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
