By John Constantine

Brothers Chris and Jason Kingsley accomplished many remarkable things back in 1994. First of all, they made a game for the Atari Jaguar that was actually good (no one saw that coming). Secondly, they built a texture-mapped first-person shooter in convincing three-dimensional space, and even though it arrived after Doom, they’d started work well before id’s genre-making classic hit the FTP circuit. Furthermore, they created a game that brought two of cinema’s most recognizable antagonists together — the nameless beast of Alien and the Schwarzenegger-threatening extraterrestrial from Predator — and they did it in a way that was more organic and compelling than Capcom’s approach of simply having them punch each other a lot, Final Fight style. It’s easy to forget, but Aliens vs. Predator truly was something special sixteen years ago, and its quality allowed Rebellion to create a unique franchise that has continued — albeit sporadically — through today.

Strip away the tech and familiar faces of 20th century pop, though, and you’re still left with a game worth thinking about. Science fiction-based video games are a dime a dozen, but games that actually let you be an extraterrestrial aren’t as common as you think. You’re usually killing the aliens, not playing as them. The experience of playing as an Alien or a Predator in the AVP franchise is intensified because they’re tangibly different from their human counterparts, something even more uncommon in gaming. In Capcom’s Aliens vs. Predator, the human characters and the aliens are indistinguishable from one another. They punch when you press the punch button, jump the same height when you hit jump, and they all have projectiles. There’s nothing but the art to separate them, superficial signifiers marking the boundary between man and monster.

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