Aliens Versus Predator
Early reports claimed the story was about humans who tried to lure Predators with Alien eggs, although the idea was scrapped.[24] Influenced by the work of Erich von Däniken, Anderson researched von Däniken's theories on how he believed early civilizations were able to construct massive pyramids with the help of aliens, an idea long debunked and based on misinterpretations of Aztec mythology.[25] Anderson wove these ideas into Alien vs. Predator, describing a scenario in which Predators taught ancient humans to build pyramids and used Earth for rite of passage rituals every 100 years in which they would hunt Aliens. To explain how these ancient civilisations "disappeared without a trace", Anderson came up with the idea that the Predators, if overwhelmed by the Aliens, would use their self-destruct weapons to kill everything in the area.[25] H. P. Lovecraft's novella At the Mountains of Madness (1931) served as an inspiration for the film, and several elements of the Aliens vs. Predator comic series were included.[19][26] Anderson's initial script called for five Predators to appear in the film, although the number was later reduced to three.[25]
Aliens versus Predator
Alien vs. Predator (also known as Aliens versus Predator and AVP) is a science-fiction action horrormedia franchise created by comic book writers Randy Stradley and Chris Warner. The series is a crossover between, and part of, the larger Alien and Predator franchises, depicting the two species as being in conflict with one another. It began as a comic book series in 1989, before being adapted into a video game series in the 1990s. Produced and distributed by 20th Century Fox, the film series began with Alien vs. Predator (2004), directed by Paul W. S. Anderson, and was followed by Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007), directed by the Brothers Strause, and the development of a third film has been delayed indefinitely. The series has led to numerous novels, comics, and video game spin-offs such as Aliens vs. Predator released in 2010.
On October 28, 2010, io9 published an exclusive interview with the Brothers Strause in which they revealed that Alien vs. Predator 3 would have led directly into Alien. Greg Strause stated that, "The original ending for AVPR, that we pitched them, ended up on the Alien homeward [sic], and actually going from the Predator gun, that you see at the end, it was going to transition from that gun to a logo of a Weyland-Yutani spaceship that was heading to an alien planet. And then we were actually going to cut down to the surface [of the alien planet] and you were going to see a hunt going on. It was going to be a whole tribe of predators going against this creature that we called "King Alien." It's this huge giant winged alien thing. And that was going to be the lead-in, to show that the fact that the Predator gun [at the end of AVPR] is the impetus of all the technological advancements that allowed humans to travel in space. Which leads up to the Alien timeline."
In 1994, Atari Corporation released the Rebellion Developments-developed first-person shooter Alien vs Predator for the Atari Jaguar, in which one could play as an Alien, Marine, or Predator. Rebellion then went on to develop the similarly themed 1999's Aliens versus Predator for the PC. This was followed by, among others, Aliens versus Predator 2 and the expansion pack Aliens versus Predator 2: Primal Hunt. In 2010, Sega released a reboot, Aliens vs. Predator, a multiplatform first-person shooter also made by Rebellion and tied into the timeline of the live-action films.[42]
Most of the Aliens Versus Predator games let you play as all three of the involved factions--predators, aliens, and colonial marines--and as you'd expect, Extinction follows suit. Each of the groups has a linear, seven-mission campaign to play through that will have you tackling a wide assortment of mission objectives. Though the AVP franchise might not seem like the most natural choice for the RTS treatment, the resource and building models for each of the three races are surprisingly appropriate to the features of their respective races. In fact, the imaginative way in which the designers have differentiated the humans from the aliens from the predators is Extinction's strongest point.
You won't do any building and base construction in Extinction like you've seen in Warcraft or Command & Conquer; rather, the game is strictly focused on unit management and combat, which helps to streamline the gameplay. Each race has a distinct method of obtaining new troops. The colonial marines gain credits by killing enemies and repairing atmosphere generators, and these credits can be put toward upgrading troop abilities and calling in new units via dropships that stop at nearby landing beacons. There are a diverse number of marine combat units, including pulse rifle-equipped infantry, flamethrower troopers, and smartgunners that use those huge, hip-mounted machine guns you saw in Aliens. There are a few support units as well: The medic can heal your troops and cure health anomalies, the synthetic can deploy gun turrets and has a motion detector for picking up offscreen movement, and the commtech is your basic support unit, whose job it is to call for extra troops and repair atmosphere generators. The predators have a straightforward resource model that's effectively based on honor. As you kill enemies, you can rip the skulls from their corpses in honor of the hunt. The more honor you have, naturally, the more predators will want to join your clan--they can be called in at any time and simply land on the planet from space. The predator units are all combat-oriented, and they have a number of special abilities like cloaking and self-healing that use up slowly regenerating energy points.
The aliens' method of building is the most original in Extinction, and it takes a good bit of getting used to. It revolves around a queen alien, who can deliver extremely powerful attacks and also remains in the hive to lay eggs. As film fans will know, the eggs hatch into facehuggers who can latch onto other creatures and impregnate them with an egg that will eventually become a fully grown alien. There are two kinds of facehuggers that correspond to two kinds of aliens--purebreeds and transbreeds. The purebreeds include the queen and a couple of other powerful aliens, while the transbreeds are spawned from regular facehuggers, and the kind of alien you get depends on what kind of host was impregnated. Cattle-like oswocs will yield a drone, which is the worker of the alien hive, while a warrior alien will be birthed from a human, and a predalien will spawn from an impregnated predator. Creating a horde of vicious, marauding aliens from hapless nearby inhabitants is a perversely pleasurable experience, and it's nice that the developers put some real thought into how the alien game mechanics should work in an RTS setting.
It's no secret why there haven't been many real-time strategy games on consoles--the control scheme is simply much easier to handle with a mouse and keyboard than with a controller's limited number of buttons and the imprecise cursor control of an analog thumbstick. Thankfully, Extinction's controls are pretty well adapted for use with a controller, and though they do take some getting used to, once you've gotten them down you'll be moving around the map and issuing orders to your units without putting too much thought into the process of doing so. The controls follow many of the same conventions you would find in an RTS on the PC--you can select multiple units and assign the grouping to a direction on the D pad, double-click a unit to select all of that type of unit onscreen, and so forth. There are a number of ways to automate your troops' actions, too, such as by selecting their offensive or defensive posture, having them patrol waypoints, and telling them to perform basic functions without being ordered to each time (such as predators collecting skulls or alien drones dragging comatose humans back to the hive). Though the control isn't without its annoyances, it's pretty safe to say that the game plays about as well with a console controller as can be expected.
Extinction may be a pretty good game, but by most standards it's not such a good-looking game. The unit models aren't particularly detailed, though they don't really need to be since they're seen from far overhead, and they do animate pretty well. The backgrounds are usually rather bland, though, without a whole lot of detail in the terrain or other interesting features to look at. The game looks basically the same on the Xbox and PlayStation 2, with the nod going to the Xbox version for less aliasing and a higher frame rate. The sound design in Extinction is of mixed quality. Some of the sound effects are right there with their movie counterparts, such as the humans' pulse rifles and motion detectors and the scream of a predator when it has harvested a new skull. The unit voices are mostly muddy and uninteresting, though, and there's no memorable music to speak of. It's too bad there isn't better presentation wrapped around the core gameplay.
Aliens versus PredatorGeneral InformationDeveloperRebellionPublisherFox InteractiveRelease date(s)April 30, 1999Genre(s)First-person shooterSurvival horrorProduction InformationRatingERSB: M (mature)Platform(s)Microsoft WindowsMac OS XCloud (OnLive)Aliens versus Predator, often referred to as AVP1 by fans (despite not technically being the first game in the series), is a 1999 science fiction first-person video game developed by Rebellion and published by Fox Interactive for the PC and Mac. An unofficial port to Linux was later released in 2001, following Rebellion's public release of the game's source code. The game features three separate storylines for each of the playable factions, the Aliens, the Predators and the Colonial Marines; while each plot is unconnected, the Marine story loosely follows on from events of Alien and Aliens, while the Predator plot includes elements taken from Alien3. 041b061a72