Aliens vs Predator is a franchise that has had huge potential, yet always underachieved grossly. The films have been awful and the older games are fondly remembered, but are well aged now. Rebellion's reboot of the franchise should have been a great game, taking full advantage of the potential of the races and the lore. This game miserably fails to achieve this potential.
The single player is divided up into 3 campaigns, 1 for predators, aliens and humans. The human campaign starts out in a promising fashion, leaving the player separated from his squad in an alien infested building. This quickly ends and the player is thrust into a run of the mill fps experience indistinguishable from most other shooters. The predator campaign attempts to provide stealth missions but these are largely poor and break down to shooting as well. The alien campaign begins with an interesting level, but rapidly becomes the worst of the campaigns and by far the shortest. All 3 campaigns combined are 5-7 hours in length, and I find this to be an unacceptable and miserable length. None of them are particularly fun, and the whole single player mode reeks of lost potential. The 3 campaigns also present the same events, meaning that once you play 1 campaign you know the story. There are some boss fights but none of them are particularly good or inspired. There is also no exploration of the expanded universe or lore of the series. There are no new alien types in this game, no new robots or war machines that could have been created for the game, nothing new.
Graphically the game is not up to modern standards. While its not outright bad, the levels are completely uninspired and difficult to differentiate areas form each other. The character models are generally good, but lighting is poor and environments monotoned. The sound fares a bit better, with some good atmospheric effects like screeches in the distance, but voice work is really under used. The story is told in a horrible way, and is so weak that its not worth telling anyway. The marines are here to kill the aliens, the aliens are hungry, the predators are here to kill everyone.
The controls are really poor in this game. The guns all feel clunky and have very poor reaction times. The melee combat barely functions which is a disaster considering the aliens solely rely on this and predators also need it heavily. When an alien uses their ability to climb ceilings the camera spins uncontrollably leaving the player not knowing where they are, which is not helped by the poor level asthetic resulting in confusion and frustration.
The multiplayer boils down to a rock-paper-scissors situation. While this should have been fun, poor controls and bad levels destroy the multiplayer. It is also difficult to find players, often resulting in long wait times for a game to start. With poor multiplayer and weak singleplayer there is really nothing worth recommending here. I can only hope that future games involving either alien or predator are far superior to this huge letdown.
Pros:
- Aliens look good
- Frightening atmosphere in some areas
Cons:
- Bad level design
- Lack of balance between factions
- Rubbish story
- Huge lack of creativity
- Far too short
- Separate campaigns thread the same levels
- Bad controls, especially in multiplayer
- No imagination and low production values
Wtf:
- Why do humans not know what the predators are after encountering them so many times before?
Score:
- 4/10