The stranded squad of space marines makes hasty preparations amid the flickering lights of a ruined former colony's command center. A scrounged sentry turret sits idle in a corner of the room, slowly scanning for signs of non-human life. Raging storms outside mask the sounds of creatures scuttling through air ducts, but the ever-present rhythmic beeping of motion trackers fill the air with ferocious frequency as the alien menace approaches.

Murky shapes take form as they leap into the light, slick, inky-black creatures with pronounced ridges lining their bodies. A shotgun burst drops the first attacker in an instant, its inert body slumping to the floor as a burst of acid blood sprays over a nearby squaddie.

Gearbox Software is a studio of many talents, but the developer's biggest success on Aliens: Colonial Marines may well end up being how accurately it's managed to nail the feel of the famous sci-fi series. This is vital, as anyone who has seen the movies can understand. There's nothing in the science fiction genre quite like the franchise's Xenomorphs, a race of highly aggressive and agile beings with acid for blood and the ability to reproduce through something akin to a cross-species infection. Xenomorphs in Aliens: Colonial Marines slide through the environment with the same sort of ease that they do in the movies, as we learned during a recent hands-on demo of the game's campaign. An unseen network of air ducts connects every room and corridor, so any alien that slips out of sight will eventually emerge elsewhere. Probably behind you.