Besides that it features all those nice little touches that make a game tend to stick in your mind; from skinned bodies hanging from ceilings, some very messy decapitations, to exploding trucks careering towards you, and the heard-but-unseen menace of nearby Predators stalking you. In general it has a wonderfully horrific ambience, a well polished addition to the Aliens vs Predator universe, and one sure to keep all the comic and movie fans happy. Sure the game has some problems: the alien levels are a little too easy and lack the depth of play that you get with the other mission sets; there's a lot of linear level design which could destroy the 'replayability'; a lack of the randomness featured in Rebellion's AvP1; slowish savegame loading times -- but the game carries on Monolith's fine work as seen in No One Lives Forever. It holds together as a whole rather than appearing to be a collection of randomly assembled 'blast-em-all' levels as seen in other recent FPS's.

Marine missions start here
with your arrival on the Verloc

Its pacing of the action is especially magnificent and overall there's quite a lot of variance with the play amongst the three races; for the most part as Harrison the Colonial Marine you're wandering around while waiting for something to leap out at you -- and that's complimented by the short, sharp action sequences where you're doing the leaping about after finally tripping over some (seemingly) wandering creatures. The aliens come for you very, very, quickly -- not just a lien either, but multiple liens coming at you across the floors, walls and ceilings with a determination that will not allow you pause for thought. Praise the smartgun and pass the ammo.

Not to despair completely though -- of all three races the humans have the best weaponry, and although the pulse rifle never looked this wimpy in the movies a few of the other weapons; namely the target-tracking smartgun, armour-piercing minigun and the cutesy 'Alice', will more than compensate for that... It's virtually no use hiding/sneaking around at all as both the preds and aliens will see you no matter what -- rely on your motion tracker for that extra second's warning and back it up with all that fearsome firepower. The problem comes in seeing your opponents; the preds are nigh on invisible and only uncloak when firing their seriously lethal weaponry (as opposed to their merely lethal) and the aliens are so damn fast and hard to see against the many shadows.

General advice: If you can see it, shoot it till it stops moving... and then shoot it some more. But remember to conserve your ammo as well, given that the SP game dishes it out so meagrely.

She's beautiful, curvaceous, deadly and, she'll
be there to haul your butt out of trouble
...and the red headed babe isn't too bad either

The Predator's game is more of a high-tech stealth approach as they've not got much in the way of automatic weaponry; it's hide, make the quick solo kill, cloak, move, lurk again, locate the next victim, kill, cloak, etc. It should be noted that although increasing your skull count is paramount you can still play a good little pred and only kill the humans with guns of course -- anything else is seriously 'unsporting' and should be beneath your contempt.

The real problem here comes in not having a weapon that can suppress large groups of opponents, and the way that firing your nastier weaponry causes you to lose your advantage of invisibilty. The predator weaponry is perfect for hunting your targets down one at a time, but not all at once in pitched battles. So don't expect to be able to charge in and survive, expect to hide cloaked from their sight and snipe your way to victory.

Good advice: Happy hunting, recharge your energy often.

Predator missions start with a
flashback on another world

As for the Aliens? Once you've gotten past the facehugger and chestburster stages (and, oh boy, how did they slip that past the censors) it's best you just run around and kill things ASAP -- before the numbers against you reach the critical mass level whereby you can no longer dodge all that incoming fire. They have no ranged weaponry to speak of; the closest thing to it is the new 'pounce' move where they leap 50+ feet forward a snarlin' and a snappin' of teeth on the way -- quite lethal provided you actually hit the target and don't go sailing past your smartgun-carrying bullseye and over some high ledge.

The only real advantages you have as an alien are speed, your wallwalking and the pheromone view that allows you to see a coloured glow around every model (bar the synthetic humans). In-game there appears to be very little thought involved in being an alien beyond occasionally ripping some wiring out to make an airlock open -- otherwise the best idea is to do the first thing that pops into your head upon encountering a new situation -- and often that amounts to nothing more than (as mentioned above) screaming around and killing everything you find as you advance through some very linear levels. It takes a bit of getting used to but you're not limited to flat surfaces anymore either -- remember your wallwalking ability -- the walls and ceilings are now your friend and this opens up a lot of escape routes should things not be working out for you with the chomping and slashing in the face of hot plasmatic death.

Cryptic advice: Beware of barbed wire...

He shoots, he scores! Next scene you're a
gonna haf'ta eat'cha way out there, boy

The individual stories of all three sets of missions converge to form a neatly intertwining plot; you are a predator on the hunt on LV-1201, who gets noticed by the corporate humans experimenting on the aliens; you are also the first alien to escape and cause the catastrophe that the Colonial Marines are then called in to salvage; you also get to play the only Colonial Marine who appears to be able to shoot straight in the face of all this carnage. Along each way you get to see your various other selves doing their thing; catch sight of a lone predator here, the alien who sets you free there, etc. It has its little twists and turns and it's another of the game's little joys to see it unfold in front of you -- Monolith have delivered again on another strong storyline.

As promised the humans do have a little more character than normal -- but this doesn't extend to the degree of in-game AI promised in the marketing beforehand. Like NOLF the game is just very well scripted and voice-acted (complete with the usual Monolith touches of humour, although somewhat reined-in this time) which makes them seem a little more real to the player. The major human villains in particular are a well-defined, utterly despicable bunch. The marine squad who back 'Frosty' Harrison up are mysteriously reminisent of another group of colonial marines known to us all, and only their names and gender have been changed to protect the innocent -- they die off every bit as easily too.

Even when you blow their legs
off they still come for you

There's not much in evidence of character amongst the two other races but you can bet your non-human ass that they don't go around calling each other 'Frosty' or 'Duke', paint clown faces on their equipment/exoskeletons, or speak back to their superior officers.

Going back to the intelligence question in the singleplayer it has to be said that the enemy AI is a little dim. You can make a noise at one point, scramble to another location and they'll still be glaring at your previous position when next you check (rather like newbies in multiplayer games). Not all that smart compared to what can be seen in other games; useful when playing the alien to compensate for the weaponry the others have, but it does grate a little that they won't check their six until it's far too late.