A few rounds of deathmatch kindly reminded us of the faction differences helped craft over a decade ago. The alien is fast but weak; playing successfully means never stopping and learning to scurry across the ceiling without making your eyes hurt. The Predator allows for a slower, increasingly cerebral style of play, picking opportune moments to de-cloak and launch their overpowered arsenal. And the marine spends a lot of time booking it and shooting things with his gun, hoping each pocket of shadow contains a hidden alien and every glimmer in the corner of the screen is a cloaked Predator.

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Still, it's coming up to a decade since Rebellion last made a mode out of AvP, and the interim period has seen studios like and competently redefine gaming. Brickley remains confident Rebellion can adapt to the current generation of consoles, however: "everyone wants the latest gadget, gizmo and gimmick. For us, you play to your strength, and one of the strengths of the engine is the lighting. As the marine you've got a flare, which you can throw and it'll give you a little pool of light which you can use to your advantage. But it's going to fizzle out, so you've got to be very tactical about how you use these things. As the alien you're going the other way round, you're trying to extinguish all the light to make darkness so you can kill. That was a great opportunity for us: to build on the strength that the engine has. We didn't put stuff in for the hell of it."

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The two maps I got to play on - Jungle and Temple - backed up Brickley's claims, with success in both maps relying heavily on an understanding of the light and shadow contrast alongside hedging between indoors and outdoors. Jungle had an intimate series of shadowy underground corridors, presumably to house Aliens, and some larger outside areas, complete with dense foliage and twisting vegetation for Predators and marines to play in. Temple was more vertically orientated, focusing on the eponymous object but keeping the indoor/outdoor contrast seen in the previous map. It was also home to a few statues of the Xenomorphs with their proboscis hanging out, like you do, and plenty of watery areas to provide a degree of safety for non-Predator races. Who can't cloak in water, of course.

Balance is paramount to the game's success online: nothing would be more annoying than one race simply dominating the others. I didn't have enough time to pass any definitive judgement as to whether Rebellion got the mix spot-on, but from the few hours I spent with the game it didn't seem like there any one race had definitive advantages. Still, the Predator was easily the most popular choice for players, partially because of being awesome but also because all of his weapons were made available from spawn: in the final version the pointy-jawed hunter will need to pick-up weapons from the map, which obviously puts the guy at a bit of a disadvantage and also gives astute opponents knowledge of what areas to camp.

It also didn't stop the more-unpopular Alien and Marine from frequently coming top of the results table, especially in rounds where I was playing as either of the two. Ahem. Despite the Predator's popularity during the session there was something about his metered, exact play style that caused me to be rubbish at him, and instead I preferred the savage nature of the Alien. Who needs a rocket launcher built into your suit when you can bite people through the head?

But that's the point, isn't it? The game works best when there's a good mix of players who all have a variety of favourite races. The only problem we can think of is that so many options might over-complicate the game for typical online gamers. "It doesn't take long to get. And then people just can't come off it," retorts Brickley. We have a feeling he might be right.

Our thanks to Dave Brickley, whose favourite alien/predator is the theatrical cut of Aliens, and Eric Miller, who liked all the too much to possibly choose one. is due out for the PS3, 360 and on February 26 2010.

By Martin Gaston