Aliens: Colonial Marines - Review

Reviewed: PC Version

Aliens Colonial Marines is a first person shooter set in the Aliens universe. A direct sequel to the 1986 James Cameron action/horror film, the game has been pending production since 2001, and in development at Gearbox since 2008. Expectations for this title are earth shatteringly huge, and this is the typical setup for disappointment.


Colonial Marines picks up seventeen weeks after the familiar events on LV-426 (Aliens), in which the squad of marines (Hicks, Hudson, Vasquez, Bishop etc.) fought off the Alien onslaught in James Cameron's wildly successful genre sequel. While it strayed from its horror roots and made a radical turn into all out carnage action/thriller (due partly to Cameron's recently massacred Rambo II script), Aliens managed to maintain some of the suspense of the original movie, while also developing the character of Ripley into a more three-dimensional action heroine. She adopts colony survivor 'Newt' into her care, and shows that when she really wants to be, she's tougher than the most battle-hardened marines.
But Colonial Marines also directly follows the events of the controversial Alien 3, in which Ripley battles a lone Alien on prison planet Fury 161. In that film, she eventually sacrifices herself to prevent the Weyland Yutani Corporation getting hold of the Alien Queen larvae she carries, thus safeguarding the future of humanity. Or so we thought.
The Weyland Yutani mercenaries (referred to as 'WeyYu' in the game) who attempted to capture Ripley at the conclusion of Alien 3 have commandeered the idle vessel Sulaco in orbit over that planet, and piloted it back to the colony world of LV-426 to investigate the source of the Alien infestation. As before, their intentions are questionable at best, and when you step into the fray, the company mercs represent a substantial opposing force. The Sulaco is also carrying a deadly cargo of Aliens, and as for how they got there, your guess is as good as mine. Perhaps the miraculous materialising Alien egg from the prologue of Alien 3 spawned multiple facehuggers? Or something to do with the vaguely explained interferences of 'WeyYu?'

You play Winter, part of a marine task force sent to investigate the loss of contact with the marine squad that visited the planetoid in the movie. Aliens fans will remember the scene. When asked how long it will take until a rescue party arrives, Hicks replies "Seventeen days." The hysterical Private Hudson (Bill Paxton) shouts, "Seventeen days? Hey man, I don't wana rain on your parade, but we're not gona last seventeen hours." Curiously, the marine force in the game arrives seventeen weeks later, but we'll just have to assume they were late?

The game starts with your marine transport ship, the Sephora, docking with Ripley's former vessel, the Sulaco. A team has already gone across and been massacred, and now it's your turn to investigate. As you step into the dark hallways (designed by Syd Mead, concept artist for the original movie) you'll recognise dozens of tiny details from the film. Bishop's lower half strewn on the deck where it was left after the Alien Queen attack. The dropship Ripley, Hicks and Newt used to escape the exploding atmosphere processor. Lockers with the names of all the marines from the movie. It's an obsessive level of detail and it doesn't get any less impressive as the game progresses. This is definitely the most impressive aspect of the game - attention to detail and authenticity. As I stepped onto the decks of the Sulaco, and later into the corridors of Hadley's Hope (it wasn't destroyed completely by the atmosphere processor blast, apparently because it's a facility designed to withstand severe atmospheric conditions) I was bowled over with nostalgia. It was like I'd stepped into the world first glimpsed in 1986, and despite the howling wind and flickering lights on the surface of LV-426, I felt right at home.

The gameplay mechanics themselves are nothing revolutionary, but then they're hardly disgraceful either. If you've played Gearbox's Brothers In Arms or Borderlands series, you'll know what to expect - simple yet effective. The handling of the character is slightly heavier than the twitchy Call of Duty for example, but then you are playing a fully geared out Colonial Marine. This is exactly what I was expecting.

Weapons are impressive, if a little underpowered. The classic M41A pulse rifle is here, with its familiar howling muzzle sound and digital ammo counter. The smartgun is as badass to use as you would expect, but perhaps there's not quite enough of it in the game. The sound design for the weapons is right on the money, and blasting away at Aliens with these iconic weapons will never get old. Some of the action set pieces can get a bit frantic, with pulse rifles and smartguns, sentry turrets and flame units all spitting out at once. Great fun.

The motion tracker can be pulled up into view, substituting any kind of in game minimap and pinpointing sources of movement on its radar style display screen. You can't use a primary weapon at the same time as the tracker, which is in keeping with how the tracker is applied in a squad formation in the movie. The familiar blip of the tracker is enough on its own to create a sense of unease, but perhaps I'm just easily disturbed. With the warning lights throwing out orange beams in the dark, the shadows shifting and the motion tracker pinging away, I'd hardly say this game lacks atmosphere. The game isn't terrifying (atleast not as terrifying as Monolith's AVP2 marine campaign was back in 2001), but it certainly had me on edge for the majority of the time.

Most of the Aliens you'll go up against will be 'warrior' class (the attacking Alien drones seen in James Cameron's Aliens), but you'll encounter many others. The smooth domed 'stalker' represents the Alien as seen in Ridley Scott's 1979 film, and it moves terrifyingly fast and makes a point of popping out beside you when you least expect it. I like the fact that the stalker uses a more tactical approach and is positively lethal at close range, and the warrior runs at you head on, representing the behaviour of both Xenomorphs in their respective films well. There is also the 'boiler', a mutated variant of the warrior class which has spent too much time in the sewer system of Hadley's Hope and deformed into a kamikaze exploding mess. When you first encounter these, you'll be unarmed and have to move stealthily throughout the sewer system, being cautious not to alert them by sound. It's an incredibly tense segment. You'll also encounter the 'spitter,' the Queen and a few others.

Graphically, Colonial Marines may not be as cutting edge as the competition, and it may be a visual downgrade from the first demo playthrough we saw in 2012, but it certainly isn't as awful looking as others have stated. But then, I am running it at 1080p resolution and max FSAA - two features the consoles definitely lack - so I'm seeing the highest end interpretation of the game. I suppose, if i had to turn the settings down to accommodate for this, I might be a bit disappointed with the texture quality in particular. If Gearbox would be so kind as to release a HD texture pack for PC, I would withdraw this complaint entirely. In an ideal world, they'd upgrade to DirectX 11 and deliver the game we saw in the preview via patches, and if Gearbox are wanting to maintain a healthy reputation with gamers, they'll do just that..
To be fair, on PC it looks on par with Gearbox's Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway, (Borderlands isn't a good comparison since its cell shaded) so if you were happy with the visuals on that game, nothing in Colonial Marines should be too surprising, or disappointing. Infact the lighting mechanic is pretty good if you ask me, creating shadows in worrying places and painting textures of light across the environment. It's just doesn't look as good as what we were promised last year, and doesn't quite pack the visual punch of other AAA titles. The console version looks substantially worse, I'm told, so pick it up on PC if it's in any way an option.

The bugs (glitches, not the Aliens) are a notable drawback at the moment. Being shot by enemies you can't even see, Aliens stabbing you with their tails through the floor, teammates walking through each other, AI behaving questionably and peculiar animation glitches. It feels like the last chunk of beta game development was rushed, despite this title having been at Gearbox for 7 years. But with Gearbox having announced a season pass, it's clear they'll be supporting Aliens for some considerable time (if they decide to maintain the game after that deluge of negative reviews), so it's extremely likely this game will be heavily patched. Infact, a bugfix was released last night for all platforms. They're on it, relax people.

The campaign itself is moderately short, with other gamers claiming to have beaten in within 5 hours. Perhaps my experience was slightly extended due to having jumped right in at Ultimate Badass difficulty level - no HUD, tougher enemies - but it certainly seems lengthy enough. Again, I refer back to an initial point. The expectations for this game have varied wildly. Essentially, what you get is a Left 4 Dead experience, with a short campaign segmented into sections that are playable either solo or as 4 player dropin/dropout co-op. Replayability with this title depends on repeat experiences with friends and other online gamers. The substantial multiplayer mode (the survival mode is also vaguely similar in nature to Left 4 Dead) is also worth the money, with a rich customisation system considering the usual limitations of movie tie-in licences and potential for hours of co-op/competitive fun. It won't have the staying power of COD or Battlefield, but I'm sure once people give this game a chance it'll carve out its own little niche. More game modes are on the way also.

Essentially, it's quite a meat and potatoes shooter, with basic shooting mechanics, occasional quicktime event encounters and fairly linear objectives throughout. It fails to wow with anything innovative, but then everything works well when seen in context of the source material. My favourite Aliens related game up until this point was Monolith's Aliens vs. Predator 2, and while Aliens: Colonial Marines doesn't quite provide the scares of AVP2, it does succeed its predecessor in all other departments.

Aliens: Colonial Marines is a good game. It's not perfect, and there is definitely potential for a better game based around James Cameron's movie universe, but not by a huge margin. And even then, most of the release day problems with the title are bound to be rectified within a few weeks of launch.
Yes, it further demystifies the Aliens and turns them into cannon fodder, but just about every Aliens game ever made has done that. That's the dilemma of placing Aliens in an action game - you have to be able to shoot lots of them, or the game stops being fun. If you're looking for the Dead Space version of Aliens though, I'm afraid this is not it.
Also the narrative can be a bit frustrating, if unavoidably so. Ripley sacrifices herself in Alien 3 to save humanity from the Alien menace, and then we jump into Colonial Marines - the next event in the Alien chronology - to find hundreds of the things running around, and the derelict spacecraft full of Alien eggs on LV-426 intact, despite a 40 megaton explosion in its vicinity. It makes Ripley's sacrifice feel just a bit redundant. Sure, less open minded gamers might perceive certain manipulations of the established 'facts' as damaging to the franchise and unforgivable, but I have to argue it's not nearly as damaging as the mysterious materialising egg in Alien 3, or the subsequent death of Hicks and Newt in the opening act. If anything, Colonial Marines is trying to repair some of the damage made by that much maligned storytelling choice, even if it's not entirely successful at pulling it off convincingly. Perhaps we just have to accept that everything written in the Alien universe since 1990 feels terribly contrived?

A quick Google search will yield dozens of reviews stating how the game is 'worse than Alien 3,' or how it's unplayably bad. Some have demanded refunds, and poured their hearts out into forums about how awful it is. A common complaint is that it looks and plays like a game from the early 2000s, and that it's painfully similar to Gearbox's failed attempt to revive Duke Nukem. Seriously people, is it really that bad? I played Duke Nukem Forever and found it to be utterly horrendous, but Aliens: Colonial Marines is in a different league entirely. It may not be in the AAA multi-platinum selling Call of Duty league, but it certainly has it's charms.
The idea that we all received a sub-standard, DirectX 9 version of this game is frustrating and controversial, and most likely the main cause of the overwhelmingly negative criticism. After having rewatched the 2012 gameplay demo, it seems that at one point or another, Aliens: Colonial Marines was definitely running on DirectX 11, yet this isn't the version of the game we see today. If I were Gearbox, I'd concentrate on releasing a graphical update for game textures atleast, especially if they want to launch this game to the WiiU market soon. As for myself, if Gearbox aren't willing to, I'll be relying on the dedicated PC modding community to get A:CM up to 2013 visual standard.

For those who like Aliens, and like to play co-op action games, please give this game a go and try to form your own opinion of it. There are enjoyable experiences to be had here, if you can avoid being caught up in the barrage of negative publicity that's hit the web.

7/10