As with all successful movies, Hollywood wanted a sequel. Predator 2 was under way, and a script was developed with Arnold Schwarzenegger in mind. Unfortunately for the producers of the film, Arnie pulled out after opposing the film’s urban setting and being asked to reprise his role as the Terminator. The movie went ahead with Dutch’s role being re-examined, with Gary Busey ending up with the part, while Danny Glover filled the main role. The movie was critically panned, and didn’t repeat the box office success of the original, though it did have a modest run on home video.
In 1996, the original plot for Predator 2 was revisited in the graphic novel Predator: Concrete Jungle by Mark Verheiden. Taking place in an especially hot New York summer, Concrete Jungle focuses on Detective Schaefer, the brother of Dutch from the original film (but just as big and burly). Predators enjoy hunting in the heat, and unfortunately for Detectives Schaefer and Rasche, they’ve picked New York for their latest expedition. Concrete Jungle was a solid entry into the Predator universe, and made readers think about what the second movie could have been.
Nine years later, we now have a game on Concrete Jungle, but…umm, you see, it’s not the graphic novel. No, developer Eurocom and publisher Vivendi felt that they’re much better than some comic book guy, and decided to pen their own story – Predator vs. the Mafia. I’ll wait for you to stop laughing.
Predator vs. the Mafia...who comes up with this crap?
Overzealous game developers often like to take established properties, and kill the elements that made the movies or books popular in the first place – Die Hard Vendetta and Hulk being great examples. The premise for Predator: Concrete Jungle seems like something concocted by an 8 year old on a sugar high that just saw a movie his parents didn’t want him to see. One of the Predators (or Yautja for the comic nerds) has been on hunt during an especially hot summer in the 1930s, when he is trapped. He sends out a massive energy pulse from his ship which wipes out the entire city. The Predator is later banished by his tribe, until they return 100 years later. It would seem that a bunch of no good Mafia goons have retrieved technology that the Predator left behind a century early, and are terrorising each other with cloak devices and razor discs and whatnot, making it difficult for the Predators to hunt. Taking control of the banished Predator, it’s your job to clean up the mess. However, a chore would more adequately describe Concrete Jungle’s gameplay.
Taking control of a Predator is normally a joyous event – Rebellion and Monolith did a great job of giving gamers the feel of the giant alien in their respective Alien vs. Predator titles, but Eurocom has really made a mess of it here. The Predator has access to all of his different weapons and systems in Concrete Jungle – stealth camouflage, heat sensor vision, tech vision, neurovision, the razor disc, spear gun and so on. Using these gadgets and weapons is about as easy as open heart surgery, thanks to a complicated control method. Eurocom have only made one button available for your different weapons, so instead of changing between them on the fly, you have to jump into the inventory screen and bind a weapon to the button, while other gadgets require you to press 3-4 different buttons to activate them. Some of the gadgets are made practically useless by level design – staying stealthy and using the combination of your neurovision and voice mimic ability to scare opponents sounds great on paper, but in reality, you hardly ever get the opportunity. The Predators have always been portrayed as extremely agile characters – in fact, the original Predator actor was a monkey. In Concrete Jungle however, the Predator controls with the same level of finesse as a Mack Truck. Impossible to steer, and seemingly heavy, the Predator will constantly be falling short of jumps he should have cleared, not clinging to edges and generally falling down holes that appear from nowhere.
Realising he's in a terrible game, the Predator falls to his knees, looks to the sky and screams "WHY!?!"
As though bad controls weren’t enough, the mission and level design of Predator: Concrete Jungle has to seal the deal, dooming any possible chance of redemption. The 27 missions on offer in the game are some of the most tiresome, gameplay-devoid experiences we’ve had to endure this year. Each mission is quite short, though sandwiched by excruciating load times, and usually involves slaying a variety of mindless foes who pose no threat to the Predator at all, or finding some poor sap and flaying his body, before hanging it from a high building, which takes you ages to climb as you’re constantly fighting the game’s controls. Some missions involve stealth, and these are probably the worst, with the game’s stealth mechanics coming more from the Rogue Ops School of pathetic execution, rather than taking notes from better games such as Thief and Splinter Cell. The game is riddled with trial and error gameplay, but the worst part of this is that you’ll need to repeat everything over if you do fail a mission, meaning re-living the long load sequence and pathetic gameplay section you’ve just completed. This gets worse as the game begins to serve up even more complex and difficult missions, such as following one gang leader across the veritable labyrinth of a city that the game is set in, trying not to set off the extremely touchy cameras.
To be frank, Predator: Concrete Jungle’s visual presentation is about as attractive as the titular creature’s mandibles. The Predator himself actually has a little bit of detail to his model, but moves like a limbering oaf. Many of the game’s enemies and other non-player characters are on the extremely low end of the polygon scale, to the point where you can actually play “Count the Polygons”. If that wasn’t bad enough, there’s little to no variety or detail in their appearance, and their animation is poor at best. The city is even worse – riddled with lacking number of low quality textures, it’s actually really hard to tell if any one area is different from another. The game’s camera doesn’t do it any favours either, often impeding the already terrible gameplay. On the positive side, the game does manage to recreate the Predator’s visual modes, and the game doesn’t have any notable frame rate trouble. Sound is relatively unremarkable, with the Predator’s screeching and taunting coming straight from the movie, while the game’s soundtrack is a rather cliché comic book/theatrical orchestral-style score that seems rather out of place in the scheme of things. Voiceovers are pathetic at best.
Hands up if you won't be touching this terrible game
One has to wonder what Eurocom set out to achieve with Predator: Concrete Jungle. As a studio that’s always been on the fringe of the highly regarded group of developers, Eurocom have done themselves a great disservice with Predator: Concrete Jungle, churning out one of the worst licensed efforts we’ve played this year. With a terrible plot, painfully bad gameplay design, bad graphics and crappy voice acting, there is absolutely nothing redeemable about this game, and thus we recommend avoiding coming into contact with it.
This review is brought to you courtesy of Infinite Gameplay, with unlimited game rentals starting from $19.95 a month.
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