WITHIN hours of somehow blagging a copy of AVP I had to stop playing.

Why, I hear you ask? Well the only reason you’d stop playing the game Alien vs Predator would be because the classic 1987 Predator film was on the box.

I love this film. I like everything about the idea of being stalked by a calculating alien hunter through the South American jungle and it produced some excellent quotes which continue to pop up in popular culture.

“You’re hit! You’re bleedin,’ man!”, “I ain’t got time to bleed,” “If it bleeds, we can kill it”, “The only way outta here is that valley that leads to the east. But I wouldn't wish that on a broke-dick dog” and of course my all time favourite “Get to the Chopper”

With this in mind I was more than a little excited to discover Aliens vs Predator – or to the public in large just good old fashioned AVP.

There are three single player modes when you choose to play as Predator with all the associated weaponary, an alien with the acid blood and syringe teeth, or a human marine with all of the benefits of having a gun or pistol (not that many benefits when Predator has his cloak in operation)

Each breed has its own strengths and weaknesses and over the course of the game they are all tested.

As ever the real strengths of any game nowadays is in the longetivity and playability of its online option.

There are the usual modes (deathmatch, domination etc) while also the added bonus of mixed species death matches or infestations.

In each mode humans, aliens and predators are all thrown into the mix on large scale and ever changing environments over the course of 10 minutes.

However I got extremely agitated at the frequency of people quitting straight away should they have the bad fortune to be randomly selected as a marine.

Every time people quit and forced the remaining players to compete in a lesser match for the next nine minutes and 59 seconds.

In some games there is an option to blackball any player with a track record of such actions but that was sadly lacking on AVP.

I just thought about Dutch, Dillon, Billy, Blain, Poncho, Hawkins and Mac do. Would they just have quit because they were being chased by an intergalactic psycopath with a penchant for people’s skulls and spines.

I appreciate that I have not really delved too deeply into the alien aspect of the game and there is a valid reason.

I was never a massive fan of the film franchise and to be honest I consider them to be a distant second to the Predator.

Predators did not need to stalk, hunt and kill for trophies. To them everything else is there for sport. Aliens need other beings to survive.

So, sci-fi lesson over, what do I think of the game? It is too short on single player and unfortunately does not include many of the seminal movie scenes.

The on-line is OK but for the reasons already stated it is completely undermined by some of its members.
 

RATING: 4/5