Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem follows a storyline loosely based from the plot of the feature film by the same name, whereupon you play the role of a predator whose ship just plain smacked into Earth. On top of this crisis, the poor guy's got to deal with an alien infestation on the same planet he was just trying to take over! Talk about a bad day, but on the bright side of things at least our friend's adventures won't be too trying or violent. By this I mean that the gameplay is just as bland as the canned story which draws only upon the laziest of writing talent in the gaming industry. Now who wants some money?

Incorporating an honor system, predators now apparently are trying not to harm humans as the game actually penalizes you for doing so. Honestly, it doesn't matter if you're being fired at or not. You'll make use of the predator's cool stealth function in order to avoid human interaction and fulfill your real goal; clean up trash and slaughter aliens. Along with the stealth mechanic, there are three different visors to utilize in order to track down aliens, map heat on the field, or locate ship parts. While these may all look sort of cool, none of them really come in handy and will mostly only serve to confuse players as to what they're looking at.

As far as the gameplay is concerned, AvP:R is a button-masher. The camera is controlled with the trigger buttons, and the d-pad maps your visors, leaving only the face buttons on hand for attacks. Normally this wouldn't be too shabby, but attacking boils down to either locking onto aliens with your shoulder cannon or slashing away until the screen's empty. On top of this, enemies usually get in line and attack in order, creating more of a health bar effect where players continue the same attack until they reach the end of the queue. Although you may acquire new predator technology to take down enemies with, there's hardly any strategy involved thanks to the aforementioned queue. The end result is a game that not only presents repetitive combat, but thanks to the honor system rewarding players by making them stronger, you'll find yourself literally strolling through what I think is a dire situation.

Sadly, there's hardly anything rewarding in the game itself, and it almost makes you feel stupid for playing, in the sense that games normally provide a challenge these days. Level design tricks players into thinking they've found a secret branching path where in the end it leads you exactly where any other road would have, stronger weapons deceive you into thinking maybe the enemies will start to grow stronger or somehow become smarter, and somehow all the way it still manages to hold your hand while it walks you around still disillusioned. It's possible to hope that things will get better, but they stay bland up til the end, and even into the other modes. Skirmish offers a time limit in which players try to get a high score on a selection of levels based on how many aliens they massacre, but only for the sake of a score and no further rewards.. The same mode can be taken on via ad-hoc, the co-op skirmish still offering no condolences for the rest of the game.

Aliens vs Predator: Requiem is certainly of a lower quality than its predecessors, almost setting new standards for how boring a licensed title can be. Unfortunately this is the worst thing a game can be, and mundane will kill not only enjoyment you may have with the title, but also start to dig away at your appreciation for the franchise. Fans will most certainly be disappointed at AvP:R, despite its semi-pretty face and attraction as another AvP game on the PSP. While the lack of a challenge may be one of its hindrances, it's certainly not the guilty criteria for being a poor game. No, that can be blamed primarily on the boring objectives, combat, and unbalanced reward system. I myself was disappointed that it didn't even pass the mark of being so bad that it got good, which means that it's going to be difficult for anyone but the most die-hard fans to have fun with this game. The only thing we've got to look forward to in the case of AvP:R is that when we're finally invaded, it won't be that big of a deal to us humans.