Aliens vs Predator Game Review

“Reboot from that, motherfucker”

Alien games seem to be pretty hit or miss and when it comes to talking about them people are more interested in complaining about the failures. I had issues with Aliens Vs Predator when it originally came out but I don’t think I give it a fair chance; hell I didn’t even finished one of the character campaigns. So here I am, playing Aliens Vs Predator again and writing a review for Xenomonth but is my opinion changing? the short answer is yes, but how much? Here’s how this is going to work, I’ll talk about each playable characters separately, going into detail about the gameplay, then multiplayer and then a summary of it all, which you can skip to I guess. So let’s go.

Marine:

Going straight into it, playing as the marine was my reintroduction into the gameplay and at first I’m thinking it’s a little stiff but as I get into it, it really isn’t that bad at all and the graphics seem decent enough. The game is also a little scary, I mean it’s not Isolation, casually shitting your pants like an oblivious child scary but it can get a little jumpy and freaking in the dark with the volume up. You pretty much play as a rookie marine who just keeps having a shitty time, the story doesn’t really do much for me and no characters are interesting. You aren’t offered much more than “Go here, shoot this”. The moments in which you hack things don’t give you mini-games, it just runs while you shoot more things, at least there are plenty of different guns to use. A cool thing about shooting aliens is that it works similar to Dead Space, you can blow off limps and then they’ll drag themselves towards you, which is great but there’s only like one animation for it. There’s a queen alien fight that is pretty underwhelming. I think the aliens work pretty well, not the smartest A.I. but it defiantly isn’t stupid. The face huggers are just inconvenient and get in the way as where the predators are a lot more epic and fun. You also fight combat androids, which are fine really but you can shoot their heads off and they still turn around the corner headless, looking for you. There’s not much to the difficulty to be honest, unless you go for a harder option you’ll have a pretty easy time with a couple of fidgety parts. I will say this, the marine playthrough lacks some serious cover based combat, a lot of the time you’ll be very exposed to gunfire from enemies and they can take a hell of a lot of bullets before they go down. The environments are different and pretty enough but nothing too special there.

I mentioned a few issues there but does that all mean I didn’t enjoy it? No, I actually had fun blasting my way through the marine side. I’m really glad it was that short though because I think I would have been bored soon. I say the gameplay is too straightforward but there are two whole new ways to play, maybe the predator and alien can make up for it.

Alien:

Next up I played as my boys, the Xenomorphs and the first thing I really take from the first level is that the introduction is awesome, the fighting still feels fast pace even if it isn’t simply because you’re so fast and that silent kills are the coolest thing ever. You play as a Xenomorph branded as simply, 6 and it’s a bit of a prodigal son and I already care about this alien more than any other character from the marine campaign, like I’m playing as my pet but the pet is an acid fuelled penis monster from space. Discovering new kill grabs are fun and the up and close ones are really brutal, hell you can even harvest enemies and plug a face hugger on them. Even though the aspect of running all over the walls and roofs is fun, in combat it can get pretty disorientating and with some of the more convoluted areas it can get pretty hectic. I like how the humans seem generally terrified when you grab them and I like how when you turn around really fast, you see your tail sway around. It’s the little details that give the alien campaign a little bit more life. The Alien campaign is short and sweet and I don’t really have any huge issues with it, it’s the same as the marines in which you just go to where you’re told and kill what you’re told but the gameplay is so much more fun that you don’t get bored of it as quickly and you almost forgive the lack of variation.

Predator:

Going into the Predator campaign is just fun, I liked how the tutorial was set up and the little touches like the predator language being translated and the Predator vision are some of the little things that make the Predator campaign as personalised and the Alien campaign. A lot like the alien, going around and finding new death animations is fun, there’s also a few awesome trophy kill death animations. The Predator has a few things in common with the alien but definitely enough new things to feel fresh. You pick up a good few different Predator weapons so there’s actually a lot of variation on this character plus there’s also a little puzzle solving. You play as a young blood who tries to destroy the fallen predator’s tech before the humans get their hands on it but ends up coming across a PredAlien and an old Predator temple. Playing through the different characters and seeing all the different links between the stories is cool but you do come across a lot of the same environments, they are different enough that it doesn’t bother me though. You have a stealth option as a predator but it doesn’t really seem to do shit and you get few different vision modes but ultimately, it’s all about your plasmacaster and Combi-Stick, that shit is fun.

Multiplayer:

On paper the multiplayer sounds great. Three different champions fighting it out for the top in big open maps and yeah, not that that isn’t great but with the fights lasting such a short time it’s crazy to walk around for up to a minute alone right? Well it would be if it wasn’t for atmosphere. There’s no crazy music or mad warfare here, it’s dark, the music is slow but tense and hearing people die around you doesn’t help. It’s probably only really effective if you’re playing alone but if you are playing alone it adds a lot to it and playing as anyone but the Alien just adds to the fear factor. There’s different games modes and others are slower than others and everyone will have a favourite but that mostly lies with team deathmatch. The environments are good and certain characters can get a home field advantage by being in an area that helps THEM camouflage better. Are characters unbalanced? A little I guess, you might set yourself up for failure if you play as a marine and the popular character seems to be the alien which can be annoying. It’s actually really fun all in all though, just hope there isn’t any of those death trains going. Grabbing from behind is an automatic kill, which means while a death animation is happening, you can grab the killer from behind and kill them and so on and so forth. Annoying times.

Aliens vs Predator is a really fun game; I don’t think it’ll hold your attention forever but I think any fan would get a kick out of it for a little while. The changes between the characters are good and the gameplay itself is pretty good but not amazing. It’s definitely worth a go, I just wish each character had more to do in the campaign then just kills things or at least more strategy to go with that.

Rating: *** ½

Better than > Aliens Colonial Marines Worse than > Dead Space

Main pros

-Each character is fun

-Each character is pretty different

-A little scary

-Suits the world

-Multiplayer Atmosphere

Main cons

-Lack strategy

-Marine story

-Short lived