The whole AvP franchise has a long history in gaming. Alien vs. Predator was a classic arcade beat’em up from Capcom. Rebellion tried their hand at turning it into an asymmetrical FPS on the Atari Jaguar and later gained a bigger recognition with the Aliens versus Predator from 99 (currently sold as Aliens versus Predator Classic 2000). Then we got an amazing Aliens versus Predator 2 from Monolith Productions which is unfortunately not sold anywhere digitally. And it still remains one of the definitive titles in the franchise (or both Alien and Predator franchises, really), nailing the horror and heroics of the Colonial Marines campaign, the mystery and the hunt of the Predator campaign and the quick, heavily movement based nature of the Alien campaign. Even more amazingly, it was one of the still incredibly few games to have one general storyline that is seen from 3 distinct perspectives depending on the campaign you play, complimenting and not contradicting itself.
And then we got this game.
It has the intertwined story of the AvP 2, yet it might’ve not had it. The storyline is trash, the characters barely exist (for Colonial marines, for Alien and Predator campaigns there are no real characters at all). Where in AvP from 99 had unique cool campaign moments and AvP 2 had all those “oh so this is what happened” elements, AvP 2010 just has you sleepwalk through the campaigns.
Especially since all campaigns go through the same 5 levels, just not always seeing all of their parts and they’re always presented in a different order. Which could be a fun way to re-experience the same places from a new perspective, but no. Most of the times the same “story” points happen in the exact same rooms between all campaigns and it feels lazy.
The game can look pretty, but its optimization also often feels off. The controls are extremely off for the PC game, with lots of rather bizarre choices. Though, to be fair, rather common for the period. Still, a far cry from the interesting and natural feel of the AvP 2 or even AvP 99. Alien requires additional buttons to simply get into vents, which is a bizarre choice. And the difficulty can often be all over the place.
Overall, Aliens vs Predator (2010) just feels lazy and boring as a single-player game. Doesn’t have a lasting appeal of the classic games nor any good ideas of its own to make it stand out.