After six years in development, Aliens: Colonial Marines finally leaps out at FPS fans, latching onto their trigger fingers, and keeping their faces hugged to the TV screen. Can it live up to the hype or has Gearbox pulled another Duke Nukem Forever?

For fans of the Alien franchise the good news is that Aliens: Colonial Marines (ACM) has been developed as a video game sequel to James Cameron’s Aliens movie, and takes place 17 weeks after the events of that film. Players fill the army-issued boots of Corporal Christopher Winter on a search and rescue mission to find Ellen Ripley and investigate what went wrong on the USS Sulaco.

Familiar environments featuring new xenomorph species

From the onset, ACM places you within an interactive version of its silver screen counterparts, thanks to the authentic sounds, look and feel of the movies, with Gearbox making good work of its full access to the movies’ sound recordings and set design.

When making your way through the eleven missions of the single player campaign, you need to  venture through the claustrophobic hallways of the seemingly abandoned USS Sulaco, and eventually end up on the xenomorph-infested planet, LV-426. Once there, you won’t find any respite from the xenomorph scourge at the ill-fated colony known as Hadley’s Hope, before exploring the Derelict spaceship most recently seen in Prometheus (review).

A great tie-in with the film is the chance to boost your weapons arsenal by picking up legendary weapons from the movies, which include Private Janette Vasquez’s smart gun and Corporal Dwayne Hicks’ shotgun.

A bloody end to the tale of interspecies romance gone bad.

You will need these in your battle against wave upon wave of xenomorph attacks. The monotony of these common battles are broken up by occasional firefights with Weyland-Yutani mercenaries as well as a few run-ins with some new species of xenomorph.

These rarer class of xeno include Spitters, who lack the aggression and armour of the common xeno foot soldiers but make up for that by being able to hurl a lethal dose of acids across great distances. This enables them to safely take-out sentry guns from far away, or simply give the nearest marine an unwanted acid bath.

Making a far more creepy debut are the blind Boilers, who are attracted to noise and barrel down on you on a suicidal run that ends in a rather nasty acid bath.

Even more frightening than either of these is the behemoth known as the Crusher, whose impenetrably thick hide and massive cargo-door busting head means you might as well have be using a water-pistol.