I've only completed the Alien campaign (PS3), but I'm gonna put up my thoughts up of what I felt so far, I'll update as I go through the other campaigns. I've made sure to spoiler tag the important stuff, so as not to ruin it for anyone.
Likes:•
The controls: They take a little getting used to, but a little testing in Multiplayer meant that I had a pretty good handle on them going into things. I use the Auto-transition, and there's only a couple moments where I got turned around, and that's mostly when I backed up over uneven boxes or something while on walls. Generally I didn't have any problems, and the button placement seems quite natural. Hissing to pull away the marines is great and the ceiling stealth tactics work just as you'd hope. The ability to tell if you're in the light and dark is really natural, as is the ability to tell when you can jump to an object or not.
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Lighting: Especially when you start getting to smack around the lights dropped on the ground, and watch them fly around. It makes the stalking around in the blackness that much better, when you come tearing out at the unsuspecting humans.
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The feel: This game did a great job making you feel like a Xenomorph rushing around on the walls, and ripping apart marines & harvesting the poor humans.
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Stealth Kills I honestly never get tired of them. They're just so rewarding.
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Fighting Synthetics: They just feel tough, and getting to hit them around has the right balance. They're harder to knock down than marines, but that's how they're supposed to be, and you still feel capable against them up close. (Not to mention the awesome dialogue when you hiss at them, "Xenomorph hailing frequency detected."
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Minor Criticisms:•
Harvest: I wish that there was one additional Harvest animation, like a unique one for if you pounce/injure them before harvesting, rather than stealth, or even pushing them on their side.
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More lights: I wish that there were more opportunity for you to creep around in places with marines, and take out the lights in more stealthy ways, rather than the more generic "cut the power" missions. Something that would totally drop an entire section of a room into darkness. It's an excellent feature, but I wish that there were a lot more opportunities to use the ability to knock around and kill the lights.
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Indestructable sentry guns: It's fine that they're not able to be destroyed to make some areas more difficult, but it didn't ever really feel like they NEEDED to stay there, but it felt incredibly odd not even being able to hit them.
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Vent transitioning: 95% of the time, it works really well, but there were a few times when I got stuck trying to run through a Vent, because didn't hit X in time, because it was directly in front of me and I was running and I went too far forward and hit an invisible wall, so I had to back up, in order to make the button prompt come back up. The only other thing if for the ceiling Vents on the second Level, I wish that there was a way to specify if you wanted to drop to the floor when exiting the Vent, or hold on to the ceiling like holding R2.
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Big trees: They're a little awkward to climb, and you hit the invisible wall up just before you think you would, in addition to the fact that they're too far apart to jump between, even when climbing out on the limbs.
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Mission composition: Spoiler
Much of this is covered in my mission length section, but I'll elaborate more here. I'd like to have seen your transitioning from the Test Lab, to the outside, to the Predator ruins feel a bit less... disjointed. Seeing little clues about the scientist's experiments, leading you out to isolate them. I'd like to have seen at least a few moments where, due to your actions, you start to see things getting overrun, like shutting down power to an area lets in Xenomorphs from another area of the complex to kill a room full of marines. In the ruins mission, you could even take all the people who were harvested in the Mission in the Predator ruins, and have them hatch out, and by lying in wait for the Predators when they come down to fight you, rather than just having the Aliens running in from somewhere miscelaneous. That way, when you get to fight the Elite Predator, you really feel like he & 6 are more powerful than the others. I also wish that you god to see more of Queen 6 (and that the camera wasn't so shaky at the end during the only closeup of her face).
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Campaign Length: I honestly didn't feel like there was enough Xenomorph goodness. There could EASILY have been 2-3 more missions. I wish there were more time to get to appreciate how unique and awesome 6 is supposed to be, rather than just running about disabling thing for the Queen.
Spoiler
There could be one where you actually get to be on the same screen as the Queen, and possibly run about securing her Hive area (so she's not just a shrieking icon in the top left of your screen). One more to delve into the work of the W-Y scientists, and give some insight into their experimentation on the Royal Jelly. I'd also really have liked another of you breaking free on the ship after you're taken, and preparing to make your evolution into a Queen (since you don't see how she escapes, and it would've make a great stealth mission).
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Fighting Predators: I wish that it felt like the Aliens actually held their ground in Close Combat against Predators. It doesn't feel like you hit them as hard as they hit you, cause they just take attacks, and you seem to get knocked about, like they knock you down with Heavy Attacks, but they just fall to a knee when hit by yours. It may be that I'm not excellent at the close combat system yet, but it's hard to read visual cues about your enemy's attack when you can't keep your vision on them after getting hit once. The prompts for Block & Light Attack to counter their moves is helpful, but I feel like it's something that the Predator should be seeing when Melee fighting the aliens, not the other way round.
Spoiler
Especially when 6, the super smart alien is getting tossed around by a couple of Young Blood predators.
