Alien. Predator. Soft, bursty meat sack (Marine). This holy Trifecta of sci-fi adoration is one of the most iconic casts in the history of modern cinema... despite at least half of the films being less enjoyable than having a baby alien erupt from your chest. Rebellion, a studio with a worrying recent track record, have been given the keys to this money-making kingdom. Does the latest AvP title penetrate Rebellion’s dodgy reputation like a Predator spear through human flesh, or is it game over man for this struggling developer?

With three very different mini-campaigns to choose from, and a very tempting multiplayer mode, choosing where to start in AvP isn’t easy. Let’s give you a hand then – avoid the Marine. This campaign plays most like a standard FPS, and it’s here that AvP’s flaws are glaringly obvious. While the hair-raising ping of the motion detector and staccato stuttering of the Pulse rifle go a long way to making you feel like a bad ass Colonial Marine, it doesn’t take long before you realise you’re a Colonial Marine trapped in a game from last decade. Level design is shockingly cramped, with endless tunnels occasionally interspersed by a slightly larger hallway. Even the jungle levels are nothing more than wider tunnels, with cliff faces taking the place of metal bulkheads. There’s no crouch, no iron sights – just point, run and shoot. The AI is dumber than an Alien drone, with the Xenomorphs rushing blindly (although they will occasionally come via the roof or walls), while Predators fire from afar, apparently forgetting that standing motionless is a great way to catch bullets in the face.

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Watch the AvP launch trailer now!
The Predator and Alien campaigns are far more interesting because they’re so, well, alien. All of the Predator’s life-smiting technology makes an appearance, and the depiction of his various vision modes is especially faithful to the films. His ability to pounce initially feels clumsy, being limited to certain key spots in the environment, but soon becomes second nature. The lightning fast Alien is very disorienting to begin with, but the addition of a handy new HUD tells you which surfaces can be leapt towards, and which way is down. All characters look, feel and sound just like extras from the most recent AvP film. Rebellion’s excellent use of source material results in the most accurate depictions of these characters yet seen in a game. Which makes it even more of a shame that they’ve been plonked into the middle of a very bland, uninspired game world.

While the variety between the character handling and techniques is impressive, sadly Rebellion has taken the lazy route of reusing many of the same levels between each campaign. It’s a boring enough world the first time around; by the third campaign you’ll be praying for community-created maps to arrive in the coming months. Sadly there are no official modding tools to speak of, so DLC offers the only near-term hope for a more interesting place to play with the stars of the show.

By the end of the tri-campaign, the woeful set pieces, non-existent storyline and shallow gameworld will have worn very thin. Thankfully there’s still the multiplayer game, where AvP’s horrific creatures aren’t neutered by brain dead AI.

Three’s not a crowd
Despite Rebellion boasting about AvP’s support for dedicated servers, the game has shipped as a peer to peer title. Apparently servers are due next week, but if Rebellion’s past history with AvP multiplayer patches is anything to go by, it’ll be another three months before they’re polished enough for stable use.

In the meantime, we’re forced to make do with interminable matchmaking. Thankfully it’s not as bad as most matchmaking experiences, with most players in a server tending to be local, though every now and then the odd 500ms+ ping leads to a warpfest that would make the USS Enterprise proud.

A total of seven game modes await your online approval, five of which are more painful than watching endless repeats of Winona Ryder’s performance in Alien: Resurrection. Deathmatch and its variants are unbalanced, inappropriate ways to play with the three radically different classes, as is Domination (a variant of King of the Hill). However, the final three modes are where AvP shines, and finally make this game worthy of your consideration.

Predator Hunt sees one player taking on the role of the Predator, while all other characters play as Marines. If you kill the Predator, you become him, while the dead Pred reverts to a Marine. It reminds us very much of one of our favourite mods, The Hidden, playing out like a tense version of Hide and Seek. There’s a catch though – the Predator can’t simply hide in a dark corner for the entire match; he must kill a Marine every 120 seconds or he becomes a Marine and the game selects another Predator. It’s a great way to keep the action flowing, though a slightly longer time limit would encourage sneakier Predator tactics.

Infestation again sees one lucky player in the role of a specialised character, this time slinking through the levels as an Alien, while everybody else inhabits the Kevlar boots of a Colonial Marine. However, when an Alien kills a Marine, each dead Marine turns into an Alien. The ultimate goal is to be the last surviving Marine, fending off hoards of Aliens. It can be very tough for the first Alien player to convert the first marine, but once that kill occurs, it’s a domino effect of murderous mayhem.

Survival mode is the third and final decent way to play AvP, which is simply a four player co-op mode in the mold of Gears of War’s Horde mode. It’s a tense affair, with new sections of the map unlocking as you progress through each wave of Alien meat.

And yet, despite these three modes all being great fun, Rebellion seems determined to ruin the experience. How? By supplying a pathetically low number of maps to the regular edition of the game, with the Collector’s Edition getting a smattering more. Anybody who has played an online shooter in the last decade knows that this is the easiest way to fragment an already small player base. It appears Rebellion don’t spend a lot of time playing their competitor’s titles...

AvP has incredible potential for modders to come in and fix the many areas that need improvement. Each of the three species has been beautifully recreated, using models, sound effects and game mechanics that are excruciatingly faithful to the source material. It’s just a pity that everything else about the game is so lacklustre. Whether it’s the idiotic AI, the snooze-inducing level design or the woeful attempts at storytelling, it’s obvious that too much time was invested on the details of the three stars, and not enough on the world they inhabit.

PC vs Console
Many reviews have levelled complaints at AvP’s visuals. After playing both the Xbox 360 and PC versions, it appears that these folks have been playing the console version, as the PC is actually a rather sexy looking title. In every area, the PC’s visuals have been pushed harder than console, whether it’s texture resolution, model detail, lighting or special effects. Even better, it runs well even on medium level machines, with the motion blurring helping to create a smooth sensation at lower frame rates. DirectX 11 support is also included, and while we don’t have a DX11 card to make the most of them, the screenshots we’ve seen shown that the DX11 tessellation makes each creature look much more organic and rounded than the already gorgeous models seen in the DX10/9 version.

Other than the visuals, there’s very little difference between the console and PC versions. Due to the relatively inaccurate firing of each weapon, combined with the auto-targeting necessary to enable the ultra violent kills, even the switch from control pad to mouse isn’t that massive a change.

Down the road though, the PC version holds the most promise. Despite Rebellion not releasing mod tools for the game, hopefully the intrepid AvP community will figure out how to make their own, and could turn this mediocre game into the beast that it deserves to be.