Aliens: Colonial Marines

[Grim.Reaper]

Thought the articles I read said it was the supposed sequel to the alien movies....

[Gusington]

My bad, I read the IGN review wrong:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/02/12/aliens-colonial-marines-pc-review

The game comes in between Aliens and Alien 3.

Which makes the above point on the nuclear blast, etc., even more f'd up.

[mirth]

Well the premise is weak at best. They could have easily done an original story. Not that it would have necessarily made for a better game.

[Jarhead0331]

Despite withering criticism, I broke down and took the plunge.  God damn it to hell.

[Grim.Reaper]

Despite withering criticism, I broke down and took the plunge.  God damn it to hell.

Good luck:)

[mirth]

Despite withering criticism, I broke down and took the plunge.  God damn it to hell.

Good luck:)

Yeah, please let us know.

[Gusington]

Godspeed JH.

[Jarhead0331]

Its exactly like I suspected.  Its COD in an Aliens skin. I really do not know why its getting massacred in the media.  It is not THAT bad, and because I'm a huge Aliens fan, I'm quite enjoying it.  The graphics are definitely not as good as they could have been, but overall they are immersive and pleasing.  I'm running in 1920x1080 and it purrs like a kitten.  The game runs great so far and I haven't had any of the bugs or glitches that have been widely reported.  Some of the graphical effects are, however, underwhelming, most notably, the grenade launcher...the explosion is admittedly week, and the blast doesn't seem to do too much damage. But the skins are right on.  The Marines look great, the environments look good, even with rough textures, and so far the warrior aliens are not laughable. They look like...warrior aliens.

I just played for an hour and have the urge to continue the story.  I'm not finding the voice acting that atrocious, in fact, I'm finding some of the dialogue lines to be slightly misquoted in reviews.  In the actual game, it is not as corny or unintelligible.  Some of the weapons are really cool and they all look very good...the shotgun is very fun to use but it is a little overpowered. I'm not finding the AI to be so terrible.  The Aliens move quickly, jump at you, climb on walls and attack from different angles.  At times, I've even seen them hide or appear to take cover.  I mean really, what to the commercial reviewers expect them to do?  Light up cigarettes and make mai tais? The first mission is definitely on rails, and a lot of people will not like this.  But this is absolutely no different from a COD game, and it is extremely unfair to take points way from Aliens for using this convention, when it is rewarded in games made by Treyarch.

Notwithstanding the above, I'm not going to recommend this game.  It remains to be seen whether it is worth full price.  If it was $29.99, I'd say to go for it.  I will close by saying that COD games barely hold my interest.  I haven't enjoyed them since the first modern warfare.  Since then, I feel like the games have continued to slide down a gimmicky slippery slope.  So far, I'm enjoying Aliens and I want to keep on playing. I think you will feel the same way if you're as big of an Aliens fan as I am, and generally enjoy FPS games and can deal with the ones that are heavy on action and light on realism.

[spelk]

I tried multiplayer last night and was pleasantly surprised. It does a decent job of creating tension and teamplay, and playing a stalking Alien really is as good as it implies. I  think the Alien control mechanic is better than the one in Aliens vs Predator. Latching onto a wall requires a physical action from you (pulling the left trigger) so dropping off a wall to suddenly leap into a marines path is very satisfying. I only played the Team Deathmatch, and it sort of comes across as Left 4 Dead coupled with something like Natural Selection.

Also I played the campaign co-op, and what little I played (over again) felt better the second time around with another person in tow. I think they must scale the enemies you face if you're in co-op, because I actually got to a point where I died - whereas in the single player campaign, I was 3 chapters in and I hadn't died once.

I've seen a lot of the press reviews and the slatings its getting, and I don't think it deserves that much of a pasting. It's nothing new, but it's not a total flop, for me anyway. I don't like these rumours of it being out-sourced so that it's lack of quality (allegedly) isn't wholly Gearbox's responsibility, and they're pointing the finger clearly at Timegate Studio's involvement (a studio I think is under-appreciated for its titles such as Kohan and Section 8 ). From what I've gathered Gearbox was involved at every stage of the game. Single player and Multi-player.

Anyway, as a space marine shooting aliens fan, I'm honour bound to purchase Aliens titles like this, but after some enjoyable and tense multiplayer, along with some blossoming co-op play, I'm glad I stumped up for this title now. I think the press backlash is mainly because it didn't deliver buckets of innovative and new.

[Grim.Reaper]

Glad to hear you guys are having a decent time with it and not a complete waste like the reviewers have stated.  I am guessing the reviewers had lofty expectations from the start and reviewed it based on that versus what it turned out to be.

[Gusington]

Thanks JH and spelk. I will pick it up when it goes on sale.

[JasonPratt]

^The game is a prequel to the Aliens movie.

No, it's supposed to be a sequel.  You're supposed to be the rescue team that shows up 17 days after Hick's distress call went out.  Remember from the film?  "Seventeen days?!  We ain't gonna last 17 hours!"

I guess they're assuming that the main reactor got taken out in the blast but that the main colony survived the blast.  The blueprints in the film showed that the reactor was separated from the rest of the colony.

The retard alien in the gif I posted earlier is supposed to be one of the ones that got hit with radiation from the blast.

It makes somewhat more sense insofar as the action takes place on the Sulaco, the Marine ship that took the platoon to LV-426. It was a reasonably large ship, and wasn't damaged by anything in the least aside from some relatively light scuffling in the hangar bay. Presumably the plot is intended to explain how things got so screwed up on board the Sulaco before Aliens3, and that's why 20th Century Fox is promoting it as a canonical intraquel.

Once they go down to the cloud of vapor the size of Nebraska, I'd think it makes much less sense. ;)

[JasonPratt]

I had wondered if Yahtzee from Zero Punctuation would do ColMari this week, but I guess it was released a little too quickly.

Instead, please accept this video of a glitch from the game I found in the comments of the RPS article. (I don't want to spoil it--let's just say the Xenos are happy the game was finally released.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J8SzBhjqaQ

[Arctic Blast]

Glad to hear you guys are having a decent time with it and not a complete waste like the reviewers have stated.  I am guessing the reviewers had lofty expectations from the start and reviewed it based on that versus what it turned out to be.

I can't entirely blame them for that. This thing has been in development for five years (during which the developers have been hyping it up every chance they get), and the end result looks pretty meh.

[Nefaro]

Sounds like multi-player is where the value may be.

But that's how it is for all first-person shooters IMO.