Review Score:

You lurk in the shadows, watching your prey whilst they are blissfully unaware of your presence in the room. You move from wall to wall, scrambling from surface to surface to stalk your victim as they move along the corridor and come to a standstill. Carefully you creep until you are directly above them; then you pounce, grab them from behind and turn them round so they can see what you are, a look of pure horror flashes upon your victims face and then suddenly your tail whips around and stabs them through the eye with a bloodcurdling scream. Then they fall lifeless to the floor, at which point you can choose to either run away or feast upon their brain. This is the life of H.R. Geiger’s Alien, and Aliens vs. Predator recreates the experience faithfully.

Originally started as a spin off to the Aliens universe under the guise of Aliens: Colonial Marines, Rebellion, (the developer), quickly changed its mind and produced an update of its classic Aliens Versus Predator franchise. Split into three separate campaigns, one for each species; a survival mode and an online play mode, where the longevity and life of this game is contained, there is plenty on offer.  Survival mode is a riot and great fun if you want to see your friends squirm with fear. The premise is a simple one, survive waves of Aliens and then eventually Predators. Dropped into an arena as a Colonial Marine with a couple of health packs (although there are more dotted around the arena) and a couple of weapons, only your flashlight and radar can help to detect the oncoming attack and nothing except moments of the singleplayer campaign can match the genuine tension and fear on display whilst playing.

As the single player campaigns go the Colonial Marine campaign is by far the strongest of the three as it has had the most work focused on it and it contains the core storyline for what has taken place on the research colony. That does not mean to say the other two campaigns are sub-par, though. As a Colonial Marine the game does a very good job of making players feel helpless against the onslaught of Aliens and Predators that you come across, as all players have at to defend themselves with is a handful of weapons, including the infamous Pulse Rifle; a gun mounted torch and some flares to help pick out enemies in the dark. Story-wise it’s the usual cliché affair of crash-landing on the planet you are meant to be investigating and losing the rest of the team, after which point it’s up to you to find any survivors and figure out what happened on the planet that lead to ‘xenomorph’ aliens being let loose in the colony. The campaign plays out much like a survival horror shooter, almost like F.E.A.R. due to the fact that there is a persistent threat of encountering an Alien at any point, and to raise that psychological tension the radar continually lets out a dull blip that becomes increasingly high pitched and faster as an enemy approaches.

The Alien campaign, just like the Predators, feels a like it has been stapled onto the side of the game, although it does add a new layer of gameplay as it plays a lot more stealthily than many other shooteresqe games. You take on the role of Alien ‘xenomorph’ 6 that was held in captivity and used for testing, tasked with harvesting as many humans as possible and destroying the facility under the QuPlaying as an Alien, players can climb walls and traverse surfaces with relative ease, and the helpful crosshair indicates whether the Alien is in the cover of darkness and which way the ground is to help ease disorientation; however it is still likely players will become disorientated. No matter how short and sparse the campaigns for the Alien may be, clocking in at around four to five missions, it does recreate the experience faithfully.

The Predator campaign sees you take on the role of a Predator that has been sent onto the colony planet where there has been the xenomorph outbreak tasked with finding out the fates of your fellow Predators who were sent on their right of passage. Spread over around six levels or so, each lasting around twenty to thirty minutes in length, especially if you seek out the bonus Trophy Belts you can find dotted around the place. The Predator controls a lot more bulky than the Marine and compared to the Alien it plays like you are running through cement, however the creature is a lumbering beast and so it only makes it feel more visceral and immersive than many other games. Like the Alien campaign it plays more stealthy than the Marine campaign, at your disposal you have all the Predator regulars; such as cloaking, thermal vision, spear, throwing blades, proximity mines and the trademark shoulder mounted cannon; using these you can lure the Marines away from one another and perform grizzly kills by hiding in the shadows or you can go in full force and tear them to pieces. Again like the Alien you have a the Heavy, Light and block melee moves to use, however just like with the Alien the system is clunky and ineffective and so you end up just mashing the light attack until something gets killed or a grab finisher move becomes available.

Overall this game is an excellent update of a franchise; its omission of iron sights and crouching along with a dipped frame rate do create a feel of a mid-nineties’ First Person Shooter, which for this game is ideal. Unfortunately I was unable to experience online mode as on the PS3 it was shoddy and laggy; it seemed to continually cut out mid match and connection speed varied, however on PC and 360 it is of an excellent standard. It has a wide variety of online game modes, varying from the standard Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch affair to the more unique Predator mode, pitting you as a marine against a kitted out Predator. If you are considering buying and playing this excellent game its worth considering what you want from it. The PC and 360 versions are far superior to the PS3 version, both having improved visuals and a decent online mode. Having said that, thePS3 does run the single player a lot more smoothly. In the end it doesn’t really matter as whatever format it’s on it is bloody good fun, and remember you’re not in space, so everybody can hear you scream.