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A celebration of the greatest console of all time: The Sony Playstation 2, and its games.
4/11/2023

S1E15 - Predator: Concrete Jungle

It's time to talk about a game staring everyone's favorite ugly motherfucker! And this Predator didn't kill himself in prison!

Transcript
Speaker A:

Welcome back to another episode of Discree Air, the podcast where every week we dive into the fascinating and extensive library of the greatest selling video game console of all time, the Play Station Two. I'm Derek Kicker.

Speaker B:

I'm Ian Golding.

Speaker A:

And this week, we visit a concrete jungle where nightmares are made of in Predator. Concrete jungle over here.

Speaker B:

Anytime.

Speaker A:

You're one ugly son of a bitch. Is that good?

Speaker B:

Ugly motherfucker.

Speaker A:

Is that what he says? He says, you're one ugly mother, and then it like, blows up or something, right?

Speaker B:

No, he says motherfucker.

Speaker A:

Does he?

Speaker B:

God, yeah.

Speaker A:

I need to rewatch that movie. I love that movie.

Speaker C:

Back then, no one knew what it really was. Newspapers called it the new way. Devil. The Indians even had legends about it going back centuries. Stories of an invisible killer, a demon who traveled with the comets, returning in the hottest seasons to hunt its favorite prey, human beings.

Speaker A:

It was released in North America on April 26, 2005. So, what is that? This episode will air on April 11.

Speaker B:

Wow. 15 year anniversary or 13 year anniversary?

Speaker A:

18 year anniversary. Almost.

Speaker B:

Jesus.

Speaker A:

Almost the 18 year anniversary of this game. Now, I've played a lot of Predator games, and I guess I never realized just how many there were.

Speaker B:

I am having trouble thinking of more than two, but there is a lot.

Speaker A:

So there's this there's Hunting Grounds, the new one that was, like, multiplayer on PS Four.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

I really like alien versus predator on Super Nintendo.

Speaker B:

There's also the Atari Jaguar version of Alien versus Predator, which is I think.

Speaker A:

It'S a port, right? Of the Super Nintendo One.

Speaker B:

I don't think so. It's like FPS. Is it super Nintendo and FPS.

Speaker A:

Oh, is it? Oh, no. Yeah, I'm looking at it right now. It's doom, but with yeah, it's doom. Yeah. You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of Alien trilogy for PlayStation One. Looks just like this. Also a first person shooter.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

There's a ton of Alien games, too, but Predator games. There's also the Alien versus Predator game for PS three and Xbox 360. I guess there are more Predator games that have to do that connect with Aliens.

Speaker B:

Right.

Speaker A:

This is one of them, too. There's Xenomorphs in this fucking game. There are indeed, which is great. Not the game. The xenomorphs are great.

Speaker B:

Xenomorphs are great. Yeah.

Speaker A:

This one, I think, is considered the best of the Predator games.

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker A:

Which, I guess, to be fair, is an extremely low bar. But, I mean, I will say this game could be worse.

Speaker B:

Yeah, it could be.

Speaker A:

Could be much worse.

Speaker B:

A lot worse. Yeah.

Speaker A:

So like we said, it came out on April 26, 2005, two weeks after it was released in Europe. It was published in America by Vivendi Universal Games.

Speaker B:

Sure.

Speaker A:

And it was developed by Eurocom, which is a British video game developer, which I guess explains why it released in Pal regions first, and they went under in 2012. But they actually have quite the roster of games they did. They did the Lethal Weapon game for NES.

Speaker B:

Okay?

Speaker A:

They did the Jungle Book game.

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker A:

Yeah. Jungle Book for the Genesis. The SNES. NES Game Boy. They did all those. They did the Game Boy and Game gear. Port of Earthworm gym. Okay. Which is something that is something. They did a Port of Super Street Fighter two Turbo for Ms Dos.

Speaker B:

The.

Speaker A:

Old Dos version, the classic yeah, Dos version, the version everyone played. They did a Port of Ultimate Mortal Kombat. Three for the Saturn.

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker A:

They did Maui Mallard in cold shadow for the SNES.

Speaker B:

That sounds great. Maui Mallard. Love it.

Speaker A:

Yeah. They did cruising World for N 64.

Speaker B:

Oh, wow. Okay.

Speaker A:

Duke newcomb 64. And then in the 2000s, they went a little wild and dabbled in other developers franchises. So they did Crash Bash, which is I mean, I haven't played it in a long time, but I remember it being a lot of fun.

Speaker B:

Yeah, I think I remember. Crash bash.

Speaker A:

Yeah. Like the Free Battle Crash Bandicoot game, right? They did the GameCube version of Crash Bandicoot. The Wrath of Cortex, of course, being the first mainline Crash game not done by Naughty Dog.

Speaker B:

They're just all over the place.

Speaker A:

2005, the year that this came out, and basically until the end of their existence, they almost exclusively did movie IPS. So they did robots based on that. Is it a DreamWorks movie? Yeah, they did this. Batman Begins Ice Age Two the Meltdown Pirates of the Caribbean at World's End the Mummy Tomb of the Dragon Emperor Seven quantum of Solace the PS Two version. Not the PS Three version. I Sage. Dawn of the dinosaurs. G force. And then the last game they did in the aughts was they did Dead Space Extraction for the Wii, which is a fun game, but it was co developed with EA Redwood Shores.

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker A:

And then in the 2010s, as they started to wind down, they did the Golden Eye Wii game, a couple of Disney games, and then called it A Day with Seven Legends. And Harry Potter for the connect.

Speaker B:

Hang it up after Harry Potter for connect.

Speaker A:

Yes. But yeah, that's eurocom.

Speaker B:

It sounds like one of those they have, like, Eurovision. It sounds like a contest where a bunch of weird singers go up on a stage and play shitty dance music for prizes.

Speaker A:

It sounds like a telephone company.

Speaker B:

Eurocom. Yeah.

Speaker A:

Or like an Internet service provider. Like, Britain's answer to, like, Charter Spectrum.

Speaker B:

It's fucking eurocom. All right, well, they did some shit.

Speaker A:

They did do some shit, including predator, concrete jungle. Now, this is a game that it wasn't on my radar when it came out.

Speaker B:

I've never heard of it before. You said this was the game.

Speaker A:

Yeah, and then I kind of discovered it as I started getting into video game collecting, because this is a somewhat like mid tier pricey kind of PS two game. This game goes for like 70 ish dollars fucking complete. I think it probably had like a short production lifespan and there probably wasn't a ton of copies. But I think most people do consider this to be the best Predator game. It is one of the few Predator games that's mainly focused on you being the Predator and you doing stuff, which I guess is the kind of draw of a Predator game. Right?

Speaker B:

100%.

Speaker A:

Like if I'm playing a game based on the first, we totally missed this one predator for the Nintendo, the NES.

Speaker B:

You want to hear a fun fact about the Predator NES game?

Speaker A:

Yes.

Speaker B:

When I was young, so we had a pretty poorly trained set of cats and one of them liked to pee on shit. And this cat peed on my Nintendo controller. And the controller didn't really work except on one game, predator for Super Nintendo. But it didn't work. All it did it as soon as you started the game and I swear on my life it warped you past levels, a level would begin and you would go on to the next level.

Speaker A:

I think I remember seeing that on cheat CC is that you put cat piss on an NES controller and that's how you maybe that's how you warp levels.

Speaker B:

If so, I invented it. So I had that game and then the cat piss thing happened and then I couldn't beat it. It was pretty hard game and then immediately I beat it. As soon as I plugged it, I turned it on the next time and had the controller plug it. It was fucking there must have been a warp cheat code obviously built in a certain series of buttons that they had cat piss on the innards, that they were constantly being activated. And that's how I beat the game.

Speaker A:

This sounds like a magic cat. It's like those cats that lay next to people when they know they're going to die except for this cat. Just when you can't beat a game it knows. So it pisses on the controller, pee.

Speaker B:

On that fucking controller and you'll help them get past the fucking level.

Speaker A:

Yeah, you play as the Predator in this game, which I think is like what most people would want from a Predator game. And let's get into the story of this game. Sure, it's one of the wildest fucking stories. Holy shit. What did I smoke?

Speaker C:

Too bad. I was starting to enjoy that as much as you were. Something just shorter about my goddamn chameleon suit. Electromagnetic pulse blew out all the tech.

Speaker B:

It's going to kill us off.

Speaker A:

So this game takes place in a fictional city called New Way City. At least that's where it begins. It'll eventually become Neonopoulos and you are in the opening missions, which is kind of act as like a tutorial mission. You play as a Predator god, it sounds weird to say that. Imagine making a game called To Catch a Predator, but you're trying to catch one of these predators.

Speaker B:

Well, probably you run into some problems there. I think people probably protest that game.

Speaker A:

You're running around the city doing your predator stuff, which is doing some killing, just killing. And this game is stupid, violent murder central. Yeah. Like, basically you go and you grab people, and then you can rip them in half, or you can rip their skull and spinal column out through, like, the top of their shoulders.

Speaker B:

That old trick for predator, too.

Speaker A:

You can skin them and then hang them up. The predators go to but the game, you go and you're trying to kill this mafia leader, and you eventually confront him and kill him and rip his head off. And then you get shot in the face by his wife, which is super funny because you've been getting shot the entire, like, 30 minutes that this level.

Speaker B:

Takes, and you just shake it off.

Speaker A:

Yeah. Just absolutely nothing. And then this woman with, like a 22 rim fire pistol, like a purse pistol, basically. Yeah, like a deringer almost shoots you in the fucking face because you decided to get cocky with her and take off your mask, and you end up stumbling away from the goons.

Speaker B:

Yes.

Speaker A:

And you end up falling through a building and you realize you're cooked, but cannot let predator technology fall into the hands of these fucking savages on Earth. So he does the predator move of blip bloop, bleep, bloop, bleep on his wrist and blows up his ship. And this is like a nuclear weapon that he unleashes on this town. One fly in the ointment, though it doesn't kill him. Somehow, somehow he survives. His predator brethren come pick his failure ass up and are basically like, yo, fucking you suck, dude. You lost to these guys. And so they exile him on a planet, on a random planet, and by this time, his eye has scabbed over. So he's got like a goofy eye, and they leave yes, they leave him a spear. I think they call them combie sticks.

Speaker B:

Yeah, that sounds right.

Speaker A:

Yeah, they're like they're spear things, but the spear does a bunch of stuff. It's alien technology. And they leave him there for 100 years. Now, in that time, the new way city becomes neonopoulos, and the gangs running the town have happened upon the alien technology, the predator technology, of which they have named it Prometheus tech, which is just truly a subtle metaphor. What a subtle metaphor.

Speaker B:

That is so subtle. Wow.

Speaker A:

Super subtle. Calling it prometheus tech.

Speaker B:

Well done, Eurocom.

Speaker A:

And in case you're a fucking idiot and didn't get it from them calling it Prometheus later in the game, it is just straight explained to you how taking this technology was stealing fire from the gods and the predators who monitor the situation. And since they come back to Earth occasionally realize that these people have the predator tech and they don't get into it too much because these predator motherfuckers don't talk. But it really seems like the Predator congress council high table, the high table of the predators. Let's call they could just come in and fix this issue.

Speaker B:

It takes 5 seconds.

Speaker A:

Yeah, but they love ritual, they love ceremony. So they go to Planet Loser and pick up the fuck up who ends up being called Scarface, which is come on now. Come on, come on. How did that get by?

Speaker B:

Too fucking bad.

Speaker A:

And they're like, you fucked it up. You want to regain your honor? You better go clean up this mess.

Speaker B:

It's all about honor with these predators.

Speaker A:

Yes, sir. And the predator makes his way back to Now Neonopoulos, where gang members have all kinds of tech that make them more difficult to fight. And then you get into what a lot of this game has problematic elements to it and you get into that. But spoiler alert, the game basically ends with the woman that shot him in the face is still alive. Blah blah blah.

Speaker B:

She's like in a hundred years old.

Speaker A:

She's in a tube. The Blood like made her and her son live forever or whatever. The predator blood.

Speaker B:

A new power of the Predator blood, by the way.

Speaker A:

In all of Predator lore has never been a thing. And then he kills everyone.

Speaker B:

You go back and you kill more. Fuckers. It's just a little harder now because they got good guns.

Speaker A:

Yes.

Speaker B:

There's not much more to it than that.

Speaker A:

Yeah. And then there's like some really ham fisted connections to Alien. At one point this woman who they at the end they call her name is Isabella but in the end they call her Mother because she's connected to.

Speaker B:

Like a computer system mother.

Speaker A:

She unleashes xenomorphs on you. There's talk of them selling the company to Utah but then also Wayland and then post credit scene, the Wayland and Utah merge, setting up a sequel that would never come.

Speaker B:

Now end is unnecessary because we there's no point.

Speaker A:

Who cares?

Speaker B:

There's no point. Yeah.

Speaker A:

Who gives a shit. Now, I'm not going to lie, I was excited to play this game.

Speaker B:

I was excited for a good portion of playing this game.

Speaker A:

Yeah, because I varied. Concrete Jungle is named after the Predator comic book series Concrete Jungle, which is great. And there is one thing that I really like about this game and that in the beginning it really connects to a lot of the Predator predetter predator.

Speaker B:

Interesting.

Speaker A:

The predator like lore. Right, right. They're called what do they call? Oh my God, how do you say it is?

Speaker B:

I have no idea.

Speaker A:

Utja. Yeah, I think that's how you say it is the species that the predator is. And surprisingly there is a lot of lore and there's been novels and in some of the video games and in some of the movies, predator Two actually really expands upon this lore.

Speaker B:

I'm interested in this because none of this is in the first movie. Like this honor thing and blah, blah, blah. It's just this mysterious thing that came to the Earth one time yes. And wanted to kill some fuckers and hunt them. It was hunting.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

And then before you knew it, there were all these honor rules and there's codes and things you do and blah, blah, blah. It's just fascinating that basically like a lone in the woods monster movie turned into such a deep fucking world and then merged it with the alien universe, and now it's become this we understand all these rules. Everyone knows about the honor code of the predators, and they're a hunting species and they go planet to plant. None of that is in the first movie. And I'm just fascinated how it just grew out of, like, this blank slate of a monster, basically.

Speaker A:

Yeah. Which I think is what makes this second movie so good. Right. Because all of the lore and all of the, I guess, deep backstory of these creatures kind of sparks purely from that movie. Including their connection to the Xenomorphs right.

Speaker B:

In the trophy room.

Speaker A:

Yeah. Including a pistol that would later on connect to the newest Predator movie, Prey, which I thought was great. I don't care about the pistol stuff, but I thought that movie win.

Speaker B:

Oh, that movie is fucking awesome.

Speaker A:

Yeah, I thought that movie was awesome.

Speaker B:

Return to fucking form, I'd say.

Speaker A:

Oh, absolutely. But, yeah, there is a lot of stuff. They're not just mindless killing machines. They clearly have very advanced technology. The Alien versus Predator movies would go into a lot of, like, what they those movies aren't very good, but they do go into a lot of the backstory of them. And this game, for the most part, follows it until it becomes basically like a mob story.

Speaker B:

Fucking horrible.

Speaker A:

Which is not interesting at all.

Speaker B:

No, it's not.

Speaker A:

And I mean, largely, the story of this game doesn't matter very much.

Speaker B:

It's just you killing fuckers. I guess there needs to be a story to keep us reason we're doing any of this. But, yeah, the story doesn't matter at all.

Speaker A:

Yeah. And this game runs into a lot of trouble when it tries because you never really connect the gameplay to the story elements. So it relies on a crutch, which is I would say that in this game's, I guess you can call them chapter breaks. You get a cutscene that's narrated, and you find out it's narrated by Mother Isabella, where it kind of explains, like, oh, he's lost his honor. Now he's got to do this. And now kind of hold your hand through it. Because the actual gameplay of this game is kind of clunky, mindless killing and running around.

Speaker B:

Yeah. That's all.

Speaker A:

And, like, occasionally, like, stealth stuff, but not super interesting. There's not a lot to this game.

Speaker B:

No, there isn't.

Speaker A:

Yeah. So before we get into the gameplay, which I'm assuming will be a very short section of this podcast, I do want to talk about some of the problematic things, some of the very racist things in this game. And that is that every one of the gangs is like a racist cartoon.

Speaker B:

Yep.

Speaker A:

Like there's. There's the Haitian Voodoo gang. Le Citois. Right. And just all of them dress like fucking Pavalegua Legba. Papa Legba. Just doing the voice. They're violent drug dealers. One of my favorite characters in this game is the Los Matadors sure. Led by Elongo.

Speaker B:

You got to have El Hongo.

Speaker A:

You got to have el Hongo. And half of his henchmen, for some reason, are dressed like Lucidors.

Speaker B:

Yeah. I mean, why wouldn't they?

Speaker A:

Just walking just walking the street looking like Nacho libre. It's very funny. There was one cut scene there's one cut scene in this game where he calls one of his captains and it's a lucidor, and he's on the cell phone, and this dude is holding the cell phone upside down. It's a flip phone, and the numbers are against his ear and the screen is in his hand.

Speaker B:

Beautiful.

Speaker A:

That's the attention to detail that went into this game.

Speaker B:

Yeah.

Speaker A:

They couldn't even have the lucidor hold his phone. Right.

Speaker B:

Well, we don't know about the lucidor culture. It's possible.

Speaker A:

That's a thing that's true. He also refers to the predator as el dominino. Invisible.

Speaker B:

The invisible demon dev demon.

Speaker A:

Yeah. And there's a huge focus on race in this game. In general, they send a henchmen after the Predator, after Scarface, and they refer to him as the Chechen, which is funny because everyone like the the mob. And the mob is Italian and Irish. There's an Irish mob and an Italian mob, and they're the Borgias, and they are just like, oh, forget about get the fuck out of here.

Speaker B:

Been nice to have a fucking I know. It was around the same time a nice road to respect crossover would have been fun. Yeah.

Speaker A:

Predator road to respect. Now we're talking Predator, the concrete road to respect.

Speaker B:

Perfect. I'm ready. I'm ready for it.

Speaker A:

In fact, in this game, this is the Predator on his road back to respect.

Speaker B:

It absolutely is. And you don't have to do as many fucking go get this.

Speaker A:

You don't have to get anyone a Beatball sub.

Speaker B:

Luckily.

Speaker A:

Yeah. There's also a very funny scene in this game where El hungo to seek shelter from the Predator, hunting him, finds himself in what is both a brothel and some sort of arms depot. And that section of the game is extremely horny for no reason. Oh, yeah. Which gets back to what I said earlier in that this game is so 90s. This game is obviously a Predator game. It has RoboCop vibes. It also kind of has, like I don't know, there was, like, a lot of movies in the 90s that had some crime guy who's like, I want his fucking head. That was like a thing. What was the other movie? The other extremely 90s movie. This reminded me of Predator RoboCop.

Speaker B:

Anything with Steven Segal.

Speaker A:

Anything with Steven all the bad guys.

Speaker B:

Steven Segal movies.

Speaker A:

Yeah. And it's just super weird.

Speaker B:

Yeah. It's an odd. Well, again, though, we've run into this now a couple of times where you get overseas developers and they're kind of our entertainment is our world kind of blown out. Right. Like exaggerated. But they don't have our world. They have that. So they're blowing out what's already blowing out. So it's just so over the top. Fucking ridiculous.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

Of American culture.

Speaker A:

Yeah. Again, this is the most diverse game ever, I guess. Secondary main bad guy I'm drawing a blank on her name starts with an L. She has, like, a private coterie of assassins that protect her. They refer to them as Ronin bodyguards. And they are like the crazy 88 from, like, Kill Bill. They're dudes in suits and masks, and they have samurai swords.

Speaker B:

Baby, why wouldn't that I love the fact that her, she is the boss of a bunch of Ronins, which are literally samurais without masters.

Speaker A:

This game doesn't understand itself at all.

Speaker B:

At all.

Speaker A:

Yeah. And there's a very funny scene where he's like, you have your Ronin bodyguards who are trained in 10,000 ways to kill. It's like that's. A lot of ways to kill.

Speaker B:

What are we talking about? Like hitting with a car. You're counting that?

Speaker A:

Yeah. Dropping a piano on them and then their keys become piano keys.

Speaker B:

Nice.

Speaker A:

Getting that. Painting a tunnel on a wall and getting them to drive into it. Stuff like that.

Speaker B:

Yeah. Making them go off the edge of a cliff and hold up a sign that says yeah.

Speaker A:

They have a frequent buyer's card for the Acme, Co, Dynamite, you know, stuff like that.

Speaker B:

10,000. 10,000 ways to kill. Shut the fuck.

Speaker A:

Absolutely. But let's get into, I guess, the gameplay of this.

Speaker B:

Sure. We've stolen the secret of fire from the gods.

Speaker C:

If it wants Prometheus tech, it can bid for it. Like the Utah Corporation, Whalen Industries, or anybody else. Daddy, we can sell mother and Prometheus for billions of dollars. You have to let me close a deal here before things get me worse. We could walk away from this shithole forever.

Speaker A:

So the controls in this game are fine.

Speaker B:

Sure.

Speaker A:

They're nothing special.

Speaker B:

Once you fix the camera to be like we know it is now, instead.

Speaker A:

Of inverted left right camera, most of the game is prompted. Executions and stuff like that are all prompted. Tell you what button to push.

Speaker B:

Even up till the end, it's not like something that's just holding your hand to the beginning. It's always going to tell you what to do.

Speaker A:

Yeah. And I mean, luck is you're just running around. There's levels. There's clearly delineated levels.

Speaker B:

Well, yeah. There are not only levels, but then it seemed like you would walk like 30ft in this game, and then there'd be a loading, and then you go to the next thing and it'd be like a quick little you know what I mean?

Speaker A:

Yeah. Which is I mean, what can you say? This is what I would say. There was hundreds of games like this in the PS era. Right. A lot of them didn't have the bump of having the Predator IP attached to it.

Speaker B:

Right, exactly.

Speaker A:

But it's really not special in any sort of way. None of the stealth mechanics are interesting. No.

Speaker B:

You just hit the fucking invisibility button.

Speaker A:

Yeah. And in a lot of ways, I think this game looks like a PS One game.

Speaker B:

Yes.

Speaker A:

The graphics in this game are shockingly bad. Yeah, the cutscenes are good. The cutscenes look like any other PS Two cutscene, like Mediocre cutscene. But the actual gameplay graphics of this game are truly awful. Like, just faces stretched across polygonal like heads and nothing moves. It feels like trying to think of a game, honestly, kind of looks like Silent Hill One. I would say Silent Hill One might look better in this game.

Speaker B:

Might look better? Yeah. It just doesn't look optimized at all. It doesn't look like a lot of it looks like they did a lot, but this feels like one of those games where they just got kind of a library of shit and they just used what they had and there was no graphical optimization or anything. It was just yeah, it looks like shit.

Speaker A:

Yeah. I think the only part of this game where it seems like there was any sort of attention to detail is in how the Predator moves.

Speaker B:

Yes.

Speaker A:

That seems special in a way that no other asset of this game does. It seems like they really tried to nail down his movement. He feels weighty. He kind of has that movement that up and down kind of movement that's probably not super accurate, but it feels special in that none of the other characters kind of do that or move that way.

Speaker B:

Exactly.

Speaker A:

But other than that, this game is pretty hollow. If you really care about the story of this because you're, like, obsessed with Predator, I mean, you can watch all.

Speaker B:

The cuttings and that's enough.

Speaker A:

Yeah, you can just watch all of them. I did find an interesting thing about the cast of this game, though.

Speaker B:

Okay, let's hear it.

Speaker A:

One of the voices of the Predator is a woman named Sarah Joy Brown who was on General Hospital for like, five years.

Speaker B:

Okay.

Speaker A:

And she won three Daytime Emmys and then it was making Predator sounds.

Speaker B:

She's on set, General Hospital in, and she's like, oh, I got to be down here by three today, guys. I got to do my voice for this awesome new video, predator Concrete Jump.

Speaker A:

She's actually in Big Mama's house too, as well.

Speaker B:

Oh, wow.

Speaker A:

And she has done a bunch of Power Rangers shit, too. And this was the only video game she ever did.

Speaker B:

Yeah. I'm going to bring something up that struck me. I don't know if you're familiar with this game. It came out, I found out the same year, and it's not the same, but there is a definite spiritual connection. Do you remember the punisher game for PST?

Speaker A:

Yes.

Speaker B:

Weren't there certain aspects of this felt like that?

Speaker A:

I had never thought literally until you said that. Right. I have been at a law. Like I said, there's a lot of games that kind of feel like this. But yeah, you're 100% correct. This feels kind of like The Punisher game. Another stupid, expensive game that is sought after by collectors.

Speaker B:

But that game is fucking awesome. I mean, if you like creative ways to murder.

Speaker A:

Yes.

Speaker B:

But just there's something about the way this game moved and the prompts and stuff. I was like, I feel like I'm playing that game. And I was like, did this rip that off? Did they use the same engine? Blah, blah. I didn't dig too deep, but I couldn't find any real connection between the two. But it was interesting how and that you felt it, too. Especially how familiar it felt. How connected they feel.

Speaker A:

Yes. And finding anything about the development of this game was difficult. There is not a lot.

Speaker B:

There's no book called Burden of Dreams the Making of Predator contractor Contract.

Speaker A:

Shoot for the Moon, and if you miss, you'll land among the stars.

Speaker B:

There you go.

Speaker A:

Yeah. No, there wasn't. Interesting.

Speaker B:

I thought there would be.

Speaker A:

Before we just completely take a dump on this game, let's hear what the critics had to say. Let's.

Speaker C:

Buddy, look at you. What have you done to yourself?

Speaker A:

No.

Speaker C:

Daddy.

Speaker A:

So the game, shockingly, received generally unfavorable reviews.

Speaker B:

That's shocking. That's shocking to me.

Speaker A:

Yeah. IGN called it a good idea gone bad, which I can great summaration. Yeah.

Speaker B:

Great summation.

Speaker A:

That's the whole review right there. Pretty much. And cited the game's poor controls and awkward gameplay as factors. That's true. Game Spot criticized the game's storyline and graphics. Totally app graphics.

Speaker B:

Yes. Both. Yeah.

Speaker A:

And on Metacritic, PS Two does narrowly edge out the Xbox version of this game. And it has a 47, whereas the Xbox has a 46. Okay. EGN gave it a 4.83 out of ten. Game Informer gave it a 2.75 out of ten.

Speaker B:

Game informer brutal.

Speaker A:

Game Pro gave it two out of five stars. Game Spot, who criticized the game storyline and graphics, gave it a 5.3 out of ten. Game Spy gave it a one and a half stars out of five.

Speaker B:

Yeah, that feels about right.

Speaker A:

I guess my overall feelings about this game are it's nothing. It's got nothing in it. It's that. Remember those wonder balls?

Speaker B:

Wonder Balls?

Speaker A:

They're like a chocolate ball, and then inside there was like a toy or.

Speaker B:

Like a kinder egg, whatever.

Speaker A:

It's like that right. It's got, like the chocolate on the outside, which is The Predator, the cool title. It has a coolest shit cover. Right? I will say this game has, like, pretty decent music. Yeah, it's not bad in the cutscenes in the actual game, it's like fucking Seinfeld music.

Speaker B:

Disembowel this guy.

Speaker A:

Yeah. But like just insane music. But when you get in, there's no candy and no toy. It's just nothing.

Speaker B:

Yeah, if it's a candy bar, it's like a what you might call it.

Speaker A:

Yeah.

Speaker B:

You know what I mean? Yeah. Okay. I mean, there's peanut butter in there. I guess it's fine.

Speaker A:

It's devoid of any filling. It's like getting a peanut butter cup. But there's no peanut butter inside.

Speaker B:

Right? You're like, what the fuck happened at the factory?

Speaker A:

Yeah, what the fuck? That's a good way to describe this game. It's just extremely hollow. I don't recommend anyone play it.

Speaker B:

No.

Speaker A:

If you're a collector, I mean, I guess you could have it as I have no plans on selling my copy just because the COVID is so cool. And I have it next to my Predator action figure and my SNES copy of Alien versus Predator, which is an infinitely better game, of course. So I'm going to go ahead and rank this game, I guess. Two and a half. Ugly motherfuckers out of ten.

Speaker B:

Man, that feels generous to me by a half a point. I'm going to go with two Glama the fuck out of ten. Just good idea gone bad. I mean, I hate to plagiarize, but that's it. Good idea gone bad.

Speaker A:

Yeah. I believe, as the kids today would say, this was a fumbled bag, for sure.

Speaker B:

Oh, nicely done. Unforced error.

Speaker A:

Yeah, it definitely an unforced error. I would love to see a good Predator game. Yeah, I would love to see a modern, like, Predator hunting Grounds is fine, but it's not what I want from a Predator game. I want, like, a Predator game that's.

Speaker B:

Like I want fucking Metal Gear Solid, but predator.

Speaker A:

I want Metal Gear Solid. Or you know what I want? I want grand theft auto, but as a predator.

Speaker B:

All right, well, that was Predator. Concrete Jungle.

Speaker A:

Concrete Jungle with dreams of made.

Speaker B:

There it is from 2005.

Speaker A:

Make sure you follow us on social media and subscribe for more episodes like this. Every PS Tuesday. You can find us on instagram at discrete errorpod. You can find me at funeral. Casual games.

Speaker B:

I'm at Ian Golden Games, and I'm posting now. Guys. I'm posting.

Speaker A:

We're trying to post more. And then you can also find us on whatnot occasionally slang in some games, including games we review on this podcast. And you'll find us there at Funeral Casual. And twice a year we try to do a charity show where we sell games and donate all the money to charity. And in fact, we have one coming up on June 4, and all the money from that will go to the trevor project, which provides mental health services for LGBTQ teens. So make sure you check that out, right?

Speaker B:

And thanks so much for listening. We will see you. And next time, Baraboom barabing our.