Aliens: Colonial Marines is to me the worst type of a game, its not bad enough that it becomes funny like Ride to Hell: Retribution, and its definitively not good enough to enjoy despite some of the bugs turning Aliens in to tap-dancing machines. Instead it resides in that dreaded middle-ground of mediocrity and boredom, where no sane person dare ever tread.

There is some hope for Aliens: Colonial Marines, however, as it appears that a modder by the name of TemplarGFX has done what Gearbox could not: make the game both challenging and actually...fun!

You can read about all of the numerous changes on the ACM Overhaul mod page, but here's the short version:

• Aliens have become far more aggressive and will no longer practice their dance moves while you blast them to smithereens. What they will do is flank, seek cover if under fire, dash across walls in order to surprise you, and in general do all of the things we've come to love about the Aliens. In order to compensate for this increased deadliness their maximum HP has been reduced, though you will need to aim for the head in order to bring them down, a task that shouldn't be too hard given that they are 80% head.

• Different alien types have been further specialized and will now hopefully be an actual threat rather than a slightly different looking splatter on the wall

• Enemy armor now serves its purpose and is capable of blocking large amounts of damage. On the other hand, the human fleshy bits have been rendered far more vulnerable, so if you can hit your enemies in their unarmored parts you will be able to bring them down quickly. In other words, no more bullet sponges!

• There has been a widespread weapon re-balance with the end goal of making every single weapon a valuable option in certain situations. The Pulse Rifle from the original Aliens has been added.

• There have also been numerous graphical improvements, the most important of which are the ones made to the lighting engine which should now provide a much more scary and immersive environment to shoot things in.

I haven't tried it out personally, but the initial reviews on the ModDB page are all rather positive, so this might genuinely be a second chance for a game that has long since been abandoned and forgotten. Hooray for modding!