Predator (C64) Reviewed on Apr 17, 2006 by:   SiL

Graded 2.5 out of 5

"Predator" for the Commodore 64 is your garden variety old-old-school side-scrolling action shooter.

You play as a pixelated colour-blob that, one assumes, is meant to represent Arnie. The game starts up with you and your team being dropped off into the jungle via helicopter - unlike the Nintendo version, released a year later, no story is given before the game starts. Everything around you wants to kill you, and you, apparently, want to kill it (admittedly, it’d be a very boring game if you or they didn’t.)

 
Your enemies are wide and varied:

Black Pixel Blocks, representing Geurillas, that pop out of random places and shoot at you.

Birds, that fly down in groups to try and renegotiate terms about the "The Birds" sequal they wanted.

Three red dots that follow you very - very - very slowly.

The Predator himself.


As far as weapons go, you pick up new ones from your dead comrades (how they died, you never know - they’re just dead), but I never really noticed any kind of difference between the weapons you picked up, and the weapon you start off with.

To its credit, the game really does follow the movie quite well: You walk through empty jungle to get to the geurilla base, you kill lots of geurillas, you walk off to admire the (rather faithful) scenery, and you even kill the Predator by dropping a log on his head. Unfortunately, one is too blinded by the game’s appalling gameplay and awful graphics (get the Amiga version - it’s just a graphics overhaul, but it makes all the difference) to notice.

I honestly don’t recommend this to anyone who doesn’t love, in every humanly-possible way, old-school games.

DOWNLOAD this game!