YMMV / Aliens vs. Predator (2010)

• Anticlimax Boss: This is quite possibly depending on the difficulty and the approach the player takes to the bosses.
  • The Elite Predator at the end of the Alien campaign will make no effort to dodge or block Six's heavy attack, as a result, Six can just hit him with heavy attacks until the fight ends. What should be an equal and tough fight becomes ridiculously easy. However, this can change depending on the playthrough, as the Elite Predator may not be that incompetent.
  • Pretty much everyone agrees that aside from the early fight nightmare, the Matriarch is laughably easy to defeat. As long as the player doesn't get cornered or a Warrior on fire doesn't blow up and kill you, the Matriarch is admittedly the easiest boss in the game, and many players had expected the Matriarch to be personally involved.
  • The Praetorian in the ruins level of the Predator campaign has a relatively easy strategy to it, jump on one of the high ruins, and then smack it with the Disc Thrower.
  • The Predator in the Marine campaign has a very easy pattern, which is shoot from the ruins, heal and then charge into melee, and in several instances the Predator will stand still or move slowly enough to get shot by the sniper rifle.
• Awesome Bosses: While most of the bosses have a pattern that makes the boss fights predictable, everyone agrees that the Elite Predator boss fight is the best fight in the game due to its unpredictability, the fact that unlike the other bosses you actually use your usual light and heavy attacks, and best of all, the fact that the music makes the whole thing more epic.
• Awesome Music: This game is widely stated to have the best soundtrack of the AVP games. Specimen Six's theme is hauntingly beautiful, while the music that plays in the final battle against Weyland is extremely awesome to listen to.
• Broken Base:
  • The Alien Campaign and the Predator Campaigns. Some feel that their player characters and the campaigns had potential, but were quickly turned into generic Alien and Predators respectively. Others see the campaigns, especially the Alien one, as the better parts of the game and believe that it could have been much better.
  • Failing to make Weyland Yutani a real adversary in all three campaigns. Some say this makes the game original, but others think it is a massive break from format.
  • Choosing to turn Rookie into a Heroic Mime, and not giving him a name. Some say this makes him original and in line with the original game back 10 years ago. Others see it as an enourmous waste of potential, especially compared to Andrew "Frosty" Harrison.
    • Similarly, Tequila. Some like her for being a consistent companion who is very civil with Rookie and being the one Marine who is not useless in a fight, others loathe her for her constant pestering, her borderline expy of Vasquez, and her generic horror genre implied love interest role.
• Catharsis Factor: After all the horrible things Weyland Yutani did, to see them running away screaming as the Alien, Predator, and a very livid Marine come racing after them is guaranteed to make you feel happy.
• Complete Monster: Karl Bishop Weyland, Weyland-Yutani's CEO, greedily seeks Predator technology and control over Xenomorphs. Founding a colony, Weyland uncovers a Matriarch Xenomorph; he then has any colonists who complain about the conditions of the colony, as well as unwitting staff members, fatally impregnated by facehuggers to create Xenomorph specimens for him to study. Despite knowing the risks to his colonists, Weyland lets the Xenomorphs escape his labs so he can observe and study their instinctual behavior, callously letting thousands of colonists die, and when a Marine is about to be killed by a chestburster, Weyland spitefully shuts down the surgical equipment so she will die.
• Evil Is Cool: While the Aliens and Predators are certainly not evil, especially in this game, players definitely prefer to play as them in comparison to the Marines.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Six is the most well liked of all of the protagonists, due to actually having a story, her considerable intelligence, and the fact that out of all the protagonists, Six actually gets considerable Character Development. This is helped by the fact that Dark is a generic Predator, and Rookie is the average soldier frequently found in game series like Call of Duty and Medal of Honor. Even the game detractors admit Six was an interesting character.
• Game-Breaker: Quite a number in all three campaigns
  • When you get it, the Sniper Rifle in the Marine campaign. Not only does it allow you to get headshots much more easily, but its ability to allow you to see unseen adversaries allows you to see face huggers well before you realize they are there, combat androids playing dead are easy to shoot, and Xenomorphs hiding or concealing themselves can be ended before they alert other Xenomorphs to your presence.
  • The Combistick in the Predator campaign in the final two levels. Combat androids can be killed in one throw, and Xenomorphs are much more manageable. It even does a fair bit of damage to the Abomination in its boss fight.
  • The Alien's auto healing in the Alien campaign gives it a big advantage over the other two races, but the difference is especially obvious on harder difficulties. While the Marines and Predators get to deal with more damage from enemies, they are only allowed to carry three health boosters at a time, which can easily be exhausted when surrounded while the Alien automatically heals from any injury. Harder difficulties are much more easier to beat when all Specimen Six has to do is hide from enemies until she heals up.
• God Damned Bats:
  • Sentry turrets in the Alien campaign are a constant nuisance to deal with. Their range and field of fire cover the whole area, so you cannot go over them which deprives you of a potential flanking route around enemies and while in the Predator campaign, you can smash them, you don't get that luxury here. And if you think knocking out the power will help, the guns have their power system.
  • Facehuggers in the Marine campaign are nightmares in that they are small, they are in a large number, and they still show up after you kill the Matriarch. Trying to avoid using a stim will be very difficult if you aren't careful with them.
  • Combat Androids in all of the campaigns are a colossal pain to deal with, in that they are very strong, destroying the head does not work and they will frequently make the job difficult. Its even worse in the marine campaign, because the androids especially the cloaked ones take several shots to take down and can easily kill you if you aren't careful.
• Fanfic Fuel: The ending of the games are easily used by fans to create stories for what happened to the characters after the game ended. Six is especially popular in that regard.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In the Alien campaign, Doctor Groves says that Six knows the darkness is her ally. Two years later, and Bane says that Batman thinks the darkness is his ally. Also, the fact that in the Alien campaign, you wait for your armed enemies to isolate themselves, before you kill them, not so different from the Predator sequences in Batman: Arkham City.
    • Even better, when you see the Refinery in the Marine campaign's opening cutscene, the refinery clearly looks like the Sionis Steel Mill, Joker's base of operations in the game.
  • In the Marine campaign, you discover audio logs that detail Weyland Yutani's actions in the past that led to this event. Similarly, in the Alien and Predator campaigns, you play as members of the namesake species that are One Man Armies that storm human bases singlehandedly. Both elements are straight out of Fall Of Cybertron two years before the game came out.
  • Similarly, the idea of an incident involving the Aliens where the background of survivors is talked about in audio logs before their deaths in a place that is falling apart directly results in Alien Isolation four years before it became available.
  • Back in the day, before the game saw a huge resurgence in popularity, people would frequently make fun the AI, especially the Marines, for making obvious foul ups, especially failing to see the Alien and Predator protagonists, when by all right they should. Aliens: Colonial Marines would have the AI be wrecked by a single coding error on the part of the developers, which caused this game to be seen as much better in hindsight.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Predator Elite "Dark" is a brilliant hunter who infiltrates the world of the Yautja sacred hunting grounds, punishing the humans who have desecrated them and finding the corpses of Predator youngbloods, setting their wrist gauntlets to self destruct to prevent the humans from taking Yautja technology. Taking advantage of the chaos to kill multitudes of Xenomorphs and humans on the hunt, Dark even kills a Predalien singlehandedly, taking the mask from his own great ancestor's tomb to reveal the ultimate prize for the next hunt: the Xenomorph home world.
  • Specimen Six is an unusually intelligent Xenomorph who escapes from her captors in Weyland-Yutani before freeing several of her brethren, including the ancient Queen known as the Matriarch. Armed with her wits and strategic prowess, Six cuts through entire swaths of Marines in defense of her hive while bolstering their ranks by harvesting civilians. Making her way to the Yautja ruins, Six single-handedly kills two Young Blood Predators and impregnates one Elite. Although captured once again, Six quickly escapes and molts into a Queen herself, having exacted revenge on her captors and built a new hive to rule over.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • If Karl Bishop Weyland's decisions to turn over any complaining colonists or staff members to the facehuggers, torturing Specimen 6, or deliberately allowing the Xenomorphs to escape didn't already put him across the horizon, he irrefutably crossed it when he condemned Tequila to death just to spite Katya.
  • Doctor Groves leaped straight over this when he used his own staff to test out Six's capabilities and when he left one of his own scientists to die when Six got loose.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The sounds the Xenomorphs make, unlike the sounds above, are music to any Alien fan's ears given that for all of the flaws the game had when it came out, it indicated that Rebellion's little remake was dedicated to the fanbase.
  • Lighting an alien on fire with the flamethrower causes it to flail around, scream in agony, and finally explode with the wettest, squishiest, most satisfying pop ever put into a video game.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Thanks to the fact that this game was made in 2010, the lighting effects are much more realistic, and a lot more terrifying. The Xenomorphs now blend in completely in shadows and the motion tracker is effectively useless. Furthermore, all you have is a flashlight that doesn't illuminate much and some flares that burn out in 2 seconds.
  • The facehuggers in the Marine campaign are terrifying to fight. They are small, can run very quickly and in dark settings, you will not see them until they jump at you. While your character can throw them away, they automatically take a third of your health, which makes avoiding the use of stims very difficult.
    • In a particularly smart move on the developers part, if there is a collectible or ammo you want to get, chances are it has eggs and facehuggers there. If you rush towards the collectible without being careful, be prepared for a Jump Scare.
    • The first facehugger is especially scary. Unlike the later facehuggers, where there is enough of a light source where you can easily shoot the thing, or at the very least have a good idea of where it is as long as you aren't careless, this one is in a pitch black corridor, with a mediocre flashlight and some flares that will burn out quickly while the motion tracker goes crazy.
  • Going through the hive. You are surrounded by Xenomorphs, there are eggs everywhere, and one bad step or misjudgement can result in the eggs opening everywhere. It can be very easy to back yourself into a corner in panic, and that says nothing about the adult Warriors.
  • As easy as the Matriarch's boss fight is, her initial stage is nightmare inducing. You get unlimited ammo, but the facehuggers will come after you and try to flank you. And when you mange to get to the warriors, trying to avoid being blown up by them when they get on fire is very difficult.
  • The many unique ways your character can die. In the Marine and Predator campaigns, you have the potential to watch your character get headbitten by a Xenomorph in first person perspective. In the case of the Abomination, one of the potential ways Dark can die is to have his head violently ripped off. In Specimen Six's fight with the Predators, but especially the Elite, you could either get impaled, see your inner mouth get yanked out, lose your arm, or be the victim of a backbreaker, all in first person perspective.
  • When the aliens escape. Imagine this if you are a colonist. You think something is up, and then all of a sudden, there are Xenomorphs everywhere. No matter how good you are at hiding, no matter how much you try to escape them, they find you and cocoon you. And the best part, your boss intended for them to get out For Science!.
  • The marines situation. You know its a big infestation, and then all of a sudden, unknown hostiles blow up your ship, most of the officers are killed, and those same hostiles are killing your own soldiers while the Xenomorphs overrun you.
  • Karl Bishop Weyland as a whole. While it is not uncommon for Wey Yu executives to be evil, Weyland is far more callous. The guy intentionally sends people who complain about work conditions to the facehuggers, and later lets them out, completely disregarding their lives as he wants to study them. And when the Marines try to save Tequila's life, Weyland spitefully shuts down the surgery equipment. To say he is a sociopath doesn't do it justice.
  • The Marine campaign on easy can give you scares. On normal, the Xenos are more aggressive, the facehuggers actually try to sneak around you and depriving you of your motion tracker, and also your ammo. You only have a pistol and some shotgun rounds, which a facehugger will dodge.
  • Specimen Six, while the most sympathetic of the protagonists, is a walking nightmare from the marines' point of view. Here is a Xenomorph who is more intelligent than the average Xeno, who observes your pattern. You hear a Xenomorph screech, and then you get grabbed from behind and headbitten. So the comrades arrive, and there is no sign of the assailant. And that is not going into the fact Six can pull this off in broad daylight.
  • The treatment of the Xenomorphs themselves is horrifying. They are forcibly separated from the Matriarch, branded, and it is implied many of the experiments involve outright torture. And that is all compounded by the fact that the humans are willing to do this in order to break them to make humanity the new power in the galaxy. The Xenomorphs and the Predators are not exactly gentle with the humans, but they are outright saints in comparison to the humans in this game.
  • Many of the audio logs are outright nightmarish as it is either Groves or Weyland talking about how they intend to turn the Xenomorphs into weapons with the cost of human life irrelevant, or it is colonists or marines describing the hellish conditions in the war. Some of the logs indicate that they are recorded very shortly before the people in them are killed.
  • Much like Aliens vs. Predator 2, the first 20 minutes of the Marine campaign is nothing, but pure terror. You are completely alone, stranded in Xenomorph territory. You have a really weak flashlight and flares that burn out in seconds for illumination. Your lovely motion tracker will endlessly remind you that the Xenomorphs could be anywhere. When you enter the washroom to restore power in the garage, the door opens to reveal a technician who has just been chestbursted. And on the way out, you will see another technician get dragged through a vent towards the hive. In the colony itself, you can see the Xenomorphs scurry through the vents. It is when you finally get to see the Xenomorphs that the game stops throwing the endless Paranoia Fuel.
    • The first couple of minutes is scary and gives a nice Establishing Series Moment. The Marlow is destroyed, and your guys head into the main colony complex. Your character fades in and out of consciousness as a battle breaks out, and from the sounds of it, it was an utter slaughterhouse.
  • As fitting of a game that has horror elements, Death By Transmitter is frequently employed. You get to hear several of your comrades die horribly over the radio and in several instances, you arrive just too late to save them.
  • The mines initially. You wake up, and find you are being dragged by a Xenomorph to the hive. You pull out your pistol and shoot the thing, and then it dawns on you, that you are alone, with only a pistol, and in an area that is pitch black where Xenomorphs can come at you anywhere. There are only two Xenomorphs in the mines, but the tension is very much real.
  • The Praetorian caste of Xenomorphs are utterly nightmare inducing. They are much larger, have a terrifying scream, can run incredibly quickly and dish out a lot of damage. Both boss fights involving them can be very stressful, especially with all the Warriors they summon.
  • Survivior mode is incredibly hellish. You do not have any flares, you are missing weapons, and you have little opportunities for stims. Needless, to say it is incredibly hectic.
  • The music of the game, while great, also contributes greatly to the endless fear that players will have in the Marine campaign. As the player moves, certain music themes will come in, usually to surprise the player, or more likely to trigger the presence of hidden enemies, even if they don't attack you.
  • In the Predator campaign, you get to witness combat androids as they gun down several Weyland Yutani employees as they beg them not to do this. You get to hear them screaming in utter horror as they beg the androids not to execute them. And it is much more graphic than the ordinary death for anything in the game.
  • The combat androids are terror incarnate. Doctor Groves, Weyland's Number Two who is not afraid at all of the Xenomorphs, is clearly afraid of them, fearing they may rule him one day, oblivious to the fact his boss is an android. In game, they will relentlessly pursue the player, they will continue fighting even if they have lost their head, and they do not give up, along with a lovely monotone voice that utters things in simple words that is very unnerving. There is a reason that combat androids are illegal.
• Paranoia Fuel: Several instances in the Marine campaign, but any time you go anywhere near eggs, especially the first time. First of all its pitch black, the flares only last a few seconds, and the thing could be anywhere, so trying to avoid using a stim during this encounter will be very hard. And then there is the fact that some instances could see you taking on multiple facehuggers. The fact they send the motion tracker crazy wont help your nerves.
• That One Achievement: Several of them in this game
  • Thanks to the fact multiplayer died out, anything involving the multiplayer achievements are very hard to get, simply because the part of the game they deal with is not used very often, in very stark contrast to every other achievement involving a weapon in the Marine campaign, which usually occurs through using the weapon long enough or just by luck.
  • "I Like To Keep This Handy", where the player must kill two enemies in one shot with the shotgun, can be quite difficult, in the fact that it is very hard to get two enemies into the kill radius required for the shot.
  • "Stay Frosty" and "I Love The Corps", the achievements you get for beating the Marine campaign on Hard and Nightmare difficulty are quite difficult, because the Marine campaign is much harder on those difficulties when compared to the Predator campaign, and especially the Alien campaign. The Xenos are faster, more aggressive, deal more damage, and on Nightmare difficulty, facehuggers can one hit kill the player.
  • "Not Bad For A Human" is where a player must get every single achievement, including the ones mentioned aboe. Suffice it to say, players don't like it.
• That One Attack: The Praetorians tail attack has them lashing out with their tail which can easily cause serious damage to Rookie and Dark. In Rookie's case, the hit is likely to be fatal, given he is surrounded by Warriors and the Marine has precious little in terms of melee, but in Dark's case, one slash can take out an entire health segment. As a result, it can easily make getting into close quarters combat with the Praetorians very difficult.
• The Scrappy:
  • The Colonial Marines are really hated here. Not only do they have the most story driven campaign, they also get the most screen time despite having genuinely compelling Alien and Predator protagonists. Needless to say, not a lot of players like them.
  • In multiplayer, Predator players are deeply loathed because of their use of technology, especially the plasma caster, as it can guarantee a one hit kill, can allow the Predator team to rack an insurmountable lead very quickly, especially against aliens, and because of a overpowered heavy attack that cannot be interrupted.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The melee combat uses a Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors system of light attacks, heavy attacks, and blocks. However in practice the enemies' attacks are hard to read, and if the wrong counter is used, melee combat can be a slog. This is why most players use ranged attacks and firearms the moment they can find them.
• Sequelitis: It was seen by this at the time it was released, due to the popularity of the first two AVP games. Now, it is seen as a good successor, especially when compared to Aliens: Colonial Marines.
• Tear Jerker:
  • In the Alien campaign, Specimen Six collapsing to the ground and looking at the refinery as it collapses. You then get to witness the Matriarch burning to death, and Six can only softly hiss before falling unconscious. Six is clearly grieving over the death of her mother. It shows the Aliens are actually animals that care for each other.
  • Tequila being condemned to death by Weyland. The music playing throughout the scene, seeing Tequila coughing and choking, and Katya pleading with Weyland to allow the surgery. The ultimate implication is she will not wake up.
    • Even sadder are the achievement/ trophy names for when you save her from the Xenomorphs and when you try to perform surgery on her. The names are "I Will Never Leave You" and "That's A Promise", both quotes from Ripley to Newt in Aliens.
  • Some of the audio logs are clearly quite sad, as it involves people grieving over the loss of their loved ones, recalling more happier times, or leaving last messages that they hope will get to their loved ones.
• That One Boss:
  • In the Marine campaign, the Praetorian boss can be extremely aggravating. While a shotgun will defeat it, its size, the fact it summons other Xenomorphs, and its speed can make it very difficult to avoid getting cornered. Not helping is that the fight scene has the player with their back to a wall, so it is very easy to back yourself into a corner if you aren't careful, and if you have to reload, you can easily be killed, in addition to the fact the Praetorian will easily outrun you even if you don't back yourself into a corner, which means getting stuck on something or briefly slowing down can cost you dearly.
  • Karl Bishop Weyland can kill you in just two or one shots depending on the difficulty, he has more health and nothing you do will stun him. Add to the fact he can be very accurate and the fact you have to reload while he dosen't is very annoying, and not helping you is the fact the initial stage is you with the stairway, which if you don't run up fast enough, Weyland will come to you at which point, depending on the difficulty, will result in a forced restart.
  • The Elite Predator in the Alien campaign, at least depending on the playthough. In some playthroughs, you can just hit him with heavy attacks he won't block, as brought up under Anti-Climax Boss above. However, in other playthroughs, he will be a very serious nightmare, and while your speed will make it easy to lose him, he will take advantage to heal himself.
  • The Matriarch's initial stage can be quite difficult. Unlike the more manageable Warriors, the first wave is dealing with a slew of Facehuggers which will take a third of your entire health bar if they jump you, which given how many there are, is guaranteed that if you miraculously managed to avoid losing any health before, will probably cost you health.
  • Most of the bosses can be difficult if you try to kill them with the wrong weapons, or if you fail to see the pattern that the bosses tend to follow, but the Abomination can be very difficult, especially when you start running out of places to jump to and mandate a fight at close quarters. One light attack can take an entire chunk of Dark's health, so a melee fight is a sure-fire way to wind up dead a few times. Any attempt to simply rely on mines will work, but the Abomination will quickly close the distance, and it will take four mines to get it to back off. Similarly, if you are out on the pathways, you will have a hellish time trying to jump from place to place, especially in the final phase.
• That One Level: All of the campaigns have at least one of these.
  • In the Marine campaign, the first problem is the refinery. First of all, you get to meet the lovely facehuggers who can take off a third of your health, which will make not using a stim a nightmare, then there is the fact that in the hive you will be constantly attacked by Xenomorph warriors. Then you get a boss fight against the Matriarch, where initially you will be forced to fight a swarm of facehuggers before dealing with a never ending wave of warriors, while trying to burn the Queen to death.
  • Several of the parts in the jungle qualify. To get to the antenna, you have to go through a cave filled with eggs that will spawn more facehuggers. Then you have to go into buildings that house facehuggers to get the objectives. And then, if the difficulty is high enough, trying to escape from the Predator.
  • The maze in the ruins level. Its pitch dark, you cannot see, the Xenomorphs will constantly attack you and your ally and its very easy to go into circles.
  • And at last the pyramid. You have to fight off an army of Xenomorphs including two Praetorians. Then you have to go through elite combat androids who can cloak and are very hard to kill, and that is not counting Karl Bishop Weyland's boss fight.
  • In the Predator campaign, the refinery. You have hardly any opportunity for stealth, the Marines will see through your cloaking device, since the map mandates close quarters combat, the Xenos will constantly come after you, and then the final part where you have to wait for the fire to be put out.
  • In the Alien campaign, the ruins, its broad daylight, the combat androids can respawn and will be very aggressive with Six, and they will turn around if you try to sneak up on them which makes attacking them by stealth extremely difficult, several civilians will commit suicide to prevent Six from harvesting them. And then there are the fights with the Predators who will shoot at Six until she gets into the arena, and whose melee weapons will take a chunk of health off if the player isint careful.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Getting all the Predator trophies can be difficult, especially given that you only have one opportunity to get some of them and then you have to restart the level.
  • The canisters, especially in the Jungle, are extremely difficult to see and you can easily mistake them for grass or a vine.
  • The audio diaries, especially the ones in the maze during the ruins level. Some of them are impossible to see, wandering around looking long enough will result in a Xeno attacking you, and also some of them have hidden traps, so if you fall down trying to get one, its likely the fall will be fatal.
  • That's nothing compared to trying to harvest the civilians in the Alien campaign. While the majority of them will be easy to grab, others will either kill themselves, stand right next to Marines, or summon reinforcements. And in the ruins level, they will intentionally lure you near the flamethrowers.
  • In the Marine campaign, one of the stats is to avoid getting burned by Xenomorph acid. The Xenomorphs in the game will rush you en masse, and it becomes a lot harder once the Runners enter the picture.
    • Similarly, trying to avoid using a stim will be very hard once you start encountering facehuggers, where one facehugger knocks off an entire bar of your three health segments. Needless to say the job is much harder.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: A few of them.
  • Specimen Six, as brought up in Ensemble Dark Horse is clearly shown to be far more intelligent than the average Xenomorphs and had the most interesting plot. Instead of making her an actual character, after the first level, Six is effectively turned into a more intelligent, but still normal Xenomorph, much to the fans anger.
  • Doctor Groves is clearly The Dragon to Weyland, is depicted as evil as his boss, and serves as the archenemy to Six and appears to be the main villain of the Xenomorph campaign. He disappears right after the tutorial and doesn't come back except for a quick appearance in the final cutscene of the Alien Campaign.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Quite a number of them in this game.
  • An awful lot of audio logs indicate that the Xenomorphs returned to the labs multiple times after they broke out and that it likely took weeks for the infestation to get this bad. Instead, we get a massive Time Skip from the Aliens breaking out of the labs to the colony already being overrun.
  • On the side of the Predators, many fans did not like how the Predator campaign followed traditional Predator modus operandi which is essentially blow up the tech, especially given that Dark is the descendant of the king entombed in the pyramid.
  • In the issue of the Marines, there are an awful lot of snippets about how badly things went before Rookie got involved. They decide to focus on Rookie rather than on the Marines situation in general.
  • Many fans were livid at how short the Alien Campaign was given that they found it the most interesting.
  • Many people were livid how the Alien can only take people out from behind, as many had expected the creature to be able to do Vertical Kidnapping like in the films. Many fans were just as angered by the failure to have the Marines dialogue react to what was happening, such as them panicking as the Xenomorphs and Predators cut them down.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • We are supposed to see the Predator campaign as them trying to clean up the mess that Weyland Yutani made in a Good Is Not Soft way, an argument that really falls flat when you take the other campaigns and backstories into account. The Xenomorphs are clearly depicted as the more sympathetic faction this time around, and are the victims of brutal experiments by Weyland Yutani and the Predators’ equally bad treatment. To make matters worse, the Predators leaving the Matriarch in stasis instead of just killing it makes them responsible for the entire game. The final straw is that the Predator campaign, unlike the Alien campaign, doesn’t do much to make the Marines unsympathetic and allows Dark to get away with murdering unarmed civilians against the Predator code.
  • Likewise, the Colonial Marines are supposed to be the good guys trying to shut down the infestation, a notion which becomes much harder to swallow during the Alien campaign. The overwhelming majority of Marines encountered there are idiots and callous jerks at best. At worst, they’re downright bloodthirsty: showing no qualms about sacrificing civilians, and later using their own men as cannon fodder to get rid of just one Xenomorph. Furthermore, unlike most entries in the Av P franchise, the Xenomorphs are portrayed far more sympathetically, to the point that the Alien campaign has Six clearly shed tears for the Matriarch after her death.
• Vindicated by History: When the game initially came out, the game had quite the polarizing release with many furiously criticizing the repetitive gameplay and the confusing plot. It also had to deal with the fact that it had to contend with two incredibly popular games in the past decade. Now, with the disaster that was Aliens: Colonial Marines, along with the lackluster media released in both franchises recently, aside from Alien: Isolation, the game is looked at much more kindly with many people remembering the game as a pretty good one and a worthy successor to the other two, and while the flaws are still there, they are rather minuscule in comparison to the flaws of future media in the two franchises.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?: The treatment of the Xenomorphs by humanity resembles slavery with the Matriarch forced to give birth to children who are branded with numbers and used as test subjects and constantly restrained to be used as humans see fit. Their treatment at the hands of the Predators, with the Queen being activated to have Xenomorphs be used in a rite of passage seems to resemble animal rights.
  • The slavery resemblance gets even more harder to ignore when at least two audio logs in the Marine campaign have Karl Bishop Weyland openly tell Six that she is merely someone to be exploited, merely to be used as a tool, and Doctor Groves saying that he will break Six and use her to make humanity the new great power in the universe, rhetoric that resembles justifications for slavery in the colonial era.
• The Woobie
  • Specimen Six is bred into human captivity with the sole purpose of being a guinea pig to advance Weyland Yutani interests, with Karl Bishop Weyland and Doctor Groves torturing her to learn more about her people's society, while they openly tell her that she will be a human tool to be used as they see fit. When she breaks out, her mother is killed and she is recaptured, and all of her kin are killed in a nuclear explosion. Furthermore, many of the experiments done on her are heavily implied to involve torture, and she is clearly shown grieving for the Matriarch when she senses her death.
  • Rookie is left by his comrades for dead on more than one occasion. He sees nearly all his comrades wiped out, he is forced to kill his CO to spare him a more crueler fate, and to top it all off, the Corporal he has formed a close bond is impregnated with a chestburster and when it looks like, she can be saved, Weyland promptly shuts off the power condemning her to death.
• Woobie Species: The Xenomorphs are quite sympathetic in this game. The Queen has been used for possibly ten thousand years as nothing but a tool for the Yautja to use as a rite of passage. When the Predators abandon the planet, the Matriarch is left alone before humans dig her up and immediately separate her from her children. Then when they escape, they are promptly invaded by the colonial marines and the Predators who want to exterminate their old enemy. Their Matriarch is killed and those who survive are killed in the ensuing wrist bracer explosion, with the sole exception of Specimen Six.

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