The base A:CM game didn't even qualify as a game. But the templar GFx 6.2 mod makes it completely different. You've probably heard of the "teather" bug. The single line in the .ini that was supposed to read "tether" that was discovered in 2019 I believe. It fixed the Xenomorph ai completely. Templars mod in addition changed the game. A complete overhaul. From the caseless explosive 10mm rounds of the pulse rifle -actually- being explosive rounds, to the whole balancing of the game, the shadows, the way your light works, everything. To the smart gun being available whenever you want. To xenomorph corpses remaining indefinitely where they fall. The acid blood "ai", the volumetric lighting, smoke, fog, etc. Too much to list. It looks nothing like when it was released in 2013. Just check Templargfx's page on moddb.
The modded game looks even better even than Alien Isolation and -way- better then Aliens: Fireteam.
PS: I love A3 (Assembly cut) for the depressing freak show of a movie it is. I just hate it as "Aliens 2".
It's hard to explain, but those of us (well ok, let's say 90% of us) who saw A2 in the cinema remember the bitter sequel that was A3. A1 (one alien) was Ridley, A2 (many aliens) was Cameron, we -knew- that A3 had to be super special. We imagined A3 would be all out war on the Alien home world, or Alien War back on Earth, that we'd find out more lore, that we'd get an action movie to end all action movies with Hicks and Ripley as stars. The whole movie loving public loved Michael Biehn in the 80s.
Instead we got A3, which was a depressing hopeless hell hole of a small movie, with Hicks (and even little Newt) dead. Right at the start. It was very surprising and a huge let down. (I think in terms of being let down by a movie sequel it ranks among the top 3 ever in action movies).
All we had left of that deep Aliens world was the ACMTM now.
So for -those- of us, A:CM in 2013 was a godsend. That it actually used the ACMTM as a base felt like a hug.
But the lies of RP and Gearbox and the E3 demo farce killed the game before it even started, not allowing many people to see what -was there- underneath the layer of feces (the story, the brilliant concept work by the returning Syd Mead), etc. TemplarGFx 6.2 gave us that.
So what I'm saying is that if you liked A2, were disappointed by A3, tried to like A:CM but couldn't get past the appaling release state, try it again with TemplarGFX.
It won't change the script, you either like that or you don't, and I love it.
Yeah it could have been better, and the world concept art by Craig Mullins looked amazing. A shame the cities were cut, but we did get Syd's actual work (what was he like 85 then?) augmented by Lorin Wood.
