I recently finished beating the campaign mode. I'll start by reciting what you've probably already heard:
This game has been in production for years. The fans of the franchise were highly anticipating the game's release ever since the 10 minute E3 demo in 2011. It showed impressive graphics, fantastic atmosphere, menacing AI, terrifying Xenomorph enemies...Then on launch date 2013...we found out that demo was a complete and utter LIE! The true game is an incomplete, unpolished mess. Several of the vent shafts near the floor where aliens emerge are simply black squares. There isn't much carnage or cinematic cuts as the demo implied. It's simply an unpolished run n gun, call of duty-esque shooter. It's very glitchy at times and the AI can be outright mentally handicapped. The aliens quite often get stuck behind boxes and sometimes they'll just stroll right by you. Other times your AI marine counterparts will also just stand there while an enemy is 5 feet in front of them and you figure there's no one left to shoot because nobody else is shooting. Then you approach one of your AI buddies and get shot from the enemy that was standing right by them. There are some WTF moments in the game too. {minor spoiler} Right at the beginning of the game you rescue a cocooned comrade. As you and your two fellow marines are crossing a long corridor from one spaceship to another, an alien begins to birth from his chest and so he detonates a grenade which destroys the corridor and almost sucks you and your other marine right into space. A real dick move wouldn't you say? Why not just shoot yourself in the head?
I haven't played the multi-player much but every time I've tried, I've found I'm automatically on the Alien team. I don't know if that's something I select beforehand or if it's just bad luck. The marine's perspective is first person, the alien's is 3rd person and it's very jarring and difficult to get a hold of. I'm used to the AvP games where the Alien, Marine and Predator were all first person. I found it very difficult to kill anyone too. I tried hacking and slashing and every button combo I could try but I always just fell over dead and never really being clear on who killed me.
Alright...so now that the negative stuff is out of the way, I'll talk about the positives: The sound effects- most of the sound effects are taken directly from the Aliens film. The sporadic automatic firing sound of a pulse rifle on the surround sound always sounds awesome. The aliens sound like aliens. The soft, repetitive dut-dut-dut of your motion tracker, and every time it gets a ping, you do feel your hair on the back of your neck stand up. Atmosphere- I know lots of people are saying it's simple or non-existent. But I found as the game progresses it DOES improve. Some of the effects look very close to what was shown in the E3 demo, then other shots right after looks like it's 6 years old. In the later levels when you're out in the open on LV-426 I found myself getting much more enthralled in the game and actually felt entertained. As simple as the game play was, I couldn't help but enjoy the fact that I was in the Aliens universe. The nods- there's tons of nods to the Aliens films and they all worked and brought a smile to my face. Not only that, but they were accurate too! The game opens with a video log from Hicks (voiced by Michael Biehn no less) who is freshly bandaged up. Aboard the Sulaco you find the lower half of an android in the main cargo bay. You also find all the empty cryo tubes and one section that had been ejected...hmm...In Hadley's Hope, there's the two facehuggers shot up in the exact same spots that they were in the film, there was the over-turned bed, etc. etc...There's also another model of Bishop that accompanies your platoon. Voiced by Lance Henriksen too. The Mysteries- Some people are complaining about plot holes. Such as the game takes place 17 weeks after the film (not 17 days for some reason). It gets mentioned that the Sulaco was last seen over Fury 161 yet it had mysteriously re-appeared over LV-426. This never gets directly answered but some of the characters theorize that it had something to do with Weyland-Yutani's cover-up which also plays heavily in the game. I'm fine with the questions not getting answered (such as why Hadley's Hope wasn't completely obliterated when the nuclear explosion went off). It allows one to make up their own interpretation. The weapons- There's a surprising variety of weaponry to choose from (though I'll always be partial to the pulse rifle) there's some customization but I keep my pulse rifle bare bones, the rest of the guns I don't mind customizing but there's nothing spectacular.
So the bottom line; I wound up giving this game a 6 in spite of myself. The action and even the effects seem to pick up as the game goes along. Multiplayer seems thrown together and forgettable. There's great references to an Aliens fan and so on. The glitches and un-polished sections really put a damper on the enjoyment but after a while you learn to focus on other things. If you're an Aliens fan and a gamer, it's worth a play (but rent it or wait till the price drops, which should be fairly quick) definitely not for full price. If you're strictly a gamer and either haven't seen or don't enjoy the aliens films, you'd likely rate this game as a 3 or 4.
This game has been in production for years. The fans of the franchise were highly anticipating the game's release ever since the 10 minute E3 demo in 2011. It showed impressive graphics, fantastic atmosphere, menacing AI, terrifying Xenomorph enemies...Then on launch date 2013...we found out that demo was a complete and utter LIE! The true game is an incomplete, unpolished mess. Several of the vent shafts near the floor where aliens emerge are simply black squares. There isn't much carnage or cinematic cuts as the demo implied. It's simply an unpolished run n gun, call of duty-esque shooter. It's very glitchy at times and the AI can be outright mentally handicapped. The aliens quite often get stuck behind boxes and sometimes they'll just stroll right by you. Other times your AI marine counterparts will also just stand there while an enemy is 5 feet in front of them and you figure there's no one left to shoot because nobody else is shooting. Then you approach one of your AI buddies and get shot from the enemy that was standing right by them. There are some WTF moments in the game too. {minor spoiler} Right at the beginning of the game you rescue a cocooned comrade. As you and your two fellow marines are crossing a long corridor from one spaceship to another, an alien begins to birth from his chest and so he detonates a grenade which destroys the corridor and almost sucks you and your other marine right into space. A real dick move wouldn't you say? Why not just shoot yourself in the head?
I haven't played the multi-player much but every time I've tried, I've found I'm automatically on the Alien team. I don't know if that's something I select beforehand or if it's just bad luck. The marine's perspective is first person, the alien's is 3rd person and it's very jarring and difficult to get a hold of. I'm used to the AvP games where the Alien, Marine and Predator were all first person. I found it very difficult to kill anyone too. I tried hacking and slashing and every button combo I could try but I always just fell over dead and never really being clear on who killed me.
Alright...so now that the negative stuff is out of the way, I'll talk about the positives: The sound effects- most of the sound effects are taken directly from the Aliens film. The sporadic automatic firing sound of a pulse rifle on the surround sound always sounds awesome. The aliens sound like aliens. The soft, repetitive dut-dut-dut of your motion tracker, and every time it gets a ping, you do feel your hair on the back of your neck stand up. Atmosphere- I know lots of people are saying it's simple or non-existent. But I found as the game progresses it DOES improve. Some of the effects look very close to what was shown in the E3 demo, then other shots right after looks like it's 6 years old. In the later levels when you're out in the open on LV-426 I found myself getting much more enthralled in the game and actually felt entertained. As simple as the game play was, I couldn't help but enjoy the fact that I was in the Aliens universe. The nods- there's tons of nods to the Aliens films and they all worked and brought a smile to my face. Not only that, but they were accurate too! The game opens with a video log from Hicks (voiced by Michael Biehn no less) who is freshly bandaged up. Aboard the Sulaco you find the lower half of an android in the main cargo bay. You also find all the empty cryo tubes and one section that had been ejected...hmm...In Hadley's Hope, there's the two facehuggers shot up in the exact same spots that they were in the film, there was the over-turned bed, etc. etc...There's also another model of Bishop that accompanies your platoon. Voiced by Lance Henriksen too. The Mysteries- Some people are complaining about plot holes. Such as the game takes place 17 weeks after the film (not 17 days for some reason). It gets mentioned that the Sulaco was last seen over Fury 161 yet it had mysteriously re-appeared over LV-426. This never gets directly answered but some of the characters theorize that it had something to do with Weyland-Yutani's cover-up which also plays heavily in the game. I'm fine with the questions not getting answered (such as why Hadley's Hope wasn't completely obliterated when the nuclear explosion went off). It allows one to make up their own interpretation. The weapons- There's a surprising variety of weaponry to choose from (though I'll always be partial to the pulse rifle) there's some customization but I keep my pulse rifle bare bones, the rest of the guns I don't mind customizing but there's nothing spectacular.
So the bottom line; I wound up giving this game a 6 in spite of myself. The action and even the effects seem to pick up as the game goes along. Multiplayer seems thrown together and forgettable. There's great references to an Aliens fan and so on. The glitches and un-polished sections really put a damper on the enjoyment but after a while you learn to focus on other things. If you're an Aliens fan and a gamer, it's worth a play (but rent it or wait till the price drops, which should be fairly quick) definitely not for full price. If you're strictly a gamer and either haven't seen or don't enjoy the aliens films, you'd likely rate this game as a 3 or 4.