Since I'm currently based in Australia, I was fortunate enough to play this game before its official release date over in The U.S. This isn't the incompetently thrown together hack job Rebellion's alien vs predator was, but this is simply a toned down shell of a game that had the potential to be superior in comparison to other games based off the alien franchise. In this game, you are able to return to hadley's hope out of Aliens, and many of the locations from the film,surprisingly, you get to visit throughout the game, but, had Gearbox chosen to make a proper squad shooter like they intended to do so years ago, when they first announced this, and not some dumbed down, mindless call of duty style shooter that throws waves after waves of alien (and human) enemies at you constantly, at the expense of a deep, intelligent first person horror shooter it wouldn't be getting a 5 score.
My main objection to this game is not that it deliberately caters to the audience that year after year buys call of duty, or the fact that its a lazy, highly linear and scripted game that lacks nearly any replay value whatsoever, but the fact the Gearbox would blatantly make gamers wait for this for over 7 years, hyping it up,while at the same time fuelling that hype with a huge marketing campaign that makes it sound better then it does, and then, all of a sudden,they dump an enormously mediocre and underwhelming game onto store shelves that barely keeps any of its promises and under delivers in nearly every way. It fails at being a decent entry into the alien universe, it fails at being a horror game, it fails at being a decent action game because the action is bloodless and sterile while the level design is so corridor like and linear to the point you're almost simply going down a set of narrow paths. The graphics look fine admittedly and sound design is above average, but its hard to really compliment this game on anything else. Its inexcusable that this took so long to come out and this is the finished product. Even alien vs predator, which was a depressingly enormous disappointment didn't break my heart as much as this did. Gearbox had enough time and budget to at least develop a reasonably decent shooter that simply gives fans of the alien franchise a satisfying experience. Had they opted to go with their original vision, and not chosen to make a brainless, clichéd ridden game that was clearly pumped out for money and to capitalize on the 12 year old boy infested call of duty market this could have been worth the time. Perhaps they should have just cancelled this years ago, so they could of at least spared many alien fans and fans of decent shooters (like me) the disappointment.
My main objection to this game is not that it deliberately caters to the audience that year after year buys call of duty, or the fact that its a lazy, highly linear and scripted game that lacks nearly any replay value whatsoever, but the fact the Gearbox would blatantly make gamers wait for this for over 7 years, hyping it up,while at the same time fuelling that hype with a huge marketing campaign that makes it sound better then it does, and then, all of a sudden,they dump an enormously mediocre and underwhelming game onto store shelves that barely keeps any of its promises and under delivers in nearly every way. It fails at being a decent entry into the alien universe, it fails at being a horror game, it fails at being a decent action game because the action is bloodless and sterile while the level design is so corridor like and linear to the point you're almost simply going down a set of narrow paths. The graphics look fine admittedly and sound design is above average, but its hard to really compliment this game on anything else. Its inexcusable that this took so long to come out and this is the finished product. Even alien vs predator, which was a depressingly enormous disappointment didn't break my heart as much as this did. Gearbox had enough time and budget to at least develop a reasonably decent shooter that simply gives fans of the alien franchise a satisfying experience. Had they opted to go with their original vision, and not chosen to make a brainless, clichéd ridden game that was clearly pumped out for money and to capitalize on the 12 year old boy infested call of duty market this could have been worth the time. Perhaps they should have just cancelled this years ago, so they could of at least spared many alien fans and fans of decent shooters (like me) the disappointment.