Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem [PSP]

Where the frustration comes in is the camera. You can rotate the POV with the shoulder buttons, and it works for the most part. However, when you come around a corner or get an alien behind you, things get sticky as you try and pan to the enemy who is getting a bunch of free shots in. It's also a pain with my particular strategy of locking on to the bad guys and walking backwards as they come at me. I'd be blasting, killing and moving backwards when I'd suddenly bump into something and get stuck.

There's a first-person mode for shooting and looking, ladders with huge arrows on them to climb and two types of aliens to fight, but none of it's worth mentioning anymore than I already have. They're nice features, but in a game this simple, you probably won't notice them.

So, the 15-mission part is the bulk of your single-player option, but there is another mode called Skirmish. In this follow up to the story mode, you get five minutes to go through one of five game levels and kill as many aliens as you can. In the end, you'll get an Honor Point total, but it won't be saved anywhere.

As if that shallow of a mode wasn't un-fun enough, multiplayer is just a two-person Skirmish. You and an ad-hoc bud run around the map as one of four different Predators and kill as many aliens as you can -- not each other. There's no winner in the end. It just ends and tells you your score. It does not tell you your opponent's score. This mode was so boring I made up my own story. I was the Mommy Predator and Ryan from the IGN News Team was the Daddy Predator. We were protecting our children -- the cars in the large empty lot we were running around -- from the aliens ... for five minutes.

Sigh.

So, remember how bad I said this game looked when I first saw it? It's easily better than that first impression, but it's still not amazing. A lot of the environments are dark, the textures tend to be bland and I saw my cannon blasts get stuck mid-air after hitting an enemy. The predators and aliens themselves look okay, but everything breaks down a bit in motion. Basically, it looks alright, but it could've been so much more.

Closing Comments
I have no strong opinions on this game. It's not broken. It's not awesome. It just is. It's there. It's not going to challenge you, but it's not going to frustrate you too badly. It's not going to captivate you, but it's not going to repel you. If you want to run around cloaking yourself and destroying a bunch of easy-as-pie aliens, this is here. If not, this is still here. Do what you will with it.

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