Here's a bit of an overview of what the book is about and how useful it is for gaming purposes.
Summary: A 160 page overview of the organisation of the Colonial Marines, presented in black and white with some colour plates, and a colour soft card cover. Written in 1995 by Lee Brimblecombe-Wood, and published in the UK by Boxtree Ltd, London.
The text is generally clear and not too difficult to follow (coherent). The chapters are interspersed with exerpts from comments by marines about some topic or other relevant to the chapter. There is no index, and the last page lists all the acknowledgements. Illustrations take up at a guess 15% of the page space, and are generally appropriate to the subject. Some are movie stills, some are particular to this book. There is a little padding through the text. While the text describes equipment (such as a tank) there is not alot of sideways information - I mean such as tank variants, large tanks, small tanks, 2 man,4 man, drop ship capable, amphibious, etc. Much of this information is collated from data supplements from the Dark Horse comics. Some of it is wildly wrong when compared to the movie. For example the layouts of LV-426 bear no resemblance to the movie in layout. I noted a few other inconsistencies.
Yielding a broad outline of how the corps is organised and fielded, including badges
Yielding a detailed break down of the rifle platoon, with marine re enactors done up in uniform for examples. There are details of the rifles and ammunition, heavier infantry weapons and armour, and their tactical use. The re enactor photos and some uniform details are reproduced in colour, while many of the diagrams are simply b&w line drawings. The chapter closes out with a rather long several page speech by a former marine.
Yielding technical diagrams and cut away of the dropship, dimensions, tactical use, pilot and pilot equipment details, painting schemes, armament details, sketches and movie stills.
Yielding technical details of the APC, with several colour photos, technical layout, dimensions (but no internal layout - a big loss) plus some variant details. There is also some details of tanks on 3 pages, before it breaks into heavy infantry support weapons, such as RPG, plasma gun, missile launchers and air defence systems. There is also a brief section on artillery, sentry guns and mines.
Detailing synthetics, marine logistics, power loaders (no variants), atmospheric combat, command and control, intel, recon, motion trackers, plus nuke-bio-chem weapons.
Details the Sulacco with sketches and cut-away, plus details of it's components, such as life support, escape pods, power, etc. There is abit about space battle (ship) tactics and systems.
This chapter is presented as a lot of conversation between marines about the impacts of the 'Aliens' movie story line as though it were a briefing and being watched live. There is also some detail on the shuttle Narcissus, the explorer tractor, and atmosphere processors.
This document is an OVERVIEW of the Aliens universe dealing mostly with the marines. It does not cover regular forces, police, civilians or anything else.
I was very excited to get this book, and also disappointed that its level of detail was so very simple, or at least restricted almost entirely to what appeared in the movies (except tanks/artillery). Information was targeted to what you saw in the movie and no real discussion was given to variants for special purposes or use against specific targets. I guess as this book is targeted directly at Aliens, this is only the second encounter, so I concede there shouldn't be much tactical info about fighting Aliens, but still I would have liked to see some. No internal detail of the APC was a glaring mistake for me. The level of details on some items, such as the sentry guns, was limited to a couple paragraphs. Enough to get you by, but could have been more detailed.
If you're making your own skirmish level rules, there is enough here to see you through. Platoon details, tactics, weapon stats, common support weapon details, etc are presented to recreate the Aliens movie in all its phases. The photos of re enactors is good and really helpful to see the equipment clearly, and a real treat for sculptors who need some direction.
As your only chance to get the technical specs for weapons and vehicles, it's a great thing for scratch builders who need a clear layout for the APC/Dropship. There is some info on Aliens, but not alot. There is speculation on their life cycle, acid blood, etc, but nothing fixed.
If I had paid full market price (2nd hand over US$100 on Amazon), I would have felt let down. At the price I got it, it was a fair deal for a very out of print book on an obscure subject. Detail is fairly good, not quite Osprey level, but teaser level to make you want to fill in the gaps.