The Road to The Predator… Rage War Book 1: Predator Incursion

Originally published on Set The Tape

‘Predator ships stream into Human space in unprecedented numbers. The Colonial Marines, controlled by Weyland-Yutani, respond to the incursion, thus entering the Rage War. This terrifying assault by the Yautja cannot go unchallenged, yet the cost of combat is high, Predators are master combatants, and each encounter yields a high body count. Then when Lt. Johnny Mains and his marines – the Voidlarks – enter the fray, they discover an enemy deadlier than any could imagine.’

Thanks to Dark Horse Comics the Predator and Alien series have become synonymous with each other, with dozens of comics, novels, games, and movies depicting the two iconic space monsters going up against each other. Predator Incursion is the first part of a novel trilogy that brings them together again, in a way that’s never been seen before.

Set long after the events of the Alien movies, over two hundred years after the events of Alien: Resurrection, things have changed dramatically in the AVP universe. Humanity has expanded further with new technology, though Weyland-Yutani is once again a controlling power. Humanity has encountered the Xenomorphs on multiple occasions, as well as the Yautja, and has developed new arms and armour to defend against these threats.

These changes are one of the first surprises in the new universe being crafted by writer Tim Lebbon, one where the Colonial Marines are no longer the ones on the back-foot, here they’re a very competent group that can take on Yautja and win. But Predator fans don’t need to worry about the Yautja being weakened by the increase in human technology, yes, the humans can kill them much easier, but the Yautja are still a formidable threat.

The first time we see a Yautja within the book they’ve already killed two of the Void-larks, the main group of marines we follow. Supposed to be the best train and best equipped soldiers humanity has, the Yautja are still able to hunt and kill them. The Yautja might not be able to kill as easily as we’ve seen in the past, but this just makes them more cunning and unpredictable than before.

When more and more Yautja begin appearing within human space, Weyland-Yutani task scientist Isa Palant, a Yautja specialist, to learn as much about them as possible. When a pair of Yautja arrive on the planet her and her colleague are on they become prey to the deadly aliens, but begin to make huge leaps in their study, unlocking the secrets of the Yautja language. This is one of the big moments of the book, as it allows the humans to learn that the increase in Yautja attacks is because they are fleeing their home space because of an even deadlier threat. Not only that, but the humans are able to use Palant and her studies to broker a truce with them.

Whilst we have seen small alliances between humans and Yautja in the past, usually due to humans proving their worth and honour in battle, here we have a species-wide alliance, complete with peace conference between Palant and the Yautja elder Kalakta. Palant’s story, and the insights into the Yautja she learns are always interesting, and gives the reader a look into the inner workings of the Predator society and in some cases even psychology.

These aren’t the only insights into the Yautja the book gives, however, as the earlier mentioned Void-larks are tasked with monitoring a Yautja habitat on the edge of human space, a mission that goes disastrously wrong when the Yautja begin to enter human space, causing the Void-larks ship to be destroyed and the marines stranded on the habitat.

Trapped on a Yautja habitat, the marines are forced to fight for survival as they make their way through an environment that no human has ever been in before. These moments are very tense, with the constant threat of sudden attack always hanging in the air. Unfortunately, things get worse for the marines when they learn that that habitat has been invaded by an army of modified Xenomorphs.

This is where things are interesting for this book, and the whole of the Rage War trilogy. The Xenomorphs have finally been turned into bio-weapons, as Weyland-Yutani have been wanting for centuries, but this time both the Yautja and Humanity are the targets. Enslaved by a faction of humanity that left human space centuries before, they’ve been turned into the perfect soldiers under the command of android generals. And now, those people discarded by humanity have come home looking for revenge.

Predator Incursion is the first part of a three book story, and as such leaves a lot of things open to be carried on, but it manages to still feel fairly self contained and satisfying in the events that take place.


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The Predator: Aliens Versus Predator (1999) Game Review

Originally published on Set The Tape

For many, when you mention Alien Versus Predator they’ll think of the Paul Anderson film, but before its release in 2004 the Rebellion game would be the first thing that would have come to people’s minds. Released for the PC in 1999, the game put players into the shoes of the Predator, Alien, and Colonial Marines, in three distinct and separate first person action/horror adventures.

The Marine story saw players thrust into the role of an unnamed soldier on a research station on the planet LV-426, the world that began the whole Alien franchise. Built to study the remains of the crashed alien spacecraft that Ripley and the Nostromo crew discovered in the original film, the facility falls under attack from the Xenomorph creatures.

Armed with a variety of weapons from the Alien franchise, including pulse rifles, smart guns, and the iconic motion tracker, you must make your way through the dark, twisting corridors of the facility, defending yourself from alien attack. Eventually having to enter the alien spacecraft, before travelling on to the atmosphere processing station, and eventually a space station, the marine story takes players through a series of very recognisable locations.

By far the most frightening of the three campaigns, the marine section forces you to traverse almost pitch black areas, using a small torch and flares to light your way, with even the tiniest blip on the motion tracker sending shudders down your spine.

The Alien portion of the game actually puts you into the body of one of the titular creatures as you defend your hive from Colonial Marines, before eventually leaving and making your way towards Earth.

The Alien gives players the most freedom in the game, with the monster able to traverse any surface, including walls and ceilings. Coupled with the incredible speed of the creatures, you’ll soon find yourself dashing around the levels, slipping upside down, around corners, and over obstacles like they’re nothing in order to reach your foe.

The Predator sections are probably some of the most balanced, managing to capture some of the horror that permeates the Colonial Marine levels, whilst also giving the player a sense of power and freedom. Sent to recapture stolen Yautja technology from the human, the Predator finds itself travelling to a number of different planets, including Fiorina ‘Fury’ 161 from Alien 3, as it hunts down and destroys those responsible for the creation of several Alien/Predator hybrids.

Equipped with a number of weapons from the films, such as the plasma caster, throwing disc blade, and spear gun, the Predator feels incredibly powerful as you move through the levels, using heat vision to hunt and kill the unsuspecting humans. Despite the obvious power of playing as a Yautja, the game manages to keep things feeling fairly balanced, forcing the player to carefully consider their approach to certain situations as to not be killed in a hail of pulse rifle fire.

Aliens Versus Predator was the first game to give the best sense of what it would be like to control the monsters from the iconic movie franchises, and essentially gave players three games for the price of one. Whilst each of the campaigns wasn’t huge, they were challenging enough to ensure that you couldn’t just breeze your way through them, and would have to spend a good deal of time with each character in order to complete their stories.

Almost twenty years later the game is still an incredibly enjoyable and engaging experience, proving to be a challenge to even experienced gamers. Well worth the time to play if you can track down a copy, or if you have access to Steam.


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'The Predator: Hunters and Hunted' Official Movie Prequel Book Review

Originally published on Set The Tape

A lot of movie tie in books, especially prequel stories, find it hard to connect to the film that they’re supposed to be a part of. Often times this is because the film makes it hard to create an exciting new story around it without taking away from the events of the movie.

One example that immediately springs to mind is Transformers: Ghosts of Yesterday, the prequel to the 2007 movie. The book felt like it was having to try hard to make a compelling story that didn’t effect the film in any way; and this was something that I was expecting from The Predator: Hunters and Hunted.

Thankfully, however, the book not only introduced a number of the characters that will appear in Shane Black’s upcoming The Predator, but also contained enough action and story to feel like it could have been a Predator film in its own right.

The story follows a group of people from Project Stargazer, a secret government programme to protect the Earth from Yautja incursion, and to acquire both their technology and a living specimen to study. It’s here, at Project Stargazer, that we meet two characters from the film: Sterling K. Brown’s Will Traeger and Jake Busey’s Sean Keyes.

Sean Keyes, as eagle-eyed Predator fans may have spotted, is the son of Peter Keyes (Gary Busey) from Predator 2. His inclusion is one of the things that intrigued me the most about the new project, and his character gets a really good introduction, delving into his reasons for being at Project Stargazer and becoming a xenobiologist in the first place. He doesn’t feature much in the book, but his scenes are very engaging and sets up his motivations and character perfectly for the film.

Traeger, on the other hand, gets much more of the book dedicated to him, taking up part of the sub-plot where he and the project’s commander have to lobby for more funds in Washington DC. Not the most exciting sounding plot, but when it’s revealed that Traeger is actually carefully manipulating politicians in order to oust the project commander and take over, it becomes a little more interesting, and sets up his position for the movie.

The rest ofJames A. Moore’s novel is given over to The Reavers, Project Stargazer’s elite unit trained by a Yautja survivor, Roger ‘Pappy’ Elliott. The Reavers are interesting enough and ‘Pappy’ is engaging as both a Vietnam Veteran and someone who has survived a Yautja in the past. The book makes a point to spend some time highlighting that having faced an alien in combat has left more than just physical scars on him, delving into his recurring nightmares and resulting alcoholism. It also gives some vague hints at other survivors, including mentioning both Alan ‘Dutch’ Schaefer (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover), without using their names.

This is what I was expecting from the book: a look into the human side of the upcoming film that touched upon some of the characters that would be appearing. What makes it really good is when a Yautja comes to Earth to hunt.

The Reavers are sent out to capture the creature, and actually manages to do so (though they do lose half their men when they do so). When the creature manages to escape from the Project Stargazer facility it returns to its ship, gets some new gear, and sets out to go retrieve its weapons and tech from the humans. It’s here that the best part of the book begins, as the remaining members of the Reavers go out to kill the alien.

Whilst the book is good at crafting human drama and has a fairly epic finale action sequence, the one thing that I feel lets it down is the Yautja; or more specifically, the sequences written from its point of view. There’s nothing hugely wrong with these moments, they’re not as good as in other Predator books and James A. Moore lacks a little something in these moments.

On a whole, however, The Predator: Hunters and Hunted is engaging and entertaining. It’s hard to know how well it fits into The Predator yet, but the story here builds a sense that it provides a good background that shouldn’t step onto the toes of the film’s events. Even if this was a stand alone book that wasn’t a tie-in, it would still be a thoroughly entertaining read.


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Birdman of Alcatraz – Blu-Ray Review

Originally published on Set The Tape

Birdman of Alcatraz is often cited as one of the greatest prison dramas ever committed to film; and now, for the first time ever, the moving human drama has been brought to Blu-Ray in stunning quality.

Telling the highly fictionalised story of real life prisoner Robert Stroud (Burt Lancaster) through his many years incarcerated in Leavenworth prison and later Alcatraz. Sent to prison for murder, Stroud quickly finds himself at odds with those running the institute due to a rebellious streak. After fatally attacking a guard, he’s placed in solitary confinement where he discovers a baby sparrow, which he nurses back to health. This begins a passion with birds that would become an area of expertise, earning him the moniker ‘Birdman’.

After being moved to Alcatraz, Stroud continues to find himself at odds with prison authorities, yet still manages to help stop a prison riot. Eventually, Stroud is moved on again to another prison, where he would remain.

Having read a lot about Robert Stroud, it’s difficult to fully enjoy the film as the story is so removed from actual events to be almost completely fictional. One of the biggest issues is that Burt Lancaster is too likeable as Stroud. Whilst he doesn’t play the character as a ‘good’ person, there’s enough charm to him that by the end, the audience is very clearly supposed to come away liking Stroud. This is in large down to changes made to events that paint the man in a much kinder light.

For example, the film says that Stroud killed a prison guard due to an issue around being denied visitation with his mother. Whereas, in real life, he stabbed a man to death over a minor rule infraction. His role in helping to end a prison riot on Alcatraz  is also an attempt to show him as a kinder, more reformed prisoner, but in real life he had no involvement in this incident in any way. In fact, the escape attempt was not even a full scale riot at all and only involved six prisoners.

Whilst these historic inaccuracies may not be too much of an issue for a casual audience member, I couldn’t help but stumble through them, with the depiction of Stroud drawing me out of what was an otherwise enjoyable film experience. Lancaster is on fine form but the real Stroud was far from mild-mannered. Hewas described by those who knew him as “jerk”, a “vicious killer” and someone who “liked chaos and turmoil”. It is reported that fellow prisoners who saw Birdman of Alcatraz actually said that Burt Lancaster “owes us all an apology”.

Despite these historical inaccuracies, the film itself is well deserving of its place as a classic of cinema. The direction from John Frankenheimer is good throughout and he gives his actors the room to give life to their characters. The scenes are longer than they would be in a modern film and the dialogue is much slower, but this actually gives a lot a weight to scenes that would otherwise be fairly flat.

Arguably, Lancaster gives Stroud more depth and charisma than the real person had (or deserved) and some of his scenes are incredibly absorbing. Burt is also accompanied by a strong supporting cast; in particular Karl Malden as Harvey Shoemaker, the embodiment of the prison system that frequently butts heads with Lancaster.

The Blu-Ray looks beautiful and it appears that a great deal of time and effort has been made into presenting the film in the best possible quality. The picture and sound quality are superb and Blu-Ray is definitely the best way to watch this classic. Whether you’ve seen it before or have only ever heard about it, now is the perfect time to watch the oft-cited cinematic masterpiece.


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The Road to The Predator… Predator: Concrete Jungle (2005)

Originally published on Set The Tape

Predator: Concrete Jungle is a third-person action game that puts you in the shoes of the Yautja hunter ‘Scarface’ on his mission for redemption. Beginning in the 1930’s, the Yautja hunter stalks and kills mobsters across New Way City. When the hunt goes wrong, leaving the hunter badly scarred, and some of his technology in human hands, he’s exiled by the rest of his clan. However, 100 years later, his clan give him the chance to redeem himself as he returns to Earth to retrieve his technology.

The story of Predator: Concrete Jungle is fairly basic, and is easily one of the strongest aspects of the experience. It uses some of the established lore from the Predator books and comics and delves into the idea of the hunters honour system as it’s core plot. Sadly, this is probably the highlight of the game, as the actual game-play and level design lets the whole experience down.

The game progression is mission based, with 27 in total, each of them having multiple objective which you will need to accomplish. The mission objectives for each level aren’t always the clearest either, with you having to go into the menu in order to find out what you need to do. Added to that, they sometimes feel quite disjointed and make little sense within the context of the universe. For example, in the middle of your quest to undo your past mistakes you have to interrupt a mugging, then take refuge in a church. Why? Well, the game never really explains why.

The game also doesn’t move from one mission to the next, instead returning you to the main menu after finishing one, making you select the next mission rather than just taking you to it. Scarface is fairly well equipped during the game, armed with a variety of combat spears, explosives, plasma caster, vision modes, and stealth camouflage.

Whilst you do have the iconic stealth camouflage the game’s stealth mechanics are not the best, sometimes you will be hidden, yet other times the enemy will suddenly be able to see you, with little warning that this is happening. There seems to be no clear rule as to when you are and aren’t visible, and coupled with some unexpected difficulty spikes leads to a game that can often be unforgiving. Poor camera controls and a lack of mission checkpoints, meaning that if you fail you have to replay the entire level again, round out a game that should have been good on paper, but thanks to some poor mechanics lets the whole experience down.

Predator: Concrete Jungle is a great concept, and the story itself is fairly good, but you have to work your way through a lot of difficult and poor game-play in order to experience it.


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