, um, not much like that. Predator the game involves running
around surrealistic landscapes dodging strange slime creatures which
belch out huge quantities of projectiles. Ok, so it's not the most accurate
movie license game, those can still be fun-- remember Alien 3? But
Predator doesn't even manage that, read and see.
Graphics: 2 out of 5
They're pretty... kind of. The background art is nice, the enemies,
ill-suited as they are to the game, are at least graphically decent
looking, and it all kind of falls into place. At least until you get a
look at the player. I don't recall Arnold having purple hair, or ghost-white
skin for that matter. The player's sprite is colored all wrong, and it
looks somewhere between out of place and downright idiotic. The
Predator is the same, well, to put it politely, unique, combination of colors.
Music and Sound: 4 out of 5
The music has to be the high point of this game. It's trippy, it's surreal,
it's synthesized, and with a real beat underneath it-- sorry, the NES's
drums will always be lacking-- we'd have our next trance hit. At least
the game designers made the connection that if we were going to be
running around surrealistic alien landscapes, we should at least have
surrealistic alien music going in the background.
Game Challenge: 1 out of 5
The challenge in this game is getting the controls to respond correctly.
It doesn't help any that waves of enemies are flying down from
everywhere, handing out certain death to all who cross them. And all
you have at the beginning are your fists! The grenades are next-to-useless,
so have fun trying to use them. It doesn't help any that enemies seem to
respawn almost immediately, so you almost never have a break from
the constant assault.
Game Play-Fun: 2 out of 5
Yeah, it's fun all right. It's fun to look at the cool alien backgrounds, it's
fun to listen to the spicy music; in other words, it's fun to do just about
anything but actually try to play through this horrible game.
Frustration
Indeed. I was frustrated the moment I started. It was difficult to get
anywhere, especially having to only use fists against strange alien beasts
that almost always seemed to be better armed. And since they respawn
instantly, the best thing to do is to just start punching blindly, because
more often than not, you'll hit something. After persevering through four
levels of this madness, though, there comes a point where you must engage
the Predator. As far as I can tell, this means standing there and blasting
him in the kneecaps with your hard-earned gun while he does flips for
your amusement. More blind shooting! At least this time you get a weapon.
Nowhere is there any indication whether or not you did any damage, so the
best thing to do is to just keep shooting like an idiot. Such fun.
Replayability: 1 out of 5
Why would you ever want to play it again? It's not as though it's going
to be any different the second time through. Or the third, or the fourth,
you get the idea. There is always the usual action game temptation of
trying to hone your reflexes to perfection, to get through it that much
faster, taking that many fewer hits, or whatever the objective is, but
even that isn't really a factor in this game, seeing as it's so awful you'll
likely not even get through it the first time.
Play Control: 5 out of 1
I added this category just so I could emphasize just how terrible and
unresponsive the play control is in this game. The character doesn't
move when you tell him to, doesn't stop when you tell him to, and doesn't
jump when you tell him to. Maybe the delays in stopping and starting are
supposed to model real physics-- nobody can stop on a dime-- but if they're
trying to be realistic, they have no place making a video game about a single
man using only his fists defeating an army of green slime-belching alien
invaders. More to the point, the intricate jumps from small platform to small
platform that have to be accomplished in this game make a character who
can start and stop on a dime a necessity. Jumps that would be a piece of
cake in Ninja Gaiden or Castlevania are horrible in Predator, just because
of its weird response.
Overall: 2 out of 5
So, what started off as an action-packed battle in the jungle turns into
an odd menagerie of aliens having nothing at all to do with the Predator
movie, assaulting en masse a poor unarmed man who can barely keep running
in the same direction in any kind of consistent fashion, never mind defend
himself. Ugh. Back to Tetris.