With only a weekend between us and deployment, SEGA have blessed us with a new, fully pre-rendered trailer for the seminal Aliens Colonial Marines. Did I say blessed? I mean mercilessly hounded and tormented, cackling with gleeful abandon as they dangle it before our fingertips, kept just out of reach like the lovable sadists that they are.

There isn't, honestly, a great deal of new content, if any, given that it consists of pre-rendered footage and is blatantly nothing more than a last minute “hey, look what we made” publicity stunt. It’s not like they haven't whipped up enough of a furore already. But it does however, set an interesting tone, which other trailers and gameplay videos do seem to suggest will be borne out in the finished product.

The music is superb, rising to an inevitable crescendo, as we follow a trail of alien acid down through the various layers of the Sulaco, with each level being ever more hectic than the one above. Culminating in a confrontation with a queen in the loading bay, then falling out away from the ship, tumbling through the vacuum of space, as the promised crescendo fails to materialise. Instead fading into a melancholy funeral dirge as the last few drops of still sizzling ichor drift lazily away into the darkness. Impressive stuff.