AVP: Movies vs. Game

The moments from the Alien and Predator franchises that we want to see in the next AvP game.

During IGN's recent peak at Rebellion's new Alien vs. Predator game, the one thing that was stressed again and again was the title's fidelity to the various franchises it uses for inspiration. In the few missions we saw, we recognised stripped carcases, disused power loaders and a grunt that looked rather a lot like Vasquez from Aliens. Indeed the Sega bigwig who showed off the footage promised that the entire game would be "littered with nods to fans of the films".

IGN is not a big fan of subtlety and don't just want "nods" however - instead we want to literally experience and play for ourselves the coolest bits from each of the eight Alien/Predator films. But what could these moments be? Read on for our thoughts...

A screenshot of the new Aliens vs. Predator.

ALIEN: Shock Tactics

The original and best Alien film is also perhaps the least transferable to the videogame medium, seeing as it features no machine guns, marines screaming "ammo!" and only one actual alien to kill. Instead of a kill-crazy rampage, Alien is an atmospheric little character-driven haunted house movie, so with that in mind what elements from the film could Rebellion actually use?

Some of the obvious aspects include the ingenious weapons the crew of the Nostromo crew cobble together to kill their fanged opponent, including electric cattle prods and the DIY flamethrower (though this has obviously been done a million times). We reckon it's the overall tone of the piece that should be transferred - the jump out of your seat and soil yourself moments, such as the terrifying finale (see pic) where - having already escaped the in lifeboat - Ripley gets a horrible surprise... Plus they could work in an annoying cat who messes with your motion sensors.

"I don't remember that massive shiny Alien head being there before..."

ALIENS: The Cargo Loader

The great thing about the original AVP game (which hopefully Rebellion's latest update will emulate) is that the Colonial Marine sections basically felt like you were transported into James Cameron's gung-ho, machine-gun-toting extra-terrestrial follow-up to Alien. This also means however that almost all of the movie has already been strip-mined for ideas by games developers for countless shoot-em-ups down the years, leaving little from the movie that hasn't been used.

However the chance to don the exosuit cargo-loader (first used by Ripley in the film's finale, where she battled the Alien Queen with the fetching yellow contraption) is always welcome, and - Konami's 1990 arcade game aside - this iconic sequence has never memorably transferred to a game.

We want an exosuit cargo-loader level, and we want it now.

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