ALIENS V PREDATORS IS A JAW-DROPPING BEAST

ABOVE: The new game from SEGA even lets you play the Alien

23rd August 2009

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A COUPLE of years back I was invited to Europe’s premier gaming convention in Leipzig.

I’ve got a lot of time for Germans and Germany – a country so similar to our own you could barely slip a Halo sleeve between them.

But Leipzig, a town that had lived for much of the last century on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall, wasn’t fun.

The convention too was drab and uninspiring. Now we’ve got Cologne and GamesCom – the latest challenge to the West Coast dominance of E3 – and Europe finally has a gaming expo to be proud of.

Cologne is a city with plenty of appeal.

The event too was well run, with lots of new announcements and a heavy smattering of frauleins in tight shorts.

Let’s hope the London Games Festival, an event which has been growing each year, can now make its mark, not just in Britain but on the international stage as well.

Of all the games on display at GamesCom, one of the most impressive was SEGA’s Aliens Versus Predator. It pains me to say this as the fi lm was absolute tat.

However, the developers have taken the theme and run with it. In fact, they’ve done more than that – creating one of the most eerie shooters I’ve seen in quite some time.

The game is still very much in development but what I saw plays like James Cameron’s weapons-heavy sequel, with aliens, marines and predators running around like six-year-olds on a double espresso.

Set within an industrial complex on an abandoned planet, the single-player campaign offers you the choice of one of three main characters, scrapping it out against a backdrop of beautifully-rendered visuals and a brilliantly creepy audio.

I saw the marine campaign, hunting the acid-filled creatures aided by a big gun, a flame thrower and one of those proximity radar HUDs that blips whenever one of the beasts crawls into view (that blip speeding up is terrifying).

I also saw a few levels in which you play the Alien, biting off the heads of America’s finest with a drool-soaked extendable jaw.

The multiplayer too looks fairly inspired, with an 18-man mash-up that should give the game legs.

Unfortunately, the predator section of the game is still under development but if it’s anything like the rest, SEGA should have a monster hit on its hands.

Aliens Versus Predator will be available on the 360, PS3 and PC in February.