When I first saw the adverts in magazines and on the television for this game I could barely contain my excitement. At last an AvP game worth playing. You know, I hate it when I’m proved semi wrong.
Let’s start with the Single player campaigns in order of my personal preference.
The Alien campaign is by and large the most fun to play in my opinion. Just dishing out shiny black death to humans, androids and Predators kept me going for the 4 hours it took to complete this section. As an Alien you have no weapons other than those you were born with and trust me this is in no way a hindrance as the Alien is built specifically for the kill. Using the appendages in your quest for survival and to free your queen is easier than you might think with the controls becoming intuitive very quickly indeed.
The Alien, like the Predator, needs to be stealthy but luckily there are plenty of places in which you can hide to kill your prey, even if you can’t find a suitable location it is easy enough to make one by taking out the lighting and hissing to attract your prey. Unlike the Predator mode however your trophy kills have a purpose, the head bite allows you to regain health and there is a fun addition in that you can call a face hugger to impregnate your enemies in order to create allies…in theory anyway. When I played through the game the hosts remained unconscious for the duration and support appeared randomly with nothing to say you created them. All in all though I think this was my favourite mode to play out of the whole game and if it had been even a few hours longer it could have been fantastic.
Being a Predator is, as you would expect, about stealth and hunting your prey from afar, utilising all of your technology in order to amass your trophy collection and promote your young blood Predator into a fully fledged warrior. That’s the general idea anyway, but this game has decided that as a player you need to wander the landscape with the bare minimum of weaponry until you progress. Fair enough as you should have something to aspire to in order to keep you playing, but personally I would have enjoyed it more if I had the option of choosing my weaponry at the beginning.
Another problem is that unlike the movie counterparts the Predator you control is no good at hand to hand combat and even with camouflage it is hard to remain unseen and you will find yourself getting shot more often than not. The Predator trophy kills are amazing though and incredibly graphic, tearing the head off your enemies is more than just a cheap thrill for you gore hounds however as you use the appendages in order to fake retinal scans and such. A few tweaks would make this section of the game so much more fun but as it stands it got boring quickly.
Okay, the Marines finally. Well I am sure this was meant to be a lot more fun than it was. Playing the Marine campaign was like having to go back to school in order to learn everything that you already know, pointless, boring and a waste of everyone’s time. I don’t know why but as I was playing this mode it felt a little tacked on instead of being part of the game as a whole. The pulse rifle is over powered and there is really no need for the other weapons and melee combat is a no-no as your Marine is embarrassingly weak, not to mention the fact that your enemies bleed acid on you if you get too close while fighting them. To be fair there are a few good moments but nothing that really stuck out for me, it’s a case of been there done that.
In conclusion, I feel that the Marines campaign could have been left out altogether, fans may or may not agree with me when I say that, but if given a choice nearly everyone will play with one of the two factions of extra terrestrial warriors before considering the Marines so why not release a game in that respect? After all, it’s not called Aliens versus Predator versus Marines is it? I’m more than a little disappointed at the play length of the campaigns, with the time it took to bring this game out for the Xbox 360 and PS3 you would think an epic game would have been created but it was not meant to be. It’s too short and not involving enough for you to invest any emotion into and I know some may say that games don’t need to be anything other than blastathons but in this day and age a good story is paramount if the franchise is as established as this.
On to the multiplayer section now….actually the only opportunity I had to play the multiplayer was in the demo. I tried to get a game but every time I tried to connect I was met with server busy messages and when I eventually did get into a game lobby, I was the only one there no matter how long I waited and believe me I waited. Three hours at one point in order to at least find any sign of life. None came however and I got fed up very quickly. I don’t know if a lot of people had this problem but when you buy a game with a multiplayer section you at least expect to get to play it. If you manage to play the multiplayer section I congratulate you, but if the demo is anything to go by the strengths and weaknesses of each faction are horribly balanced.
With the lack of a good story, the addition of the Marines, the short playing time and the horrible time I had trying to get into a multiplayer game means that I cannot recommend this game to anyone but the biggest fans of the genre. Actually that’s not true, I wouldn’t actually put the fans through it. This game is only worth playing for the Aliens section of the main game. A poor effort compared to a lot of the recent releases.
VideogameUK verdict: 3.5/10
