Aliens Versus Predator – Gold Edition

Genre: First Person Shooter

Release Year: 1999

Developer: Rebellion Developments

Publisher: Fox Interactive

Age Rating: 15+

Playability Status: Perfect

Tested On: Windows 10 x64, Windows 7 x64

Availability: Open source but copyright retained

Ridley Scott’s 1979 movie Alien has left a legacy not only for film but for videogames too. As far back as the Commodore 64, gamers have had their chance to fight the inhuman killing machines for themselves. Rebellion’s excellent 1999 title Aliens Vs Predator not only gives the player the chance to be a fierce Colonial Marine, but also the camouflage wearing alien huntsman known as Predator. Skilled players can even take control of the Aliens themselves and scuttle after the hapless Marines or fight the fearsome Predators. Aliens Vs Predator is a superbly playable title that has aged surprisingly well and can still keep modern PC players on the edge of their seats.

Installation

Aliens Vs Predator – Gold Edition will install without any issues on modern PCs, simply install it from CD as usual. If the CD-ROM does not start installing automatically when you insert it, browse to the CD in Computer/This PC and run the “AvP_Setup_Launcher.exe” program manually. The game should ship with two CD’s, the second is a music CD, don’t forget to put this into your CD drive before you play if you want to listen to the music.

Patching

Before attempting to play the game on a modern PC, it’s vital that you install the latest patch. Rather than use any of the officially released patches, you should download the latest user created “AvPx” patch available from this page. The patch on this page has been created by a fan using the official game source code (program code) that was released by the original developers. This has allowed the fan community to keep supporting the game and updating it, meaning that the game works perfectly even on the latest systems. Note, when installing the patch it will automatically try to install the Visual C++ Runtimes and DirectX. If you already have these components you can safely cancel this part of the installation.

Tweaking visual options

With the AvPx patch installed, the game is automatically set to the highest quality visual settings. The only setting you need to configure is the screen resolution. This can be set under “Audio/Video Options – Video Card and Resolution” from within the games main menu.

Sound

Aliens Vs Predator supports EAX sound effects, which means if you have a suitable sound card it’s a good candidate for use with Creative Lab’s ALchemy software. However we tested the game with ALchemy enabled but could not determine any difference in the sound quality, nor did we get surround sound.

Multiplayer

The games official multiplayer servers have been discontinued. It’s still possible, however, to host local games. So for instance, if you have two or more computers connected to your home internet connection and two copies of Aliens Vs Predator, these two machines can be configured to play AvP with each other. To do this, one user should select to Host a game, then the other should choose to join a local game. There’s also the option of joining a game on the internet by directly entering the IP address of another computer. Playing like this may require you to reconfigure your router or other tweaks to your networking gear that are beyond the scope of this article.