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First Impressions: Marine 1: "We've run out of mud sir, and the Predator army is headed this way!"
Marine 2: "Bah! I say we nuke dem."
Blizzard Entertainment is home to arguably the best strategy game series' ever imagined. Built for the PC by whom is known as mainly a PC company, Blizzard's WarCraft and StarCraft franchises are the Gods of all that is strategy. It's also been proven countless times before that it's very difficult to emulate any kind of real-time strategy game on the home console, as the controller functions are too different and just don't justify the same experience you'd find with a mouse and keyboard in hand. That's not stopping developers from trying though...and as such, Electronics Arts is going full flank this summer with a console based real-time strategy fledgling that's looking to compete with its genre master, a title by the name of Aliens vs. Predator: Extinction.
Aliens. Predator. Marines. These are three most deadly species known in the Aliens vs. Predator series, which have been locked into what seems to be a conflicting war that will never settle throughout the rest of eternity. When a small dispatch of Colonial Marines land on the planet LV-742 and uncover both of the rival classes inhabiting the planet however, the team then decides that this feud must end once and for all. In their primitive state of mind, the humans decide that they're going to wipe out each and every creepy, crawly creature they come across in hopes that they'll become the end-all dominant force of the universe.
With the effect of Blizzard's strategy games in mind, Extinction will almost come to terms of a close likeness. As in StarCraft for example, you could build your own assorted armies, vehicles, and stations and so on in order to send your new creations out into battle to plan both defensive and offensive strategies while the enemy was doing the same exact thing. Aliens vs. Predator: Extinction will operate similarly to that, only with the exception that you'll now have at your disposal the Aliens, the Predators, and the Marines to work with and to fight up against.
In starting the game up you'll be able to select which team it is you want to be on -- the Marines, the Aliens, or as the Predators. Whichever one is your pick though, the battle tactics for each faction will vary. If it's the Marines you want to control, then their distinction above the rest will be to thwart their enemies using the latest in hi-tech gadgetry such as the exo-suit or their vehicle of choice to get around in, the Sniper. The extraterrestrial sides of things are a bit different on the other hand, with the Predators using stealth and Hydra vehicles for mobility, and Aliens piloting the Ravager, driving away other forces by the horde, and implanting facehuggers within the pits of an enemy's stomach. In all there'll be a total of ten units per species, which you can then upgrade throughout the course of the game to bigger, better forces of absolute destruction.
When you want to make a console-only real-time strategy game as much like StarCraft as you can, you want to tailor its visual style with a reminiscent treatment. And in doing so, Xbox gamers shouldn't expect the best to come from the machine that boasts the most from its inner host. Small but surely, StarCraft's minuscule sized graphics may have not been terrific by any means, but the game was and still is one of the most addictive games of any kind in its well designed strategic gameplay concept. Albeit not as descriptive as other games on the system, Extinction will provide refined morsels of models by the droves across futuristic battle terrain such as in jungle warfare and the innards of darkened caverns all in an action packed overhead 3D perspective.
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One question still remains: Can a console ever hope to compete with its PC brethren in terms of playability issues through the process of real-time strategy? By the looks of it from past gaming experiences, I'd say the attempts so far were a failure in order to prepare a future generation where the technology would then present itself. Since consoles are becoming more and more like the PC these days, it's coming to realization that you can do just about anything you want to with one as far as the technology will allow it. I think it's that time now, a time where consoles can allow the same experiences we see, feel, and hear with our computers. And as Aliens vs. Predator: Extinction is arriving this summer, I feel if any system can pull off almost anything the PC is capable of, the Xbox is the one to do it.
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