Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Waste of time"

As a fan of the previous iterations of Aliens vs Predator on PC, A sequel that would make it to consoles seemed like a sure-win. But the execution of this title is too flawed and restrictive for today's standards.

AVP has always allowed you the ability to play campaign as either Predator, Alien or Marine and AVP for 360 does not falter from this formula. However, no matter which role you play you will see the obvious flaws that haunt this game. Each campaign is rather short, and they all seem to lose their flair shortly upon starting. Graphically the game is unimpressive. Drab environments and Stiff animations. Character models for every human look almost exactly the same, let alone a different hairstyle or "feminine" features. Lazy development from the graphics team if I may say so.

The Marine campaign is an overall bore and the worst of the three. Playing as a marine isn't anything special from conventional FPS's out there. The game suffers from archaic level design. You are also pretty much a dog on a leash as you are told what to do and when at all times, nullifying any sense of freedom. The weapons are nice, but mostly unchanged from the previous titles I.E the "Aliens" universe.

The Alien campaign brightens things up a bit, but not by much. Trying to utilize all of Aliens move can become a chore due to the games bad, and somewhat unresponsive controls, as well as some dizzying camera moments as you transitions from ground to ceiling. Still, the game lets us completely mutilate the opposition with Alien's nice variety of attacks, but this too will become stale after seeing the same death animation for the 20th time. Another problem I experienced with the Alien side of things is the "limited" freedom. The level design on the Alien levels(as well as Predator) have many areas with invisible walls and un-passable barriers. Kind of defeats the purpose of being able to leap across great distances and run alarmingly fast, if all you have is an unseen wall stop you in your tracks doesn't it?

The Predator campaign plays similar to the marine, as in the same overall play style but varies greatly. Predator has some nice abilities and cool weaponry and attacks as well, but is once again detered due to bad controls and constrictive level design.

Multiplayer was a ghost town when I tried it late 2010, so I cannot comment much on it. Others said the online component was actually quite fun and interesting but if there is no one online, there isn't much left to go back on for this title.

AVP has some interesting concepts, but lack of freedom, Linear game-play and dated graphics and controls prevent this title from truly shining like its predecessors. The game has a decent length due to the three different campaigns, which should clock you in at about 5-6 hours each, but if you can't muster the game's inherent problems, you won't get much enjoyment out of AVP at all.