Dan Trachtenberg has the weight of the whole Predator franchise on his shoulders after directing 2022's excellent series revival, Prey. With animated film Killer of Killers getting a strong response and the upcoming Predator: Badlands continuing the live-action train, Predator's on a major upswing. I just have one question: where's the great Predator video game?
That's a question Trachtenberg himself is looking for the answer to. "I am desperate for there to be a third-person action adventure, Uncharted, Assassin's Creed, that kind of open-world thing," he tells IGN. I won't come down too hard on Trachtenberg for perhaps implying that Uncharted is an open-world game, and either way he's certainly right that a AAA Predator game could be very cool.
Regardless, Trachtenberg shouldn't have to prove his gamer cred – after all, one of his most notable early works is the Portal fan film No Escape. And he knows that Predator already has a long history in video games, taking a moment to shout out the oft-forgotten and poorly reviewed 2005 PS2 and Xbox title, Predator: Concrete Jungle.
"Concrete Jungle was something that I missed unfortunately," Trachtenberg explains. "And that was a long time ago. And there's just so much fun to be had game wise, I think, with Predator. I hope it could happen."
Concrete Jungle got a 47 aggregate score on Metacritic, which is pretty dismal even by the standards of '00s licensed games. Nonetheless, there are loads of Predator fans who look back on it fondly for telling an original story in the universe. We do have a more modern Predator adaptation in Hunting Grounds, but that's an asymmetrical multiplayer title that isn't really providing the same type of experience.
While the movies might have largely been dismal, the Alien vs. Predator subfranchise at least gave us some good games, including an excellent Capcom arcade beat-'em-up and a couple of great FPS titles through the '90s and early '00s. But I'm with Trachtenburg – the idea of a big-budget, open-world Predator game has a heck of a lot of potential.
Concrete Jungle did not make our list of the 25 best PS2 games. It probably wouldn't make a top 100, either. Honestly, I'm skeptical it would hit the top 1000.
