An underappreciated game with a solid story, good atmosphere, and so-so gameplay.
What I liked:
First & foremost, the story shines more than anything else with this game. At first it seems like it borrows so heavily from "Alien" that it's basically as un-original as it can be. But once you start working your way through the story, you find the lead character likably tough, and you run into a great cast of characters who will fight with you. And some won't make it to the end, the game isn't afraid of killing off your friends. The story and game overall is pretty lengthy, yet managed to keep me engaged the whole time. The game also has lots of autosaves, to keep you from grinding through the same areas over and over if you die.
The sound is another strong point. The sound effects, voice acting, and soundtrack courtesy of Breaking Benjamin are excellent. Not expecting to walk into a boss scene, then finding yourself trapped & surrounded as a BB song simultaneously starts playing is pretty cool and works to get you psyched up. The only sound related problem I had was that it was sometimes hard to hear dialogue over background noise, regardless of how I tweaked the audio options.
I don't agree with the complaints regarding graphics. The graphics were as good as any last-gen game. I played it in 480p and thought the graphics were fairly impressive. But regardless, this is a last gen game, so I doubt graphics are a deciding factor for most people if they're playing old games.
What I would change:
The gameplay, slightly. It's not horrible, but it's a little jerky. It almost feels like there's a delay from when you press the control stick and your character starts running. I found myself completely used to this after a little while, but it's still not as responsive as I would have liked.
The style of gameplay. This is an action game, with lots of shooting. But it feels like it wants to be something else. Which is why I wasn't suprised to read that this game was originally supposed to be a survival/horror set in space. Instead, they changed it halfway through, made the aliens easier but added many more of them. This makes it a little more repetitive and less strategic. It's not a bad action game by any means, but I think it would have been better as originally planned. The game should be called Shoot Like Hell, not Run Like Hell, because you rarely run from anything. There are also a couple QTE's (quick time events) thrown in where you have to press a button that pops up within a short time period. I'm not crazy about these to begin with, and the fact that one of them seemingly had absolutely no strategy other than guessing which button was right made it worse. Fortunately, these QTE's were limited to only 2 occasions throughout the game, so they're easy to overlook.
The game is easy. I didn't mind this too much myself, because I'd much rather have a game be too easy than punishingly difficult. And it wasn't completely un-challenging. But those looking for a serious challenge probably won't be satisfied. The main reason the game is easy is because most weapons have unlimited ammo, and if you're like me and you like to search around you'll find an ungodly amount of health pickups. I guess this is a reward for exploring, which is cool, but there are so many of them that I didn't feel much need to conserve them.
Bottom Line:
Sure, this game isn't perfect. But the flaws it has are, in my opinion, flaws that all but the best games have to some extent. It's ashame the game wasn't well received, because it was originally part of a trilogy, and there is now little hope the final 2 games will ever be made. But if you're looking for an action game, and you're willing to sacrifice a little gameplay for a good story, RLH won't disappoint.