Sentinel Reviews

I have some bad news for Aliens fans, today I am reviewing Aliens Colonial Marines.

 

Colonial Marines is a farce of a game. Almost nothing about the game went according to plan. Development was setback numerous times, technical issues meant that the game had to be severely downgraded from previous tech demos that were shown.

In fact there has been so much controversy surrounding the issue that Sega issued an apology for misleading advertising and Sega and Gearbox, the developers, are now being sued for false advertising.

 

The game that has hit our consoles is simply not the game that was presented at games conferences. This seems to be the main reason for the animosity towards this game.

For me though, it’s the complete lack of respect that Gearbox have shown for the Aliens franchise.

Graphically the game is shockingly bad. Textures are blocky in the extreme, animations look like they came from a PlayStation 2 title and the less said about the character design the better.

Level design is linear, you walk through corridor after corridor killing whatever moves and then moving on to the next.  All of the levels look the same, it takes the feel of Hadley’s hope and force feeds it to you until you can’t take any more.

 

Let me begin.  Aliens Colonial Marines was set to be a cannon sequel  to the film. You play as the backup force that was mentioned in the movie sent in to check up on what happened to Lieutenant Gorman’s squad.  Without spoiling the story, not that it’s that good too begin with, I can safely say that this game ruins the Aliens cannon.

 

Colonial Marines somehow manages to take the galaxy’s ultimate killing machine, the Xenomorph and turn them into fodder.  The AI is brainless simply making a dash for you as soon as you are in sight. The intelligent malevolence they had in the movie is gone. Instead we have generic cannon fodder that is less threatening than standing on an upturned plug.

 

To add insult to injury there’s a new enemy type. Humans. Yeah, faceless grunts that pop up from time to time presumably to add some diversity to the 6 hour campaign. Keeping in line with the rest of the game however these enemies show no awareness of their surroundings or any kind of tactics. They will either sit behind the same cover taking the odd shot or charging straight down the barrel of your pulse rifle.

You can play single player, which is best to be avoided, and cooperatively with up to 4 players online. The best way to play the game, if you feel you have to, is to play it with friends on the hardest difficulty, it’s the only way you might be challenged.

 

Most first person shooters nowadays take the same format when it comes to weapons, usually you can carry 2 weapons and in some cases have a pistol for backup. Not so in Aliens Colonial Marines, you have a backpack full of weaponry that you can change to at any time. I found that because I never had to make a choice about what weapon I wanted to take with me, pulse rifle for multiple enemies or my flamethrower to get rid of those pesky eggs that I never really felt like I was in danger.  I almost never ran out of ammo and if I did I could simply change to one of the 3 shotguns I carried, “for close encounters”. This ruined the threat that the Xenomorphs should have presented.

 

Dotted throughout the levels you can find “legendary Weapons”, these tend to be slightly improved versions of other guns, you can find Hick’s shotgun, Hudson’s pulse rifle, Gorman’s pistol and Ripley’s pulse rife/flamer combo. These weapons are slightly better than their counterparts early on in the game but as you upgrade you weapons by completing challenges they quickly become redundant.

There are half hearted boss battles, one that includes a power loader, don’t get excited, it’s awful. The ending of the game sees you trying to blow a queen out of an airlock. While that sounds like an appropriate end to an Alien game it feels clunky and awkward.

 

I never felt any connection to the characters, even by the end of the game I couldn’t bring myself to care if the characters made it out or not. I think this was down to poor writing more than anything else, the character design didn’t help either. The voice acting is mediocre. I felt that one of two things may have happened, either the writers tried too hard to recreate the tone of Hudson Apone and Vasquez or they simply didn’t try at all.  

 

I think I’m being fair when I say Aliens Colonial Marines is an awful game. The hype that surrounded it for so long simply magnifies its flaws.  This isn’t even a bargain bin game. Don’t put yourself through it. If you want the most lethal creature stalking you though LV426, just watch the movie.