I’m an angry chap at the moment. See, I know that one of the unwritten rules of journalism is that you shouldn’t criticise other peoples’ work, and that one of the rules about games journalism in particular is that you must appreciate that other opinions are justified to a degree. Yet, here I am, sat in front of my monitor after a good dozen hours with Aliens vs. Predator and at least half that again spent reading around the internet seeing general comments, opinions and the like. Something just doesn’t sit right with me, and here’s as good a place as any to convey that.

First, the game itself. AvP is a multi-campaign FPS in which you can sneak around as a Predator and stealth kill your way through enemies, pelt around as an alien and scare the living bejesus out of anything that is unfortunate enough to come across your path, or a marine, whom is pretty vulnerable and must rely on his trusty weaponry to clear a bit of space to manoeuvre. These campaigns are interlocked with each other and the storyline can be completed in whichever way you see fit; either progressing through a single species’ entire campaign one-by-one and piecing things together, or by hopping between them and building a more complete picture from the get-go.

Something that I found particularly enjoyable is that these individual species really do have their own unique style of gameplay, which adds to the fun immeasurably. Take for example the Predator: you’re big, you’re mean and you can hop around stalking your prey before killing it off. See a group of marines rather annoyingly blocking your progress? How’s about hopping up into a tree, using your voice-throw ability and guiding one of them off into a mine you have put down? It actually makes you feel like a complete badass, and once you manage to sneak up on an enemy you can inflict all sorts of incredibly gory trophy kill moves on them. Ever wondered what it would look like if you tore a man’s head off and took time to admire his spinal column? Wonder no more!

The marine campaign, on the other hand, is all about vulnerability, and having to keep on the edge of your wits. You’re given a couple of flares to lighten dark areas and a (purposefully, no doubt) pretty weak flashlight, but throughout you’re always having to deal with aliens rushing in at you, and the occasional predator going ninja on your arse. The audio side of the game plays a particularly clever part here; sometimes you’ll swear you’ve heard something scuttling up behind you only to turn around and be presented with nothing, whilst other times you’ll be happily going about your business only to have a facehugger launch at your screen and ARRRGGGHHH GET OFF MEEEE.

The alien campaign doesn’t quite hit the heights of the previous two, but it’s still good fun in its own way. Scuttling around on walls and the ceiling and swashing your claw at lights to create lovely little dark patches to hide in is great fun, and there’s just something... well... bloody fun about being this super-quick xenomorph that can leap into a group of unsuspecting marines and cause all kinds of havoc and panic. You’re vulnerable of course and as such tactics like the aforementioned aren’t really recommended, but you’re still able to get yourself out of some tight spots by legging it and using every surface imaginable to your advantage.

Taken as a whole, these three campaigns should last you almost ten hours, which is about standard fare for a FPS game these days. The story that threads through each of the three is interesting enough and benefits greatly from some great vocal performances, in particular from Aliens film actor Lance Henrikkson as the rather evil Karl Bishop Wayland. In fact, the audio is a stand out component of the game in many ways, with creepy backing tracks and all sorts of hellish screams, hisses and gurgles around pretty much every corner. Some games try too hard to be scary and fail; at times AvP manages it effortlessly, and a lot of that is to do with the ambience.

The single player is enjoyable enough, and although you can’t herald it as one of the finest examples of first-person gaming, it does a bloody good job of keeping you absorbed and introducing you to each of the three species, which comes in particularly handy when it comes to the game’s main starring attraction, the multiplayer modes. There are seven of them on offer to experiment with, with a couple of them being standout offerings that are as much fun as I’ve had with any multiplayer shooter to date.

Primary of these is Infestation, in which one player starts the level as an alien hunter and has to slowly harvest all the other players, who begin as marines. There’re two particular tension points here: as the alien, you are initially at a huge disadvantage until you harvest a couple of marines and turn them into alien buddies to help you wipe the rest out. As the marines, you are desperate not to be the one who screws up and lets the side down, for as soon as the alien has its claws into one of you then the odds begin to swing away from your team. It makes for a wonderfully tense mode in which a good alien player can reap the rewards of stealth and careful tactics, whilst the marines need to work together properly to stop themselves being overrun.

The second is the Survivor mode, of which four human players can work together co-operatively to defend themselves against wave after wave of increasingly tough alien spawns. This is made all the more frantic by some pretty clever design that sees all the decent ammo drops and health packs spawned into particularly dangerous parts of the map, giving you and your squad a rather tasty risk-reward dilemma. Oh, and you can injure your own team with gunfire, so whilst spray and pray tactics might seem a pretty dandy idea at first, in the long run it’s going to cost you.

In fact, there are a pleasing amount of modes that encourage team work. I mean, yeah, sure, the occasional death match against everyone is great for letting out a heck of a lot of stress, but working together in Species Deathmatch with a couple of chums trying to protect you against the other species is wicked fun, and the kind of thing that you could build new friendships over. You may scoff at that last point, but my Steam list if packed full of random folks I have teamed up with on Left 4 Dead over the year and now I am never short of a good game with players I know and enjoy squadding with. AvP is the kind of game that can and will do the same, should you want it to.

This brings me back full circle, right back to where I came in on this review. See, I may do this for a job, but at heart I am also a gamer. I grew up on playing the same games many of you did, and I grew up learning what I still believe to be elements any game needs to be fun. For me, throughout my countless hours with it, AvP has ticked those boxes and some. It’s good, solid FPS fun, and the multiplayer modes are fantastic fun to play through. Yet, you get the feeling that this is no more enough for some folks.

The question is why, and to be honest the only impression I get is this: AvP is criticised for not being Modern Warfare 2 with Aliens. There’s no tiered ranking and unlock system for the multiplayer. There’re no ironsights and crouch for the marine. You know what I personally think? So effing what. It’s an entertaining blast back from days when people would just enjoy slightly simpler, more instant game modes in multiplayer. It realises that the whole point of the marine campaign is that the last thing the series needs is a slower, more tactical method of playing. The whole sodding point of AvP is that it’s fast, often to the point of sheer panic. Should it suffer for this? Hell no. It makes up for the lack of unlocks or levelling in the multiplayer by simply being addictive, frenetic fun.

So, yeah, cheers chaps – this one’s struck the right chords with me, and has been given its score as a reward. If you’ve scanned to the end to see this summing up paragraph, let me sum it up rather bluntly: this is not Modern Warfare or Battlefield 2 with aliens, and it is all the better as a result. Deal with it.