Hello there, guys...
I have played it yesterday and it took me a day to muster all of it...
First thing is this game proved I am truly an Aliens nerd... I loved seeing the litle details like the names of the Marines we loved in the lockers... I loved watching the Sulaco, seeing the interiors of it... Loved Hadley's Hope and the vistas of LV-426... The graphics were not great, but to me, they got the point across... I was expecting a better graphics game, especially from the trailers and all, but I have to say that from day one, from the very first day I heard they were doing this game, I was skeptical for just this reason: having played Alien Trilogy on Sega Saturn, and knowing already this was taking place post-ALIENS movie, so, no Atmospheric Processor, LV-426 is ruins and so on and so forth, I think they went the only way they could: spending some time on the Sulaco, spending some time on LV-426, expanding it (IMHO, not so credibly so) to an obscure Weyland-Yutani facility annexed to the Space Jockey (aka Engineer) ship... And that is about it, really... I don't understand what fans were really expecting from a game that reduced it's scope so dramatically by calling itself 'a sequel to Aliens'... Maybe I am just being over-positive about it, but I was pleasantly surprised given I had such low hopes going into the game, except for the feeling of walking around Hadley's Hope or the Sulaco or the Jockey's ship... Or seing the four ejected pods on the Sulaco... That was cool... Those were great moments and I am always replaying those levels... Hoorah to ashes...
Also, whenever we see way too many graphical stills and no in-game shots, you should worry... That was my second hint...
About the STORY, I think it was tolerable... I am a huge Alien3 fan, so
Spoiler
having Hicks alive and kicking
is not a sequel to me, but an alternate, paralell universe... His explanation could make sense, but was a bit flimsy...
But, of course, I understand those who were expecting a lot, maybe too much, from this game... It always disappoints... I liked AVP 2010, the last game featuring my favourite monsters, and given the quality of those 2010 graphics, I can understand the frustration against this 2013 one who, I agree, has the graphical quality of a Starship Troopers game... To me, it was good enough to make me happy to see my favourite tidbits of the movie - Hadley's Hope, Operations (seeing everywhere our favourite characters went was a great feeling; which is what these games are all about)...
Would I have preferred this game with the AVP 2010 graphics? Of course! But we must bear in mind that AVP 2010 is one of the benchmarks for graphical quality, meaning that most may computers may not come to specs... I am lucky, having a top of the line one, but I am aware that many, if not most, may not have... And I should add that, for instance, the Nest bits were better than in AVP 2010, because it had that cool shading effect the AVP 2010 did not have...
Regarding the Xenos, The AI was all over the place, alternating between the good and the awful intrinsically, which means that they were chaotic... The huggers gave back the fear the first AVP game had, even though you could fight it off (sometimes, I couldn't click fast enough and it was game over, man! HAHAHA). The Human enemies were a nice addition vor variety, and I disliked the Berserker and the Spitting Aliens, being two creatures that never existed before! So, unless they had elephants or rhinos on that planet, the Berserker makes absolutely no sense! But we had the Paetorians before in AVP, so... Also, the scarinness factor was clearly sacrificed for action, and since Aliens was more of an action movie with almost IMHO zero scarinness, I think this game followed that movie's choice of action over fear...
So, I will stop here for now, as this post is already enormous, and there are many things to be said about the music (great, best part of the game)...
Cheers!