For some time, I’d been counting down the days Alien vs. Predator. Being a huge fan of the original game, and an long-time Alien supporter (which has been the cause of debate in our household on more than one occasion) [1], I’d been cautiously optimistic about its release. Previews had shown just enough regard for canon, and more than enough disregard of what has become of the movie franchises [2].
About a week before its release though something shifted. My excitement started to dwindle. I’d put in a few hours with the multiplayer demo, and while it had its moments, playing against kids half my age who have far more time than I to invest in their electronic maiming skills, left me a little cold. Then early reviews started to slip through and quite quickly Alien vs. Predator shifted from a must buy at launch to an I’ll pick it up eventually.
Instead, my attention turned to the talk surrounding Heavy Rain; a game that I’ll admit was absent from my radar. And after reading the pile of positive reviews over the last few days, I’m not sure how that happened. Heavy Rain looked to capture my love of dark, moody serial killer films [3], with the essence of the point and click adventures I grew up on.
Heavy Rain’s writer/director David Cage has been keeping a blog over at IGN (which is where the awesome image above has come from), chronicling the development of his game over the past few months. It’s a fascinating and rather inspirational read. Chances are, if you own a PS3 or are even remotely interested in playing a new experience, you’re probably already aware of Heavy Rain [4] and might even be playing it right now. Meanwhile, I’ll be spending my time avoiding spoilers and looking forward to getting stuck in over the weekend.
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[1] It’s hard to ignore the fact that the whole Predator thing comes from one not bad -albeit schlocky – Schwarzenegger vehicle, and everything that’s come since have been rather lame attempts to put an admittedly cool character into somewhat lame scenarios. The Alien however has three outstanding films, each adding their something unique to the mythos surrounding the beast.
Plus, they look awesome.
Also, I may be sleeping on the couch tonight.
[2] And this is me completely ignoring the fact that there is such a thing as an Alien Vs. Predator movie.
[3] We’re talking Zodiac and Seven in particular here. The good stuff. Fincher grade material.
[4] Which, no matter how hard I try, I keep reading as Chubby Rain, the film within a film from Bowfinger. I’m really hoping there’s an option to yell “Gotcha suckas!” somewhere in the game.
of False Starts & Frustrations 