The storyline ties into the films, focusing on the exploits of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, making use of the voice of Lance Henriksen to portray the man himself, Karl Bishop Weyland. Still a bad guy, Bishop has taken an interest in a small colony that's been developing information about the Xenomorphs, when all hell breaks loose after Bishop ignites a signal to the Predator species, which decides it's time to land on the planet and partake in some ancient "Serpent" slaying. Of course, the Colonial Marines, who were answering a distress call at the same time, end up getting involved in the fight, and the storylines mix and match from there.

The three campaigns can be tackled separately from each other, or you can weave between all three. Once you finish a particular stage, you're given the option to just continue or switch to another campaign. There are elements that tie all three together, and you'll come across a few scenes or areas that tie into events of the other campaigns, but you're not going to lose much in the way of story detail however you decide to tackle the missions. Personally I just went with the suggested order, Marine, Alien, Predator, and that worked out fine for me.

Each campaign is relatively short, about two to three hours, with around five or six different maps to explore, which get repeated to a certain degree between each campaign. You might see a few different elements of each map, especially considering the mobility that the Aliens and the Predator have over your human counterparts, but for the most part you'll be re-treading a lot of the same ground over and over again. However, small puzzle elements and the types of enemies you encounter will alter from one campaign to the next, enough so that the game areas don't really feel as repetitious as they could be. v Combat is certainly unique, and while the Marine said plays out like most typical first person shooters, playing as either the Predator or Alien certainly takes some time getting accustomed to. For the Alien, your attacks are all melee based, with all three species having melee attacks tied into the RB and LB button on the 360 controller (or L1 and R1 on PS3). With the Alien though, that becomes your primary attack, with one being strong and the other weak. You can hold both in to block, and for some fights you'll need to set up a rudimentary combo of blocking and delivering a quick attack, or breaking an opponents block with a strong attack. It's a really basic system, but it works for the most part. If an enemy is lining up a strong attack, you can put them on their butt with a quick weak attack, which usually lets you make use of a grab attack. These act as instant kills, and you can also pull these off if you manage to sneak up behind an enemy unnoticed. The Predator has a similar ability, while the Marine can only use these melee strikes as a way of deflecting enemies. The biggest issue with the instant kills, however, is that there's a long animation tied into pulling them off. If you go to use one, you need to make sure that there's nobody near that enemy that will notice you, or else they'll get a free 3 to 4 second window of time to really lay into you, and you can't break away from the animation to defend yourself. It's a somewhat annoying set-up, and it makes these stealth kills and grab kills nearly ineffective in online multiplayer.

For the multiplayer portion of the game, there's a variety of modes to check out, include variations on deathmatch and team deathmatch. For Team Deathmatch, you can either go all out with different species working together, or you can separate into species specific groups, with three teams fighting against each other. There's also an infestation mode that starts off with a group of Marines, one being chosen to become an alien, and the rest changing as they're attacked and defeated by that single Alien opponent. Infestation is a lot of fun, and probably my favorite set-up of the different multiplayer options given. There's also a mode that employs control points, but I found that to be overly hectic and not particularly fun. You'll die constantly and respawn, and I feel like that mode is a little imbalanced if you're playing as the Aliens, with their ability to walk on walls and ceilings, making them far more difficult to target in areas that allow for a lot of room, which some of the control points are placed in. The deathmatch and team deathmatch modes are pretty fun, but the lack of maps is a pretty big hindrance, and not all of them are fun. There are a few that are downright annoying, including an interior temple map with floors that constantly shift about, creating new passages and closing off other ways, and providing some tight corridors that make the Predators feel pretty ineffective, since it negates their ability to perch from high spots and jump around a lot. Overall I feel like the maps could have used a little more balancing to make them entertaining to all the character types, but hopefully that's something we'll see expanded upon in DLC a bit.

My final thoughts on AVP are that the game is pretty decent, but I was really hoping for something a lot more entertaining than this. I've dabbled a bit in the previous two games, and I have some fond memories of multiplayer there, but I'm not feeling that same sense of fun from this current version of the game. The single player campaign goes all over the place, from some tedious and boring areas like the Jungle section, to some of the more fun and entertaining places like the Ruins, and overall it feels really off pacing wise, and it certainly wasn't consistent enough to be something I'd play through again anytime soon. There are highlights, sure, but you have to go through a fair amount of crap to get to them.

If you're a big fan of Rebellion's previous efforts, I won't entirely dissuade you from checking this out, there are certainly some neat things going on here. However, my overall feeling is that it's a lackluster effort compared to the previous two games, and I think a lot more polish and thought could have went into making it more fun to play. Here's hoping some DLC content will expand the multiplayer into something more entertaining to check out, but the single player side is pretty much stuck as a run of the mill experience. I'd give this a definite rental before buying, or at least wait for the inevitable price drop.

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