You're gonna get gutted if you do; with your puny load out of an assault rifle, motion detector and pistol (awesome, thanks). Meanwhile, your enemies are aliens that can turn invisible, see every spectrum of color and light, crawl on the ceiling at 50 mph, eat brains for health and spill acid blood upon death. It seems like they bought in to the Halo style of not aiming down the sights (admittedly, you might want to stick with the ol' spray and pray method of compbat in this game, though) and keeping the wepons spread out around the map from the begining of the match-- as opposed to letting you pick your loadout. Not exctly my favorite type of FPS.

My biggest problem with the demo is that it's only free-for-all deathmatch where as a team-based game-type feels like it would have been better at instilling in players the species dependency that I thought was the a big part of the game's essence. One thing you realize soon in the demo is that you will need to stick together, and that it will take exactly one match playing as a lone Marine in multiplayer to make you drop the class and switch to Aliens or Predators forever.

The controls function surprisingly well, I'm surprised to say (aside from the fact that you still can't customize button layout). The only real problem that I faced was getting in to these strafe-offs while playing as the Alien trying to spear an enemy (that class is all melee). You can circle around each other trying to deliver the killing blow only to be shanked to death by a Predator idly watching from the rafters. Getting to hard-to-reach places is pretty easy for the Predator now that he moves though the levels with a pretty snappy pace using the targeted jumps.

Oh, and it looks amazing! I mean, it's artisticly pitch-perfect for the Aliens/Predator movies we all know and love (I'm only talking about the movies made prior to 1988. You know, the good ones). The architecture and atmosphere are sooo creepy and errie, it makes you feel uncomfortable to be in the environment. Again, I just feel sorry for the Marines who can't make use of the ledges, catwalks and skylights that are perfect vantage points for the other species.

In the end though, I think I'm a little more excited about playing this game in either team deathmatch or the single player mode (unless there's a co-op?). Whatever happens, the game is on the right track. I can't wait to see what they do with it.

Oh, and what the hell does focus mode do? And what is shriek used for?!