An above-average reboot of a horror FPS classic
The single player storyline is similar to that of the AVP movie. Weyland-Yutani Corporation discovers an ancient temple ground where Predators used as a hunting arena for the Xenomorphs. Contact with the facility is lost which sends the Marines over to investigate, which introduces the first of the three campaigns. You play as the Rookie, a rookie Marine who gets knocked out right as the shuttle lands and wakes up only to find most of his team killed. He spends the rest of the campaign fighting Xenomorphs and Predators as he tries to find the rest of his team and escape the facility.
The Marine campaign is somewhat disappointing. The reboot follows the same elements of the original for the first few levels. You fight in powered down facilities with little or no light. The next levels take a U-turn and decides to go outdoors, in jungles, temples, etc. I guess they wanted to try something new, but it totally destroys the atmosphere of the horror fps Marine campaign. Half the fun in the original Marine campaign was trying to shoot things that were coming for you but you couldn't see them. The outdoor scenery of levels like the jungle gives away the camouflage of the Xenomorph, eliminating the suspense. That lack of sight combat was also available when fighting Predators, frantically trying to find them as they cloak and lock onto you with their plasmacasters. Unfortunately, you do not get to face Predators until the last levels of the campaign, and you only face one. Most of the Marine campaign you face off against Xenomorphs and Androids. Its fun for the first few levels, the club fight was pretty intense, but loses substance. By the time you are close to the end, you just want it to be over.
Next is the Alien campaign, where you play as a Xenomorph breeded by Weyland-Yutani scientists in a lab and branded with the number six on your exoskull. Eventually you break out and compelled by the Hive to carry out certain objectives. The Alien campaign is somewhat better but still frustrating. The design change to a outdoor scenario messes with the gameplay, as you frequently used the dark to creep up on your kills, but the AI is so poor that if you just avoid forward line of sight most of your enemies won't spot you. If you multiple enemies you can just rush damage one then sprint away to heal and repeat. Although its easy at times, other times its just frustrating when they didn't work every angle on the level design and you get stuck. If you try to manage out of the problem, you sometimes accidentally fall down and right in front of your enemies and get wasted.
The Predator campaign redeems the other two lackluster campaigns. You are a youngblood that is proving himself as a Hunter, and you head to the temple to investigate what happened to another youngblood. I guess it is more fun because of how overpowered the Predators are. However the gameplay requires you to be creative, as in the latter fights you face off against groups of Xenomorphs and encourage you to use every weapon during the course of the fight. Mines, the plasmacaster, the disc, and the combistick. The final boss is a bit of a disappointment since by then your arsenal makes the fight pretty easy. Other than that, the Predator campaign was the most impressive of the three.
Overall, the single player is a bit disappointing. It was pretty cool how the aspects of the story crossover to each other, like when you are the Predator and pass by the same lab room where you broke out of as the Number Six Xenomorph. However, the level design is poor and the controls are horrific. Theres NO crouching, wtf? Marines can't interrupt a reload by sprinting out of combat, so basically when you are out of ammo you are pretty much dead, unless you remember to switch weapons to avoid reloading. Aliens have their wall climbing issues. Predators melee combat is like boxing on the Heavy class in Team Fortress 2.
Multiplayer is surprisingly more fun than singleplayer. Although it still suffers the control issues, it offers the fast gameplay and intensity that the singleplayer does not. Although the Predator seems to be a bit overpowered in multiplayer too, a skilled Alien or Marine can still put up a decent fight. As you score better in each individual game, you build up XP for your online profile, and unlock different skins for each race. Though it doesn't offer any rewards that change the gameplay, the skins are a nice small reward, considering the high detailed graphics of the game. AVP is nearly 15 GB of hdd space, and you can understand why with its great graphics and terrific level of detail to the skins.
Although it wasn't a great reboot, it has its moments and deserved better than the 5.5 Gamespot did. Plus Gamespot was just being lazy again and doing a copy & paste of the same review that they gave the console version. 7.0 is a more accurate scoring for the game, though saying it is any higher would be stretching it.