Finished this.
Quite liked it.
My biggest fear going in was that, as an alternative to the darkest film in the series, this would feel like Aliens fan-fic, a happy little fun ride where they blast aliens to kingdom come, etc..et c..
Glad to have been very wrong.
Cadigan made this way darker than the original script and even though tone-wise it still owes a lot to Cameron's film, this is darker than anything that Cameron would dream of putting on screen.
Spoiler
Cameron would never make Hicks mercy kill children. Ever. Hell, that's darker than anything Ripley ever had to do.
Hicks as a paranoid, PTSD/survivors-guilt ridden mess of a man is probably the very best version of him. And the way Cadigan writes all that out feels honest and (thankfully), free of cheap melodrama.
Solid.
(this has some pretty fun gore too)
In some alternate universe, this was directed by Tony Scott, competitive as f**k, wanting to beat his brother at his own game.