As the old sports adage goes, you’re only as good as your last game. Same rule applies in gaming: No matter how impressive your reputation or the quality of your past glories, if your last title was a steaming heap, that’s what people will expect from the next one. And while Rebellion is one of Britain’s most profitable developers, its last game, Shellshock 2: Blood Trails, was about as much fun as contracting botulism. So when Sega announced that the studio was revisiting its classic Aliens vs. Predator PC franchise on Xbox 360, we’ll admit to being excited about the revival but skeptical about the potential quality of the game itself.

Rebellion knows this; in fact, the studio is a bit embarrassed. “Shellshock 2 was a very difficult project that we inherited when we took over the Derby [UK] studio of Core Design,” admits company CEO Jason Kingsley. “It was well on the way to being halfway done. And yeah, not our proudest moment. I think it was aiming really high from a creative perspective. I think it missed its objectives completely in a lot of ways. It was difficult; it was very difficult.”

But with that refreshingly candid confession, Rebellion has something to prove with the return to its most famous series — and to quality. We had a chance to take a tantalizing look at the Predator’s campaign, and within a moment all memories of mutant zombie Vietcong and “sexy” soldier women in hotpants vanished, replaced by giddy fanboy excitement and a flood of fond memories.

The Hunt is On

That’s not to say the warm glow is entirely fueled by nostalgia; this isn’t just a total rehash of the late-’90s PC game. Rebellion has gone back and looked at how it should feel to play as a Predator, using the first film as its prime inspiration. A Predator doesn’t trundle around like your standard FPS grunt — he leaps between tree branches and ledges, sizing up an attack from above using his various vision modes. Rebellion was excited to include this element as a crucial part of the Predator’s movement, and the team settled on a system that allows you to lock onto nearby ledges and tree branches and automatically leap between them. No clumsy platforming or toppling from treetops here — just fast, stylish stalking. We weren’t able to get our hands on it (after all, the game likely won’t ship until 2010), but the “focus jumping” mechanic looks both efficient and intuitive even in this early state. The original AvP was always about threats coming from every possible angle, and finally the Predator is able to take full advantage of the environment as well.

The Human Element

Of course, the violent relationship between these three warring species works only if there’s balance, and simply hanging around in the treetops isn’t going to keep you safe. Aliens are capable killers, and they’ll clamber along the underside of the same branches and ledges that the Predators rely on. Similarly, if a Predator reveals himself too hastily while stalking a squad of human foes, the Marines’ strength in numbers and instant-response ranged weaponry will turn him into bright green burger-meat.

Now, a unit of Marines cautiously works its way through a jungle on a distant colony planet; we watch from beneath the lid of the Predator stalking them. The iconic heat-vision mode is back (along with its counterparts for detecting Aliens and other Predators), allowing us to keep an eye on the Marines’ steady progress through the area. One of the more convenient ways to pick off the troops is by using the Predator’s shoulder-mounted plasma cannon, which locks onto enemies more quickly in the relevant vision mode. The other option is to dive in, using the Predator’s lunging attack, and get your wristblades dirty. (In the final game, the Predator will have a full arsenal of weaponry; we’re guessing — hoping? — we’ll see the return of the glaive-like disc and a spear gun for stapling enemies to walls, although neither’s confirmed at this point.)

Gore Galore

In spite of all the Predator’s toys, it was the up-close wristblade combat that provided the biggest surprise of the day. You see, in the films, Predators have a tendency to keep the skulls of their slain prey, and in AvP the Predator has an animated “trophy kill” that is genuinely one of the most spectacularly violent sequences we’ve ever seen in a game — and we’ve played a lot of games.

As the kill was initiated, a terrified Marine was hauled up into the middle of the screen by his throat. The unfortunate victim’s struggling lasted a half-second or so before the Predator’s scaly hands twisted his neck, accompanied by a crunch like that of raw celery, popping his head off like the lid of a Pringles tube. Naturally, a sizeable portion of the hapless grunt’s spine followed, and, as the Predator drew the head back down to inspect it, we realized that the Marine was still rolling his eyes and gasping his last, with nothing but bloodied, glistening vertebrae beneath his chin. Cue an intake of breath from us that was clearly audible even above Rebellion’s weapons-grade sound system.

Now, we’re not tremendously squeamish when it comes to virtual viscera, but this was several measures more graphic than anything we’ve seen recently — so much so that we’d wager it’ll be cut from the final game to avoid an Adults Only rating in the U.S. “The trophy kills are a big debate,” Kingsley tells us. “This game is obviously based on R-rated movies, and we want to make sure it’s very clearly a Mature-rated game. “Some games are for kids, but we’re not making this game for anyone other than adults. That’s very clear, and within that context, I think the violence is part of the character and the world — we’re talking about a fantasy world here and fantasy creatures, and about trying to build up a mythos. I remember the first time I saw one of the particular Predator kills, everybody went, ‘Oooh’ — but it’s what the Predator does in the movies.” Extreme, but accurate.

Acid Test

As you’d imagine, combat against Aliens plays out differently from fighting with Marines. For starters, the Predator’s signature cloaking device — which renders him almost entirely invisible to humans — doesn’t work with these extraterrestrial killers, meaning stealth is almost completely out of the question. The bugs can climb on any surface, making them much harder to track with weaponry, and for the most part, you’ll be forced to take on the Aliens face to face on their terms — no mean feat when their blood is corrosive acid. Of course, if you’re canny and the opportunity presents itself, you can pit the two species against each other, then simply pick off the winner. Everyone’s each other’s enemy, so unleashing a bunch of Aliens on the Marines, for example, will lead to a huge firefight that a Predator can observe from the safety of a vantage point above the battle area.

While we’ve been treated to only a portion of the Predator side of the game, we’re clawing at the walls to see how the other campaigns play out. We’re promised three separate but intertwined campaigns, with the Marine segment having a distinct survival-horror flavor to it, and that’s not to mention the inevitable online multiplayer battles between the three species. It seems that after the mess that was Shellshock 2, Rebellion has something to prove, and where better to do it than with the series where the studio made its name. Could Aliens vs. Predator turn the film’s slogan on its head? Because it certainly looks like whoever wins, we win as well.