Aliens vs. Predator (Xbox 360)

Aliens VS Predator!!!

Well, after a good few weeks of tentative waiting after the multiplayer demo i have finally bought and completed The single player campaign for all species in AVP.

So... what to say about this game that hasn't already been whined about by let-down fanboys or spit on by FPS nerds?

Not that much if I'm honest. Well this was a short review...

...Okay let's have at this with some structure at least;

The story: I'm going to have to break this down into three so bare with me.

Alien: As an Alien the story starts in a lab with you bursting from a restrained guy's chest, a short tutorial level is given as a "testing the subject" type...thing... it's been done before but it gets the job done so I'll leave it alone, and you inevitably escape due to a power failure (read "Rules for the Evil Overlord" there should always be a back-up generator!) When you escape you do the bidding of the alien queen and some stuff happens. Play the game!

Predator: As a Predator you are sent to the planet after the humans accidentally release some sort of homing beacon and you must destroy all trace of the Predator technology and kill as many humans and Aliens as possible on the way. Play the game!

Marine: As a Marine you crash onto the planet after receiving a distress call from the base on it, where-upon you spend the next fours hours jumping at the slightest sound and running for your life. When you aren't laughing maniacally in a boss fight, blowing stuff up with your overabundance of respawning ammo. For the love of everything holy, buy and play this game!

I need you to do something. Just for a minute could you please pretend you think I know what I'm talking about? You will? Oh good.

Aliens VS Predator suffers from so many different things, the largest being a massive lack of imagination stemming from the studios of SEGA, not to mention the fact that every film, game or book set in space has stolen a piece of the Alien and Predator franchises, because they were just THAT good. The melee system, the single thing that Aliens have to attack with, acts as though the design team KNEW what they wanted but couldn't implement it properly, giving up at a sad "Rock, paper scissors" knock off, and the story is stereotypical space-horror filled with as much fiction from both universes as possible to keep the fan's happy.

It is exactly what we fanboy's asked for when we begged for a game about Aliens and Predators for this generation of console.

Allow me to ask a question: If I were to ask for a double decker bus driven by a homocidal maniac whom I had just called a silk wearing dandy, am I then allowed to moan when said maniac turns me into road pizza?
I can practically FEEL the frustrated screaming coming from SEGA and Rebellion's development teams as the fans reiterate that "yes what we wanted was a game about Aliens and Predators and Humans much like the old 90's game which we loved so much but with better graphics and for this generation of console... But we didn't realise what we would get would be a game about Aliens and Predators and Humans that isn't innovative or new because we wanted it to be like our old 90's favourite."

So yes this game has been done before, yes every single part feels like it's been done better by other games out right now because they in turn have taken idea's from the Alien and Predator universes. But since when did innovation equal fun?
May I bring your attention to Mirror's Edge for a moment? Innovation practically dripped from the box but it played like moving house, stressful and tiring.

In conclusion I never played the 90's game so to me AVP felt like a breath of fresh air after the years of Halo and Call of Duty. It's been given a hard-time elsewhere but I love it for doing the wrong thing, well done SEGA for following in Nintendo's footsteps and looking backwards rather than forwards.
I award Aliens VS Predator three ratings:
To the Alien campaign I award 3/5 "stars"
To the Predator campaign I award 4/5 "stars"
To the Marine campaign I award 5/5 "stars"

All in all a rating of 4/5 "stars"
Now I'm off to play mixed species deathmatch, SNEAK ATTACK!