Aliens vs. Predator Collection

Aliens vs. Predator is a first-person action game from Rebellion, the studio that basically owns this license on PC, and the 2010 entry gives you three completely separate campaigns built around three radically different movement and combat systems. The Marine campaign is a straight survival-horror corridor shooter where flashlight management and sound design do most of the heavy lifting. The Predator campaign hands you a cloaking device, a shoulder cannon, and a trophy system that rewards decapitating enemies for sport. The Alien campaign turns everything upside down, literally, since you run on walls and ceilings and kill with brutal melee takedowns. That structural variety is the game's best idea and it mostly works. Each species plays differently enough that cycling through all three feels like three short but distinct games rather than one stretched thin. The Marine sections genuinely build tension in a way a lot of modern shooters skip entirely. The Predator's vision modes and gadget toolkit scratch that power-fantasy itch without making fights trivially easy. The Alien campaign is the roughest of the three because the wall-running controls need time to click, and the melee-only combat can feel repetitive before the credits roll. None of the three campaigns is long, which is either a problem or a feature depending on how much patience you have for mid-2010 production values. Multiplayer was the other pillar at launch and the Collection includes both the base game and its bonus content. The asymmetric species-vs-species modes are a genuinely interesting concept, Marine squads versus solo Predators versus swarming Aliens, but the online population is essentially gone at this point. If you're buying this hoping to find populated lobbies you will be disappointed. Co-op survival mode exists and is more findable than competitive, especially if you bring a friend rather than relying on matchmaking. The Metacritic score of 68 is honest. This is not a technically polished game even by the standards of its release year. AI is inconsistent, the story across all three campaigns is thin, and the visuals have aged about as well as you would expect from a fourteen-year-old PC title. What holds up is the creature-specific fantasy. If you have ever wanted to be a Predator hunting marines through a jungle facility, or an Alien crawling silently across a ceiling before dropping on an unsuspecting squad, this game delivers that specific feeling with real conviction. The license is used, not wasted. This is a game for players who grew up with the films and want a competent, no-nonsense recreation of those power dynamics in first-person. It is also worth a look for anyone interested in how asymmetric design can make the same map feel like a completely different experience depending on your species. Go in with calibrated expectations, treat it as a trio of short genre exercises rather than one cohesive AAA game, and you will get something out of it. Go in expecting a modern production and you will bounce off fast.

Alex · Scout Team

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