The Charge:
Hunter. Survivor. Prey.

Opening Statement:
Everyone’s favorite extra-terrestrial Cuisinarts are back, and as per usual, mankind is caught in the middle. Can Rebellion, the studio behind the original PC classic, manage to get it right this time around?

Facts of the Case:
The Weyland-Yutani Corporation has found something beneath the surface of BG-386, a discovery so valuable that even Karl Bishop-Weyland (Lance Henriksen, of course!) has taken an active role in the excavation. When the planet side colony goes silent, the USS Marlow is dispatched on a search and rescue mission. The Marlow however isn’t the only ship in the stars above Freya’s Prospect; a group of Predators has made one hell of an explosive entrance. They’ve got some time to kill, and more than enough prey (of the soft meat and hard meat varieties) to keep them occupied.

"Let's ROCK!"

The Evidence:
It has been 10 long years since Rebellion graced PC-owners with the original Alien Versus Predator, 15 for those who remember the superlative 2D Atari Jaguar outing that one-upped the original Doom. In the interim, neither of Fox’s big creature franchises had much of a presence in the video game world worth talking about. Alien fans got a few shooters that ranged from passable to excrement, while Predator fans got a wretched 3D action adventure title, and both races would square off in an ill-conceived Real-Time-Strategy title before descending into crap portable and mobile phone game hell.

Rebellion has suffered a similar fate, their post AVP resume consisting of low rent ports and poorly received shooters and movie tie-ins, with only one or two notable exceptions like Namco’s Sniper Elite or the slightly better than average Rogue Trooper;. Their most recent offering was the abysmal Rogue Warrior, which currently stands with a whopping metacritic score of %27 (though in all fairness, that dud was handled by the recently shuttered ‘Core Design’ team). It’s pretty safe to say that, based on the pedigrees of the developer and franchises in question, that the odds would be pretty stacked against Alien Versus Predator.

The first thing the devs did right was follow their own game. AvP features three disparate campaigns, one each for Human, Predator, and Alien, and each campaign’s narrative interweaves into the other, making for a decent, well-told plot that fits soundly into the Aliens universe. The lion’s share of the exposition comes from the Human side, and I recommend that that one should be your first stop, while the ET campaigns give you alternate perspectives and provide a little fleshing out of events. To be frank, AvP could have included the Human campaign as it is and it still would have been one hell of an exceptional, if brief shooter. Every minute of the action is perforated with a sense of impending doom and tension that feels directly ripped from James Cameron’s Aliens. The derelict colony of Freya’s Prospect feels lived in and logical, and your trip through darkened corridors and dank tunnels eventually leads to a sparse jungle and some varying terrain that feels fresh. While the shooting mechanics do lack some of the core features that have been present for the last decade or so, like aiming down sights and crouching, the gunplay never feels old or stymied as a result. There’s a degree of melee combat included as well, it’s a last ditch effort as a Marine, a brutal alternative as the Predator, and your only option as an Alien, but it always feels solid.

As a human, the gameplay is essentially linear progression with some light backtracking. The model most closely resembles Bioshock, though there’s considerably more focus on intensity. Also borrowed from Bioshock (or maybe even Doom 3) are audio logs that are found scattered throughout the environments that help to further shine a light on the chain of events that occurred before you set foot in the formerly bustling colony.

The Predators are here to protect an ancient artifact that the humans have inadvertently uncovered. You play a rookie on his first hunt, and you’ll have to contend with an army of space marines and aliens alike, all swarming around your sacred grounds with little care or concern. Going toe to toe with the marines is out of the question, but taking the high ground and picking them off one by one is a ton of fun, particularly when you have all of the Predator’s wonderful gadgets reproduced brilliantly. When the dual wrist blades come unsheathed, however, know that the predator’s melee game is the strongest of the trio. Things are going to die horribly.

Then there’s the Alien campaign. Running around as one of these suckers is extremely fast paced, and the lack of any real long range strikes turns the Alien game into an up close stealth kill and retreat scenario that contrasts very sharply with the Marine’s nonstop struggle for survival and the Predator’s mix of stealth and brutality. As an Alien, every surface is your plaything, and when your skitting down narrow corridors at blinding speeds whilst scaling walls and ceilings, everything clicks, and at times, the goings on resemble the first person camera sequences in Alien 3. You play as 6, a captive chestburster with a clever mind, raised to adulthood under the watchful eye of human masters. When the opportunity to escape is given, you take it. The rest becomes a mix of chase and avoid gameplay that is pretty fresh feeling, and almost, dare I say it, evokes memories of the stealth missions in Batman: Arkham Asylum.

As good as AvP’s gameplay is, it’s backed up by some great, though hardly cutting edge visuals. The levels range from grimy and industrial to ancient ruins and, of course, the Alien hives, and all look great. The “lived in” look of the settlement of Freya’s Prospect, with windblown sandy streets and dank, wrecked interiors all feel great, look great and really capture the vibe of the Aliens future. The environments are complemented with awesome lighting effects that really add to mood and the tension of the gameplay. Pools of pitch blackness are everywhere, and oftentimes the marine’s piddly little flashlight is his best friend. The character models and animations, particularly where the Preds and Xenos are concerned, are fantastic stuff, and look great both in still frame and in motion. The marines come off a little chunky around the face, but their weaponry and gear is replicated near perfectly from Cameron’s Aliens. Last but not least, the juicy bits of gore that permeate the Alien and Predator stealth kills are extremely visceral and satisfying.

The sound design is also fantastic, with impeccable use of the 5.1 soundfield (DTS on the PS3). The sound design in these films is ported over flawlessly, from the machine like patter of the marine’s pulse rifle to the Predator’s auditory snikts and swooshes. The Aliens also hiss and roar just as they have on screen for the last 2 decades. Every element of the awesome sound serves to engross you further into the game. Voice acting is solid as well, with Lance Henriksen leading the charge. This is a game you’ll want to play with the lights off, and with the stereo cranked.

For those who crave Multiplayer, Aliens versus Predator definitely has you covered. The multiplayer suite is well stocked, with several modes and a full ranking system to satiate the experience point hunger. Rewards aren’t anything special, usually multiplayer skins, but the game modes are designed to fit the nature of the game, and they do so quite well. I had the most fun with co-op survivor, which pits up to four marine players against swarm after swarm of AI controlled Alien hordes. It’s Gears of War 2’s Horde mode for Aliens fans, and it works almost as well here as it did there. You also get several forms of deathmatch (including interspieces), and interesting game types like Infestation, where whomever bites the dust respawns as a Xenomorph. AvP doesn’t bring about any multiplayer paradigm shift or anything, but it plays well enough to be engaging, and the robust selection of options keeps things interesting.

"There's something out there huntin' us, and it ain't no man..."

Rebuttal Witness:
While AvP’s three campaigns do have a wildly varying feel to them, each is pretty brief. On the hardest diffuclty, the Marine campaign will end in 6 hours or less, with 4 – 4.5 hours being the more likely completion time for seasoned vets (about the same time it takes crazy people to go through Modern Warfare 2). The Predator and Alien campaigns are shorter (considerably so for the Alien). All told you’re probably looking at about 10 hours of single player gameplay if you stretch things. The multiplayer definitely picks up the slack, but for those who’s focus is single player, 10 hours and you’re done. It’s actually pretty generous for a shooter these days, but with that 10 hours split between three separate campaigns, the illusion of super-shortness may leave you feeling cheated.

Aliens versus Predator gets tough, particularly during the Human campaign. We humans are fragile meatsicles, and there were several points during the campaign where any kind of forward momentum ground to a screeching halt amidst a wave of black, acid-blooded death. Going toe to toe with any more than two or three aliens without something like a smart gun or plenty of rifle ammo in your arsenal is an incredibly brutal prospect, even on ‘normal’ difficulty. When you encounter a Predator, be afraid, be very very afraid. For some, the scripted nature of the game’s encounters may feel like a first person throwback, particularly when they have to repeat one section seven or eight or nineteen times because those hissing bastards are relentless. It wasn’t really an issue for me, but it bears mentioning.

Slightly more serious are control issues that pop up in the Alien and Predator campaigns. The Predators have the ability to jump some pretty outlandish heights, but the ability is linked to specific hot spots on a given level. There are times when the first person perspective makes it a chore to notice and navigate to and from these spots. It gets difficult to stalk prey by jumping from tree to tree when you keep missing your jumps. There are also a few instances where logic dictates that you should be able to leap to a specific point, but you just can’t.

Meanwhile, the Aliens, skittish little bastards that they are, can get a little squirrely when you’re zooming around floors and ceilings in cramped quarters. It gets tough to navigate when up is down and down is up. There were also a few times that I had trouble navigating through vents, as you have to line yourself up just right and wait for the button prompt to pass through. There’s an option in the menus to enable “auto transition” for the alien campaign, and that should be your first stop. Without it you have to press a shoulder button to get your critter to skitter to the fullest. With it enabled, movement from one surface to another becomes a smoother affair.

These issues will frustrate some more than others; for the most part, the fun I had with the creature campaigns far outweighed the minor infrequent annoyances I had with the controls. More often than not, everything clicks, and your careening down the roof of a low tunnel at breakneck speed with some human refuse waiting to take a tail to the eyeball, or you’re silently watching a platoon of marines, just waiting for some hapless bugger to separate from his squadmates so you can drop down and separate his spine from his body.

Slightly more serious issues are found in the multiplayer setup, which relies heavily on the now standard console matchmaking scheme. I could hop into 360 games pretty effortlessly, but the PS3 matchmaking was often slow to respond, and on at least one occasion I was waiting over five minutes for a match to begin. I won’t get into the shortage of multiplayer maps, as what’s included works pretty well, and therea re apparently more coming to DLC markets in the very near future (they’d better be free too).

The PS3 version also does “feature” some flicker and aliasing that I didn’t notice on the 360 version. It’s hardly a dealbreaker, and the games are close to identical on both machines, but I felt I should bring it up for those with both consoles.

"Game over man! Game over!"

Closing Comments:
Aliens Versus Predator is a suprisingly great effort. It not only trumps every other game that’s ever featured an Alien or Predator logo, but also proves that Rebellion is still capable of incredibly wonderful things in spite of their recent output. It is an unabashed love letter to fans of either franchise (though especially Cameron’s 1986 film); with three great (if brief) campaigns that bring equal parts terror, adrenaline, and awesomeness, an excellent complement of multiplayer modes, and the technical muscle to impress. I love it!

The Verdict:

Platform: Sony Playstation 3/Microsoft Xbox360/Windows PC
Developer: Rebellion
Publisher: Sega
Release Date: February 16, 2010
Rated: M (17+) for Mature