Period. There's no other better way to put it. This game captured the very essence of the Aliens and Predator movies. Each race has its own single player campaign that feels like it came out of its own unreleased movie. The best part about this game is that each race plays exactly like they were seen on the big screen. The Colonial Marines were all about going in, guns blazing and setting up sentries at strategic choke points. The Xenomorphs are all about hanging on the ceiling in a dark corner, waiting for their unsuspecting prey to wander by so they could pounce on them and put their inner mouth through their forehead (yes you can do that in this game). The Predator, of course, is all about the hunt. Stalking their game until just the right moment and then taking the shot (because unlike the marines, their "ammo" is very limited). The beauty is that these aspects are also demonstrated in multiplayer. As a matter of fact, it's part of what made it so balanced. Contrary to popular belief, the Predator is NOT the "best race" in the game. There isn't a "best race". Each race is deadly in its own way, you just have to know how to use it. For instance, the Marines are the slowest, but they have their motion trackers so they can tell from what direction to expect trouble, and they have superior firepower. Every single one of their weapons is lethal. Most of them are "one-hit kills": if you hit anything with the minigun, it's dead. The Predator is the most durable, but takes some skill to land a hit. It is true, the plasma cannon and the disc are "homing", but they are also slow (think the rocket launcher from Quake), and can be outran, especially by the Xenomorph which has only two weapons, tail strike and claw swipe. But that's all it needs because it's got unbelievable speed. Combined with ability to climb all surfaces and leap incredible distances, it really is the perfect killing machine. Only downside is that they're fragile and die easily. The Gold Edition adds a few new weapons for the Marines that added a tad more balance and a bunch of multiplayer maps, many of which are recreations from scenes straight out of the movies (Leadworks from Alien 3, Slaughterhouse from Predator 2, etc.). Take it from a die hard Aliens and Predator fan, this truly is the best Aliens/Predator game ever made, and I've played them all. Aliens vs. Predator on the Atari Jaguar, Aliens. vs. Predator Capcom side-scroller, etc., and even Aliens: Colonial Marines. I bought this game when it first came out in 1999 and then again when it was rereleased on Steam. And I gladly bought it once again here on GOG, if anything just so I can have it DRM-free.
This is easily one of the best first-person shooters ever made. It literally had everything, and more: interesting weapons (which actually was just one weapon but got "upgrades" so it could shoot other type of ammunition, and I still think it has the best "melee" weapon in any FPS: the fold-out chainsaw that allowed you to "jet-jump"), AWESOME music that really set the mood and fit the overall game, great graphics for the time (1999), original character design, stellar voice acting as well as highly entertaining dialogue, and it even had a pretty good story as far as this genre goes, and it even has partial level destruction (which is still pretty rare to find in a video game, especially back in 1999). Oh yeah, did I mention that this was the first FPS to have perfectly integrated vehicle combat and actually got the combat RIGHT? Seriously, nothing else, at least in some respects, has come close. I believe that if this game had been properly advertised and/or was somehow ported to a console at the time, games like Halo would have been completely ignored. I still have my original Redline CD that I still play to this day, though it has some DRM issues due to the age of the OS it was designed to run on. Summary: . Just buy this game. It's a steal at $6 (the soundtrack alone is worth triple that). Thank you so much GOG for making this game available again.!
