Recent reviews by Hito

I went into this game not expecting much but boy does it deliver if you are a fan of the Alien franchise.

The story is about on par with Aliens 3 where Aliens and Alien pull ahead. The ending level gives room for pause. You can understand what they were going for but it doesn't quite work the same way as it does in Alien and Aliens.

Lighting, music, and sound effects are on point. The game goes out of its way to make sure you feel like you are on LV426: right down to the rhythmic click of the motion tracker as hostiles begin to surround you. I am disappointed that the gun noises from Aliens didn't make it into the game but you can't have everything.

From the cyro units on the Nostromo to the chilling cafeteria from Aliens 3, the game devs paid homage to many classic scenes in the films so keep an eye out when exploring the levels. There's even a nod or two to Isolation which was a very nice touch.

The gameplay is engaging and requires some tactical thinking. While you can go in guns blazing, the game seems to reward you more for stealth. There are a variety of weapons, classes, and skills to use but none of them are really required to beat the game, allowing you to experiment as you see fit. The motion trackers need tuned down as they are ridiculously overpowered in controlling the AI on any given map. There is a new game plus that carries over your marines (and expands their max level) which was a nice touch and made replaying the campaign on a higher difficulty worth it for me.

Speaking of difficulty, the tuning is nearly perfect due to how many settings can be customized. Don't like being rushed? You can disable the clock. Want more of a challenge but don't want to make the enemies into bullet sponges? You can modify their health and damage to what you desire. Nightmare will keep you on your feet but the easier difficulties allow you to play the game as if you are watching a movie.

There is some modding support but nothing too major. The developers seem semi-active as of writing this review. The last major update was in November of 2023.

The line item that brings this game down is the plethora of bugs you will encounter. They're easy enough to ignore and nothing is too game breaking, nothing a reload can't fix anyways, but you can't help but feel most of these bugs should have been caught before the formal release of the game.

I would rate the game a 7/10. If the game had a little more polish and was less buggy, it could easily be a nine or a ten out of ten.

Happy hunting, marines.