The movie “Alien” was a classic of suspense: tense, dark, brooding, emotional and with a unique and interesting mythos as a solid spine in an already-strong film. It was a formulat that has been harder and harder to recreate as the years go by, even as technology has jumped by leaps and bounds. Its sequels progressively lost the charm of the first, and few other similar movies have come close.

Except for “Predator,” of course. Its stalking, intelligent alien was a striking competition for creepiest species in sci-fi. Fortunately for everyone, both series came together circa 1990 and have been spawning addictive combos ever since, even if nothing has been quite as powerful as the original stories that started it all.

The video games have occasionally come close, and the newest game to come out, “Aliens vs. Predator” published by Sega and developed by Rebellion, has some of the best tension in a game this side of “Resident Evil.” Its moody lighting and a motion detector borrowed from “Aliens” keep it one of the most authentic experiences since the movies.

The human campaign is the highlight, even if the controls and weapons are pretty standard for a First Person Shooter. The space marine you take control of navigates through tons of dark corridors with his trusty shoulder-mounted flashlight and flares, which set the mood perfectly for a tense couple hours. It’s a really short campaign, but it’s jam packed with so many frantic battles filled with blipping motion detectors and pulse rifle fire that it’s something worth playing through repeatedly. There are plenty of collectible audio files to fill in some back story, and the game includes four difficulty modes for gamers to torture themselves with. Why anyone would play through the hardest mode without any checkpoints is beyond me, but the option is there.

The alien campaign is a close second, filled with tense creeping and crawling. The alien is an astoundingly fragile creature compared to the marine and the predator, with a single regenerating health bar that vanishes with a shotgun blast or two to the face. It’s well equipped to take down creatures with a single button press, but only after sneaking up on the motion detector-equipped enemies.

Being a Predator is the least interesting and least fun aspect of the game. It starts out as a less-subtle variation of the alien mode, with a lot of sneaking around, being invisible and pressing the action button. It develops into something fun as the predator character picks up some distance weapons, but it never becomes anything as exhilarating as the rest of the game. If it weren’t mandatory for an “Aliens vs. Predator” game, it could’ve been dropped without any real harm to the game.

Unfortunately, the multiplayer is where the game falls flattest, and largely through no fault of its own. After several attempts over a few days, I was unable to connect to any of the potentially fun and exciting game types available for up to 8 people online. “Predator hunt,” “species deathmatch” and “infection” modes were all forbidden to me. The desolate landscape of online multiplayer for the PS3 left me with just a few short rounds of deathmatch, which had some potential depth that I would’ve loved to uncover.

For the most part, though, it was just clumsy shooting and clumsier melee button mashing. Balancing the teams in the various modes would have changed a lot, as would coherent teamwork of some sort, but who knows how it would have all pulled together in an ideal world. In the world we have, multiplayer is a futile waiting game.

Despite my disappointment in the rough shape of the multiplayer, I can’t avoid recommending the game to any “Alien” or “Predator” lover. The actual “Predator” segments were pretty flat, but the predator species helped tie together a terrifying romp through a fantastic game world.