By David Wharton | 8 years ago

The Aliens universe seems like a natural setting for video games, having influenced or been outright ripped off by countless games over the years. And while there have been several tie-in games over the years, we have yet to get the really stellar Aliens game fanboys and gals have been waiting for ever since we watched Ellen Ripley climb inside a power loader and lay the smack down on the alien queen back in 1986. That may finally change with Aliens: Colonial Marines, which is headed our way this February. In case the game hasn’t been on your radar, here’s a new story trailer to change that. Is this gonna be a stand-up fight or another bug hunt?

Aliens: Colonial Marines is more than just an excuse for xenomorph mayhem and macho banter loosely tied into the beloved cinematic universe. Instead, A:CM is a straight-up, in-canon sequel to James Cameron’s Aliens (although it takes place after the events of Alien 3), which follows a squad of the iconic soldiers tasked with investigating just what happened to the crew of the Sulaco on LV-426. The game makes use of the weapons, locations, and even the sound effects of the movies, meaning you’ll get to flip off the lights and feel your blood pressure spike as the unmistakable bleep of the Marines’ motion tracker registers xenomorphs coming closer…closer…that can’t be, that’s inside the room!

This trailer reveals a little bit more of the storyline, and it definitely has my interest. The fact that they find the Sulaco in orbit above LV-426 — as opposed to above Fiorina 161, where we last saw it in Alien 3 — suggests there will be more going on than just running a gauntlet of spiny, double-mouthed assholes with acid for blood. The gameplay will take players inside both the abandoned corridors of the Sulaco and the Giger-esque derelict Engineer vessel where this mess all started. The game’s storyline also has good pedigree: it was penned by Battlestar Galactica writers Bradley Thompson and David Weddle. And while it hasn’t been confirmed yet so far as I can tell, that sounds an awful lot like Michael Biehn himself during that Hicks segment…

While this past year put a lot of attention on the Aliens universe thanks to Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, I’m a lot more excited about this game than I ever was about the movie. That being said, the developers at Gearbox have said that they got to speak with Scott and read the Prometheus script while working on the game, so there could be some interesting surprises in store.

Aliens: Colonial Marines arrives on February 12, 2013 for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and WiiU.