Aliens: Colonial Marines

17 weeks after the events in Cameron's film, you and your unit arrives at the Sulaco. Something has gone very wrong, and it's up to you to find out what, and take care of it. You'll face countless PMCs, some Aliens, and more than a few head-scratching retcons in this fan-fic of a story. Weyland-Yutani keeps trying desperately to tame the universe's most drooling killing machine. The villain himself is straight out of a Saturday morning cartoon.

It's important to note that this is no longer broken. Well, other than the occasional hiccup. They patched the crap out of this thing, and fixed almost everything. That they could, that is. Some issues remain and mar the experience greatly. Plot, characters, dialog, writing and execution(do *not* get me started on the acting and lip sync) alike are definitely lacking. And yet, there are definite glimmers of talent. You do sometimes care. The types can be annoying, yet feel like they belong here. And the banter almost all works. Even if it has a tendency to go one line too far, ending on a sitcom punchline. All it's missing is a "wah-wah", or possibly a "that's our (blank)!" This adds a *lot* of customization and compelling new abilities for both species. The numerous guns, while too similar and limited especially for sci-fi, can be changed in a good amount of ways. Silencer, a handful of alternate fire options, stat changes galore. Strong, unique Legendary weapons add replayability. For what they can deliver, and recognizing the markings. Hudson, Vasquez, Different types of Xenos, they're given ranged attacks, tons of improvements on what was there before, etc. The real issue is that you can't practice this at your own pace. You have to improve, and even just learn, via multiplayer. And you will get slaughtered early on. That's when you can even find a match. No players, no server list, limited matchmaking, and I could go on. In two weeks, I barely spent any time in any of the too-similar modes. I hate to direct anyone to 2010's AvP, but that one you can play anytime, gets creative in how you approach it, and lets you try it at your own pace in SP.

The AI is hilariously inept. Maybe that's why your offline buddies are impossible to kill. They will run right into your line of fire, leave you to die, teleport to you if you get ahead, and more. Enemies might freeze in place, or just randomly run around. Their use of wall-walking seems more like they're showing off than their having a reason for doing so. The lack of enemy variety in these is lessened, though the Crusher, a huge one that's not that different from the Queen, is pointless. One spits acid at you, with nice speed and accuracy. Another will kamikaze, exploding in their blood. Thankfully, they can't see you. Which means you have to crouch-walk past them. Or stand perfectly still when they're completely next to you! Did I mention you were weaponless in this section? And that they look like fossilized husks until they start walking, surrounded by actual ones, so you won't know which is which until they start moving? The DLC are a mixed bag. I wouldn't get any of this if it's not on sale. The obvious ones to leave alone, for now, are the ones that consist entirely of MP maps. You can't play them by yourself. And without them, there are 10 to start with, a reasonable amount. They add up to 20 total. Ripley's signature bad-ass rescue facilitator is worth the asking price. Note that anyone you can don the look of are all slightly "off" in the face. There are enough shotguns without the one you can buy separately, and they don't lack ammo, reload speed and the possibility of alteration. Bug Hunt is rarely played. The two energy attacks are worthless. The S.H.A.R.P. Sticks mix things up and are the most interesting part of your arsenal in this whole thing.

Stasis Interrupted deserves detail. You play as a few different protagonists, you really get into it, it clocks in at 2 and a half hours meaning almost half the core product. The plentiful time spent alongside, unfortunately never as, Hicks is sadly somewhat soured by Michael Biehn clearly not wanting to be there. Even if you hadn't heard about that interview, it's plain to see in his performance. And I say that as one of his biggest fans. Compare to Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon where he, as he also says, was having the time of his life.

Authenticity is through the roof. Everything looks, sounds and feels right. All memorable locations are not only visited, they're recreated in tremendous detail and every added section fits in so well, you'd swear you just didn't remember seeing that part in the films. The motion tracker finally works exactly right. You have all the equipment you see used. For some reason, you can carry every projectile delivery system, and even start out with a number of them from the beginning. Of course, you may not realize until after a while, and by accident, like it was for me. It's not common today to carry that many at once. And you can't cycle through them with any key. Oh, you can go back and forth between primary, secondary and which of the three pistols you have ready. As worthless as that is in the face of so much firepower that you basically cannot run out of ammo, no matter how inept you may be. You're stuck with the slow wheel which keeps you from moving, doesn't pause or even allow for it, selects whatever you were resting the cursor on even if you were just checking what had the most bullets left.

I recommend this only to the biggest fans of the franchise, and don't go out of your way to get your hands on a copy. 5/10

Here's my original review, written a few years ago, when the game had several game-breaking bugs. The worst of those being, the game was literally impossible to save, or even to exit from without the three finger salute and rebooting the computer:

"Truly awful controls, plus the absolute worst save-game system ever devised...and by that I mean, it doesn't. Save that is. Everything's copascetic when you start playing fdor a while, until you go to quit game and find out, you can't. No, you can't quit the game, because it won't let you. I'm not kidding. It's impossible to do a normal save and quit, or even to just quit, you have to restart your computer to stop playing. If you can find a work-around for that, you might have fun playing this game - I searched seemingly everywhere, couldn't find any mod or code that would allow me to quit and just gave up..."

I finally tried playing this game again, and was amazed to find it actually worked how it was supposed to. Saving the game and exiting were now working as they should have been from the get-go and you could actually play the game. Unfortunately, for me at least, it's too little too late - the graphics are archaic and have not aged well (as they have for other classic games I often replay, like Tomb Raider 3/Last Revelation/Chronicles, Half-life, or Max Payne) and the game play is just average. But if you want to give this obsolete game a try it's ok to do that now.

I need to make it clear that before going into reviewing "Aliens: Colonial Marines," that James Cameron's "Aliens" (1986), the superior, action-packed sequel to Ridley Scott's infamous, landmark 1979 deep-space horror/sci-fi flick "Alien," is one of my all-time personal favorite movies.

"Aliens" is my fifth favorite movie of all time; I grew up with this movie, and I personally consider it to be far better in every conceivable way and fashion, than "Alien" (though I must also readily admit my great fondness for Scott's original masterpiece).

So you can imagine my surprise when news finally came out that a video game billing itself as a genuine sequel to Cameron's "Aliens" was in development. Unlike most people who have relentlessly trashed "Aliens: Colonial Marines" since its February 2013 release, I feel that I'm somewhere in the middle. I at least thought it looked nice, and it was good to see some sort of continuation - however sloppy - to "Aliens." The story to "Aliens: Colonial Marines" basically details a war between the United States Colonial Marines and the Weyland-Yutani Corporation's private army of heavily armed hired mercenaries, who are illegally breeding the hideous Xenomorph creatures using captured Marines and innocent space colonists as hosts.

It all sounds exciting, doesn't it? But it does have many issues...

The game itself has an incredibly clumsy story - which I already detailed briefly - that thoroughly contradicts established events from the film, and game-play that's pretty typical of any high-tech first-person shooter in recent years, since it was stated fairly early on by the developers that the game would feature squad-based game-play (we all thought it was going to be a war game in outer space, like the movie), and would feature the return of genuine flesh & blood performers from Cameron's 1986 action epic reprising their original roles from the film - Michael Biehn (Corporal Hicks) and Lance Henriksen (Bishop); if you could get the additional DLC packs, additional actors from the film - Al Matthews (Sergeant Apone), Mark Rolston (Private Drake), and (?) Bill Paxton (Private Hudson) (?) - would also be reprising their roles.

In terms of basic first-person shooter game-play, "Aliens: Colonial Marines" does feature some of the iconic weaponry from the movie, as well as familiar locales on-board the Colonial Marine space vessel the USS Sulaco, and the ruins of the space colony Hadley's Hope on the desolate planetoid LV-426 (and there's even a sequence in the middle of the game featuring the Derelict Spacecraft from "Alien" and featured briefly in a restored scene from the extended director's cut of "Aliens"). The game does not, however, recreate the claustrophobic tension and terror of Cameron's film (much less feature any of the landmark score composed for the film by James Horner), and most of the game's confrontations feature you gunning down hordes and hordes of approaching Xenomorphs (though you'll have your AI comrades and maybe a robot sentry or two to aid you - somewhat). There are little tasks you have to complete here & there to advance the story, but much of everything in "Aliens: Colonial Marines" consists of the player shooting aliens.

Some of the gun battles where you encounter the alien creatures can be frustrating - and even overwhelming (but not in a particularly good way) - at times, which is about the only authentic thing about them that even comes close to Cameron's "Aliens." Other than that, it's a pretty straight-forward first-person shooter that initially billed itself as the future of the "Alien" franchise in the video game world (which is ironic considering the possibility that "Aliens" has arguably had the single greatest influence on the overall development of the first-person shooter genre).

Despite the clunky story, there are a bunch of little tidbits that reference Cameron's film, which shows that the game developers may have spent too much time watching the movie rather than understanding it and trying to recreate the action and suspense it delivered.

"Aliens" will always rate as one of my all-time greatest movies, and one of the scariest, and most action-packed, sci-fi films ever made. The game that aimed to expand its story and legacy - "Aliens: Colonial Marines" - is not so much. It's a big disappointment, albeit an enjoyable disappointment. I got my kicks out of playing this game, mostly by enjoying the numerous references to "Aliens" (which include having to collect dog-tags of the Colonial Marine characters, among other little items, from the film), which took me back to the moments where it all started.

It's all too bad, really, because this could have been an EPIC, EPIC game-changer...

7/10

The first thing you will notice is the absolutely dated textures, some fancy new design would have been nice as well but they have paid some attention to detail. Admittedly the game does look rather bland in 2D but crank up the 3D eyewear and it looks quite good. Its rather surprising that this game has garnered so many negs as it really isn't all that bad. There are some quite tense moments where you are just waiting for a face-hugger to suck your face off but all in all It looks as though they threw something together just to cash in. Actually playing the game isn't all that bad. Other game manufacturers go all the way and pay so much attention to detail but not so this crowd. For instance a lot of the time you are shooting at an Alien and your team mate gets in the way - other games you would be severely admonished "Hey stop shooting at me"! but this one your team mates don't mind. (so much for reality) NVidia rate this game as average in the 3D rating but I found it virtually unplayable until I downloaded the Helix fix. If you want to play in 3D it is recommended that you apply this fix. You need to be slightly higher than a casual PC user in expertise to be able to extract the fix to the proper directory but it is well worth doing as before the fix, lights from other marines helmets were on the wrong plane and torchlights were in 2D - the whole thing looked messed up. Do a web search for Helix 3d fix etc, its only a tiny 33KB download. Why cant you simply install a game on Steam without having to perform an hour of updates? That is so annoying especially if you only play the single player campaign. The majority of the updates are probably multiplayer fixes. Don't be put off by the negative reviews, its worth a look just buy it when the price has gone down to $20.00 or so, maybe get it from a bargain basement seller! If 6.5 out of ten were there that would be my rating maybe even 7!

Beneath this games bad story and AI, mediocre gameplay and graphics plus the worst final boss ever is a neat little game.

The setting and tone of this game is often near perfect, yes it's horror underdelivers aside from the first mission but you truly feel like you are in there fighting aliens, it has amazing collectibles, great multiplayer (not anymore cause uhm no-one plays this game), weirdly enough extra DLC and fantastic customization plus fun new Aliens.

If for whatever reason you find yourself interested in this game or are just a massive fan of the Aliens franchise check it out and you might get surprised.