Why? It's not as bad as they say

I played about 3 hours of the Single Player campaign, and I have to say that the game is not really all that terrible.

-The AI is really aggressive at least on the Hard difficulty (playing on PC), so I died quite a few times. Maybe on Normal it's too casual, but it gave me a decent challenge so far.

-Atmosphere and graphics are ok for me, but I understand the complaints after watching this

-Sound design and music are actally pretty great and shooting feels responsive (at least with the Pulse Rifle, which I used almost exclusively)

Honestly, I don't understand how this game is worse than the latest Medal of Honor. Even story-wise, I would say they're on par on the "meh" scale. I like the Aliens movies, but I'm not a huge fanatic or anything, and I am enjoying this game as a slightly above average FPS.

Now, if you'll excuse me, "I'll pour some Whiskey, sit on my couch" on this cold Miami day, and play some more ACM

Seems to be mediocre, though it does give flashbacks to previous Gearbox masterpiece Duke Nukem Forever. Also it is remotely challenging on normal and that is a definite no-no for modern games; any deaths or inconveniences at all = instant review dismissal. See for example: Golden Axe: Beast Rider; another perfectly competent if generic and underwhelming game given horrific reviews since it dared to be slightly challenging.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AMMGS8zutE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BZpDqjAcPU

I agree. It's more of a budget shooter than a $60 game.

I made the comparison to another budget/meh-but-still-enjoyable-shooter Singularity in another thread, and having completed the campaign on Hard I have to say it's accurate.

I don't understand the brain dead AI quibbles because whenever I was rushed by a group of Xenos I felt the heat. Defending the Pelican near the end of the game was a huge challenge because of how many Xenos they throw at you with little in the way of ammo or health packs or armour. Again I was playing on Hard, but I got the ALIENS experience I was hoping for out of it. Fighting humans was meh, though. They weren't fun.

All in all I wouldn't recommend anyone buy it at full price, but for $20 I don't see the harm in it.

Has the time finally come for the defense force for this game to finally come out of the woodwork?

Honestly I played it and I thought it was not fun at all, it turned into me forcing myself to see it through at one point. It may be my playstyle but the AI was absolutely broken and was incredibly easy to deal with, it wasn't a matter of difficulty for me at all. The few things that stick out in my mind were how I would sprint into rooms and the Human enemies would still try to go to the same exact cover, even when I replayed a few of the levels it never changed as if they were scripted to be in those exact spots. Aliens were too slow and a great deal of the time I would be able to just sprint away and evade a great deal of them entirely. Another thing I did not like at all about that game was the lack of unique weapons and how you're essentially stuck with either a Shotgun, Plasma Rifle, or Pistol and that just rubs me the wrong way in this day and age.

To me the straw that broke the camel's back for me was the portion of the game involving the APC, where you had to be in a specific place in the level to shoot a barrel. I know this because I attempted to shoot the barrel from other portions of the map and it wouldn't trigger the APC retreating, and I would be locked into the level.

If you liked the game then that's awesome, I personally thought the mutliplayer was decent for instance, though in my experience the single player was a bland and mindless shooter at it's best, and obsolete five years ago at it's worst. It wasn't the fact that it was difficult, because it really wasn't. It was all a matter of the bugs I encountered and how little the game made me care at the end of it all.

I've put in about 2-3 hours into the game so far, and honestly I was expecting a lot worse based on the reaction from a lot of players and reviewers. So far it seems like a very mediocre game. AI can be bad at times. I had one NPC who refused to proceed, hence making me unable to proceed with the game. Apparently it was waiting to gun down a Xeno, which was stuck in the level walls.

Sound design was fine. The pulse rifle does not sound underwhelming as I was lead to believe but the guns do feel like peashooters. The visual impact of, say, firing a shotgun into a Xeno's skull just didn't feel satisfying enough. I liked having the ability to level up and earning new weapon attachments. To be honest, this aspect is the only thing motivating me to keep on playing. Storyline is uninteresting thus far.

Can't comment on the multiplayer as I don't play multiplayer. All in all, a very average game so far but can be quite fun nonetheless.

Nothing like some whiskey in a cold Miami day for buyers remorse self assurance.

It all depends on your starting expectation of how good a game is going to be.

If you go in with low expectations you might think a 2-3 ish star game it's ok, but if you go in thinking it's going to be great you'll likely think it's a lot worse than it really is.

I think a lot of the media had bought into this title at least given how it was pitched to them and who was hyping it. So their visceral reaction is pretty understandable

Same here. I wanted to play this game basically just to feel out what all the hub-bub was about and after about 4 hours of playing (only on 5th level due to playing on Ultimate Badass difficulty), and that is where the game starts losing it for me. I should have played on normal, but guess what, I didn't, dunno why. I am sure the difficulty spikes would be much more mellowed out if I were to play on a lower difficulty, but there are some places it is a breeze, and others were you have to plan every move, and even then, you get guys spawning in when one of your squadmates hits a trigger only for the newly formed enemy to come up from behind and killed you in a couple of bullets.

It doesn't seem like an amazing story, but not awful. The enemies are pretty basic, but some spawn triggers can get kind of annoying. Sound design is just alright, not even good, but I am getting a little enjoyment in how it is just teetering under good, and every once in awhile it surprised me (like the guns sound kind of terrible in a kind of bad sci-fi kind of way). Graphics remind me of Doom 3 (maybe a tad worse), very generic, and its not 2004 anymore, so they seem a bit dated, and for long periods of time, arms and pillars will just load in as a muddy texture, and stay that way the entire time you are in that area or scene, so that is kind of crummy, but not completely abysmal (but on the other hand, not like some of the trailers showed either). Multiplayer, baring I only have played a few games seems serviceable at the very least, but playing in any of the modes really doesn't make you feel like you are playing an earth-shatteringly new multiplayer mode.

At this point, 3-to-4 out of 10. (Mind you, I use the full 10 point scale, and just about nothing deserves a 10 or perfect). Its generic, hasn't really shined as of yet, and definitely not worth the $60, maybe worth $15 or $20...

I dunno, by Alex only giving it 1-star, I felt like I had to play this train wreak, but maybe I just have not gotten to it yet.

EDIT: I do like Ashly Burch's voice acting though as Lt. Reid.

It's just a very mediocre game to begin with but given the expectations of it (those being that it's part of the revered Alien franchise, it's developed by Gearbox who made the popular Borderlands franchise and that it was stuck in development for a good few years) you'd think they'll churn out a better product. But of course they haven't, so when you weigh it against those expectations, it's incredibly bad. It definitely doesn't that they're charging it at full price and that these are the same guys who helped develop Duke Nukem Forever that was in a very similar position to this.

I can't help it.

With no able defense this ship has sunk long ago and Captain Pitchford was among the first to abandon its crew, steal a dingy and row back to the shore of the Borderlands where new adventures await.

Arm the sentry guns!