Pleasantly Surprised.


I picked this up on Amazon recently for one pence shy of five pounds and I'm rather happy that I did.

Maybe most of the bugs have been ironed out over the time between its release and now, but it doesn't seem anywhere near as buggy as people reckon it is. In fact, it's a darn sight less buggy than Fallout: New Vegas was, and that was riddled.

The game play may not be groundbreaking, but it is solid enough. The aliens seem well done to me - they move well, look good enough and make me jump when they're supposed to - and, while the WY-human enemies aren't the smartest on the planet, they at least have an in-universe out for it given that they are scientists as well as sorta-soldiers.

I've not completed it yet (have just got Bella to the WY base) but I'm having fun.

Perhaps I'd be disappointed if I'd spent a lot more cash on it, perhaps not, but I'm sure digging this alt-universe* sequel to the first three games and can't wait to get the DLC.

*Let's face it, no matter how tight the plotting of these things are with their source material, there will always be some continuity-fudging going on due to the need to be creative. I just see it as AU and not in the movie continuity, same as with the books and comics.

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Well, I personally loved the game. For years, I had wanted an Aliens game with his premise (being in a marine team, no Predator BS etc). I didn't think the A.I. was that bad. I thought it was generally pretty good. I found my marine team helped, & I thought the lurker aliens were particularly good (scared the crap out of me the first time playing). I played on the hardest difficulty at night with the sound up & had a blast.

I loved the movie locations the most. I also love being able to play as movie characters online, particularly on the Tribute map on Bug Hunt, which is a very accurate reproduction of Hadley's Hope. I also love the hand held motion tracker too.

I also thought the story was good. Not as good as Alien or Aliens, but certainly better than the garbage like Alien 3 onwards.

That said, while I enjoyed the game, I despise the way the game was handled, & the lies by Gearbox. They embezzled Sega's funding to work on crap like Duke Nukem Forever & Borderlands. This is just Randy Pitchford saying he is above the Alien license, & a bigger cultural influence than these films, or Cameron & Scott.

If Pitchford had any respect for the material like he was bragging about for months on end, then he'd not have fraudulently misused Sega's funding, & he'd have made sure Gearbox put as much effort into this as they did with Borderlands. Since we know they had zero interest in making the game, then why sign a contract with Sega? Nobody held a gun to Pitchford's head.

In addition to being a disgusting liar & fraud, he is also a hypocrite. Not long after the game comes out, he starts crying about people calling him a liar. He then starts spouting off about being "committed" to the game, & that the console versions would get the film grain option.

I was really excited about the film grain feature, as I am a huge fan of the film, & I love celluloid. Console users never got it, nor was there this so called "commitment." They had the nerve to charge people almost $40 for the season pass, yet refused to make an effort to make it easier to get games on the DLC maps (which are half the content of the season pass) by fixing matchmaking, or having offline bots. The latter was supposed to be in, as there is an offline mode for multiplayer. This is not LAN, as there is a separate LAN option. Nor can you even play splitscreen with another controller, even though the booklet says you can (it specifically mentions splitscreen multiplayer mode as well as campaign co-op).

The game wasn't supposed to have playable female marines either, until a fan made petition got thousands of signatures to convince them. This is why we didn't get a playable Vasquez skin. Considering the way Cameron portrayed his female characters in Aliens, & how Gearbox kept bragging about being huge fans of the film, playable female characters (with equal amount of customisation options), should have been a given.

The fact is, Randy Pitchford is a sexist, misogynist scumbag. He made Duke Nukem Forever a priority over this. Nobody wanted this worthless turd of a game. They did finish the development, but Pitchford is a huge Duke fan, & even worked on Duke 3D in the 90's. Women in these awful games are just portrayed as dumb sex objects.

Another bit that shows Pitchford's claim about being committed to the game to be an absolute lie is after they finished the Borderlands 2 season pass, instead of focusing on Aliens, they decided to make more crap for Borderlands.

Sega certainly do deserve to be blamed for how the game turned out, & they kept pushing for mostly human enemies (at one point they actually wanted hardly any aliens. In the finished game its mostly about 50-50 with regards to human & alien enemies). But to be fair, they invested $60 million into the project, & to have cancelled it would have been a huge loss. It is understandable that they'd try to get a return on their investment.

The huge problem was Gearbox deliberately sponging Sega for more funding & kept getting it delayed (they weren't actually working on the game like they were supposed to).

Sorry for the rant, but it sickens me how arrogant Pitchford & his team of frauds are. The Alien films are some of the most influential science fiction films over the last 30 years (Aliens was also known to be a huge source for game developers to rip off), & to think they were above the material is really disgusting.

It is also appalling how video gamers & companies still like to support Gearbox, even though they deliberately set out to deceive Sega, 20th Century Fox, the fans, & people involved in the game who worked on the films.

Oh, one last thing, Pitchford continues to lie about being a fan of the films. He has said he respects the developers working on Alien Isolation & Ridley Scott. This is a crock of bullcrap because if this game does well, it is only going to make it bluntly clear that Gearbox were the reasons behind the troubled development of ACM, & they'd look even worse. He is a scumbag.

Randy Pigford says a dream project requires embezzling funding, lying & ripping off the fans

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it's a darn sight less buggy than Fallout: New Vegas


That's because this game is a Hell of a lot less ambitious than F:NV, which was a massive open world RPG with a branching storyline & was made on a creaky bug ridden game engine that Bethesda developed many moons ago. Obsidian put their heart & soul into making F:NV the best game they could make and were rewarded with good reviews from their peers. Gearbox abused the Alien license & crapped out a mess of a game, knowing that it would sell on name alone & they were right. Luckily both you & I only paid £5 for it but I feel sorry for the people who weren't as lucky & were suckered into pre-ordering it based on the false advertising.

I used to have the Willem Dafoe living under my bed.

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Same, picked it up on a steam sale at some point, probably in a bundle as I honestly don't remember buying it.. fired it up and have been playing it all night.. lost track of time... Having a pretty good time with it, only bug so far was got stuck crouching under a grate and got killed and started ragdolling. only happened once, no big deal.another nice touch is it has Logitech G19 support... so the lcd screen on my keyboard is now a dedicated motion tracker (It scrolls through several uses, but motion tracker is the handiest by far.. hear that ping and just look down.)I'd imagine people that paid full price might be a little put off, but for a sale game it's a great find. tried most of the other Aliens and predator games and so far this is the Aliens I've been waiting for.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Thanks to Batman vs. Superman, the "S" on Supermeh's chest now stands for Sidekick

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Got it for $10 cdn myself, maybe the price and my low expectations going in helped but I did enjoy shooting the Aliens quite a bit and the Lurkers were very well done, I was kinda scared at those moments.

Could have done without the WY Mercs and the total butchering of the story. As much as I love Hicks I have accepted he died and can move on but I guess they really needed to answer the magic egg and facehugger from 3 so why not throw in everyone's favorite marine while they're at it.

As a fan of the first 3 movies I would give it a 6/10 due to the bargain price, if I had paid $80+ at launch I would have been rightfully pissed though.

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Uh huh right someone never read the original Hicks and Newt comics.

You gotta stay in your seats until the Sulaco reaches the terminal!

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I just picked it up today at the pawn shop for dirt cheap ($5), so I'll be giving it a go here soon.
The original reviews of this game was probably some of the biggest disappointment I've had in a long time, so who knows, maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised. If not, oh well, I probably spent more money just driving there to pick it up.

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