8 Greatest Video Game Second Chances

Despite what Ash Millman will routinely tell me, Alien: Colonial Marines is a bad game, a very, very bad game.

From the "totally real I swear guys" vertical slice pre-release content that was an utter falsification of the endgame experience, to the utter horror show that was its development cycle, all the way down to the code that was just one change away from delivering much better enemy AI, Colonial Marines was the "Game Over, Man" moment for many fans of the franchise and it was going to take a LOT of work for the series to recover.

And say helloooo to Alien Isolation.

I cannot express how much the franchise NEEDED this game, as finally after years of languishing in the action horror genre, the needle was shifted back to pure survival horror tension. With an incredible art direction that emulated the original films, and a double-brained Xenomorph that would learn your location and hunt you down with terrifying precision, Isolation became the benchmark for others to be measured by.

This was the sorbet experience to a buffet of lukewarm gruel and finally pushed Aliens back into relevancy and our nightmares once more. Cheers for that.