Aliens vs. Predator

Compared to Colonial Marines: this looks like goddamn Bioshock. It's got problems in terms of visuals (at times they look okay, other times they're hideous), the focus on melee combat takes much of the suspense out of the game as you can simply push yourself up against a wall and hold the "block" button, and the story leaves a bit to be desired. But this truly captures the aesthetic of the universe: no other game makes you truly feel like you're playing as the Predator or the Xenomorph like this one does. It's so much fun to play as the alien terrorizing colonist and helpless marines: only wish the campaign was a bit longer. The survival mode is also a fun time waster. Overall: give this one a try if you're a fan of the franchise. It's available on the Xbox store and is backwards capatible, it's worth it if you love these movies like I do.

It's good, it's pretty good. I am glad that somewhat in 2010... we put back some things on the right path. After AVP (2004) and AVP Requiem (2007), which I didn't like at all... I thought that all that alien & predator thing is going down the drain. But, thanks to this new video game, and film "Predators", we got some interesting stuff here. Now, let's get back to the game. Graphics - incredible, gameplay - amazing, what can I say, atmosphere and music were great too. And still it kept good impression when you are playing with Alien, or predator, or the marine. Again you feel cool when you are playing with each of them, and their stories are connected, just like in AVP 2 (2001) video game. Though, I don't think that the action scenes, or some moments in the game were not that much tense and not very high voltage. It's kinda slow. This game rules because of good graphics and gameplay, but the plot is weak. Never, during gaming, I have never felt anything exciting in the plot, it's pretty simple, and I feel sorry for that. The intros for all three campaigns were good, but as the plot moves on... something was missing. Maybe it was about these changes that occurred within Alien and Predator canon/universe. You can see that in the game, and there are pretty cool moments with those changes. Like, for example, giving predators much more deeper hunter culture. But, I like things simple. That's just me. When I heard so much about this game, and I expected to be something big, yet simple, and it wasn't ... It was really good, but without the plot... 60% of it is good. But, still highly enjoyable.

I'm sure by now every one knows of the Alien vs Predator series. Either by the mediocre movies, the comic books, or the games that came out in the late 90's and early 2000's. And if you're like me you've been eagerly awaiting their return. Well I'm happy to say that the series is back.

Aliens vs Predator gives you 3 different campaigns and an excellent multiplayer experience. The 3 campaigns are: alien, predator, and marine, and each one is different and satisfying. The marine plays like your standard first person (but with a larger focus on melee combat) anyone from the Halo of Call of Duty series should feel at home here. The marine campaign focuses on action and scares.

The predator campaign's a little different. It focuses on stealth with humans and hand to hand combat with aliens. The flow is simple, you'll enter any area with marines, isolate one, preform a stealth kill, and repeat the process. The twist is the environmental factors, such as sentry guns that will lock onto you even if you're cloaked, water which will disable your cloak or even rival species.

The alien campaign is the most drastic change from the standard first person shooter. For starters all of the aliens attacks are melee based, meaning you'll need to get close to enemies to attack. So it's a good thing the controls are up to it. You have 3 attacks: light, heavy and block. Light is quick and can be used to form a combo, but can be blocked. Blocks can be broken by a heavy attack, but they take time to use, so it's possible to interrupt it with a light attack. As an added bonus if you succeed in your heavy attack, the enemy will be stunned long enough to preform a brutal finisher. The alien and predators share the same melee moves, but unlike the predator the alien has no long range attacks, making its gameplay even more stealth oriented. The aliens can crawl on any surface, so stealth parts involve hoping off from the ceiling to execute a marine, similar to the predators. The twist is that their are sentry guns that will gun you down, or that their are civilians that you'll want to harvest, however they usually have armed guards and will kill themselves if you're not quick enough.

The final component is the multiplayer which is very well done. There's something for everybody. There's a free for all, team death match, species team death match, territories, a version of Halos infection and juggernaut, and a Gears of War 2 style horde. The only thing that keeps this from a 10 star rating are the length of the campaigns and the kill trains in multiplayer. Happy hunting

Predator - The game developers were clearly inspired by the settings and ideas AVP (2004) helped established, which is why much of it's design in this game resembles those from the actual film, which in IMO was a bad route take. Now it's not all bad, as a matter of a fact, some of the concepts are actually quite interesting, like for example the ability to jump across long distance, from platform to platform, and the fact that the disc actually requires skill to eliminate your opponent unlike it's predecessor which featured a lock-on tracker system allowing killing Humans and Aliens to be far to easy. The sound bites were arguably the biggest disappointment about playing as the Predator, because literally all the sounds the Pred makes have been re-recorded, leaving the player with no famous roar, or screech but instead a mutated horse which doesn't in the slightest sound anything like a Predator should. The single-claw approach along with the updated sound effects almost makes for a different creature, and therefore doesn't leave you feeling like your controlling a Predator, which overall is rather disappointing. The campaign was rather flat story-wise, but I did enjoy the expansion of the Predator culture, and slashing Aliens never gets old especially since there's many trophy kills and normal strikes to choose from. The lack of the combi-stick and/or net gun was also disappointing..

game-play - 8/10 story - 6/10

Alien - One thing I must say that they improved on with the Alien game-play in terms of realism, was that they finally fixed the heat bite feature. In all 6 of the Alien films, it's clearly established that the 'little mouth' pokes a hole right through the center of the human forehead, which is exactly what the Alien does here. In lets say, AVP2; the Alien completely bites the head off, which whist looks cool doesn't fit in with the logic of the Alien's capabilities -- so I was glad to see this fixed up. The controls look and fell accurate to how the Alien moves and behaves, but having said that the pounce is no longer in tact which I found disappointing considering stunning enemies and then attacking them when there most vulnerable in terms of movement, was one of the funnest things to do in AVP2. The sounds have once again been modified, and apart from a death scream, all the original sounds have been replaced, but in this case, I actually don't mind 'em as much as the awful re-made roars the Predators make. I'm about half-way through the single player campaign and while I heard a lot of positive reviews about it, I was quite underwhelmed; mainly due to the fact that you don't start as a face hugger and work yourself up through the life cycle which I really enjoyed in the AVP2 Alien campaign.

game-play - 7.5/10 story - 4/10 (so-far)

Marine - Quite possibility the most underrated single-player campaign out there. I really enjoyed the dark and creepy atmosphere of the Marine, and IMO, it really captured the fear of the Aliens again, since there really wasn't much light and you had to use your motion tracker and flares to get an idea of where they were located. The weapon selection was a bit of a let down considering there was no rocket launcher or mini-gun to choose from, and the sniper whist understandably toned down from its 'overpowered' approach in AVP2, doesn't do near enough damage as it should. Overall I found the Marine to be quite entertaining; and it was easily the best single-player experience in the game.

game-play - 8/10 story - 9/10

Being a fan of both universes, it was a pleasure to play this game. I didn't play the old version of Aliens vs Predator, so I'm only evaluating this one.

The plot here is banal, and not particularly important, you get high from the gameplay itself.

There are 3 campaigns here - for a human, a predator and an alien (I will write in the sequence of my walkthroughs)

A human (paratrooper) is the very first and most interesting campaign among all. At first, there was even horror in the very first chapter, then, although there was a sense of danger (there would be constant sounds of monsters nearby, both alien and sometimes predator), it was not so scary anymore because you found a weapon and got used to throwing flyers in the dark. There is some kind of plot here too (unlike the trail campaigns). Well, his episodes are the longest in the game. Rating : 7/10

Predator is a pretty interesting campaign. Here you will feel like a real omnipotent hunter (and this is cool, because the Predator is one), there are no special difficulties (but there are challenging levels), you have a large arsenal and many enemies, in general, it's a complete action movie. It will take less time to complete than a human. Rating : 6/10

Alien is the shortest campaign, which is no worse than Predator episodes. There is a very interesting gameplay here, you will finally be able to feel yourself secretive (because everything here is based on stealth) and a nasty enemy for humans, just like a predator does not have a special plot, and it is not needed. Rating : 6/10

Overall, it's a very good game to play once (but with a buzz), where everything is built on - go from point A to point B, break it and so in...