Alien vs Predator (2010) Review - You are the prey and the hunter.

By Sam Coles:

Rebellion Studios are a developer with an interesting track record with stinkers such as Shellshock 2: Blood trails to the blood splattering Sniper Elite series. Aliens vs Predator is a decent game, with a few flaws but nothing to deem it a bad game, as a lot of critics at the time did not favour this game. This was not their first stab at the licence as they made the fantastic 1999 PC release, which was fast paced multiplayer action, they try and recreate this with this newer iteration with mixed results.

Alien vs Predator’s campaign is split up into three stories you have the Aliens, Predators and the Colonial Marines in the middle. With the Aliens you play as freshly birthed hatchling subject 6, a Predator just named Newblood and a Rookie marine, do you see the pattern here. The story is just each race trying to prove their worth, it’s nothing too exciting as it is an excuse for three parties to tear each other apart for 6-8 hours in this gore fest, and I mean gore fest.

Each gameplay style is unique to each campaign, with varied results I’m of course talking about the Alien campaign which is not very good. The Predator campaign is easily the most enjoyable, as it relies on the creatures predatory skills with the reliance of stealth as a full on assault is a good way of getting yourself killed.

The marine campaign is action based, however it does have some tense moments as your hear motion tracker beeping, as the Aliens get closer and closer. The shooting controls are solid, with a small but good amount of weaponry, with iconic Smart Gun to the standard yet effective shotgun which will blow enemies into chunks.

Now we get to the Alien campaign which is the worst out of the three, like the Predator chapters it relies on stealth to get from point A to B, however the controls are extremely twitchy and disorientating. Unlike the Predator, the Xenomorph can scale walls and ceilings and this sounds good on paper, but in practise it is a confusing mess as you can’t tell what’s the ground or ceiling. It doesn’t help that the controls are extremely twitchy as trying to move slowly is a near impossibility.

The visuals are okay, they weren’t mind blowing for 2010 but they are serviceable with decent looking textures with the jungle environments. Character models of the Predator and Xenomorph look fantastic and represent the source material; however the human character models look basic with flapping jaws like a saloon door. The gore is extremely detailed with executions from the Predator tearing marines heads off with the spine still attached to the Aliens ripping their eyes out, if you’re squeamish don’t play this game. I played this on the PS3 and it has some huge framerate issues, dropping below 20 frames per second in some busy sections, which if memory serves me well I don’t remember the 360 version having these issues.

Aliens vs Predator is a fun game with three separate campaigns with unique play styles that will keep you entertained for around 6-8 hours. Unfortunately the multiplayer is no longer active, but that is to be expected for game that is nearly 8 years old, but the singleplayer content is fine. The game is insanely cheap these days I picked my copy for £2 on the PS3, so give it a go.