Amongst the bugs and niggles afflicting the game are a few real show-stoppers. Sometimes a scripted sequence will just not happen, leaving you to ponder what's supposed to be happening for a few minutes and then reload an old save game. As a result there are times when in any normal first person shooter you would just assume that you had missed a clue, but in reality the game has forgotten to do the next cutscene. Sometimes smaller things go wrong. The AI has a habit of getting stuck on the scenery, or the Aliens make stupid noises and then come charging down the corridor, as if they weren't boring enough as it is. The other annoying thing about the AI-controlled Aliens is that they don't seem to bear any resemblance to those that you play alongside in the Alien campaign. When you are fighting against them the Aliens look awfully short and seem to have a tendency towards crouching down and scraping your shins. There's quite a lot to do in Aliens vs. Predator 2, but despite its technical tomfooleries and the criss-crossed storyline, it isn't as good a game as the original Alien vs. Predator. Some hopeful multiplayer options and the odd bit of excitement can't rescue AvP2 from its bugs and poor mimicry, and it's a pale shadow of Monolith's last big effort, No One Lives Forever. If you're crying out for a new shoot 'em up you would be better off getting Return to Castle Wolfenstein.