Aliens Colonial Marines review
Since watching Ridley Scott’s ground breaking sci-fi horror Alien as a young boy (thanks dad!) H. R. Giger’s alien Xenomorph design has fascinated me. An alien that has acid for blood and a truly inspired, yet grotesque reproductive cycle captured my imagination from an early age. Then seven years later came James Cameron’s Aliens movie. Although contrasting in tone to the original, with it’s more action centric style, this was everything I could have hoped for in a sequel, more Xenomorph’s, a stack load of bad ass space marines and a lot more action. Like Alien before it Aliens wasn’t just any old blockbuster it even had characters you cared about and it’s a franchise I care about, I even have a soft spot for the giant alien turkey Alien Resurrection.
So is it another glorious day in the Marine Corps, has Gearbox got it right? After all the game has been touted as the true sequel to Cameron’s film. Am I going to need a frequent change of underwear and have a palpable sense of panic induced fear whilst checking my motion tracker, am I going to care about the characters? Well, yes and no.
You play the campaign as the tough Corporal Winter of the United States Colonial Marine Corps. Your ship the USS Sephora has been tasked with finding out how the USS Sulaco (the marine space ship from Aliens) has somehow reappeared over planet LV-426, having gone missing some 17 weeks before and last being sighted over planet Fury 161 (a nice nod to the prison planet from David Fincher’s Alien 3). Having woken from cryogen you soon find out that two squads of your fellow marines have boarded the Sulaco and have come under heavy attack from enemies unknown and you are sent to investigate what has happened to them. As the story progresses you not only battle Xenomorph’s but also mercenaries of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. Unsurprisingly the nefarious Wey-Yu Corp. has not kept its promise, after all who believed Burke when he told Ripley that they were only interested in destroying the Xeno’s and not studying them. Wey-Yu has set-up a research facility on LV-426 next to the crashed Space Jockey ship of the Alien film. As you fight through hordes of aliens and mercs alike you are joined by two NPC’s who fight alongside of you, Private O’Neal and Private Bella Clarison. Sound good? Unfortunately not, it’s a derivative continuation of the story and one that left me wanting more as not a lot is truly answered. My major problems with the story are the dialogue and the NPC’s.
Firstly why do developer’s continuously see fit to green light scripts for 18 certificate games that appear to be written for 12 year olds? I am also thinking of the recent sleep inducing Far Cry 3 script here. The dialogue in Aliens: Colonial Marines is cheesier than a Quattro Formaggi pizza and contains such gems as the banal ‘Oh shit! It’s blocked, it’s really blocked!’ and ‘Where do these stairs go?’ replied with ‘How would any of us know that!’ to the ludicrous ‘Well I’ll be a kangaroo’s asshole!’ Maybe, by the 22nd century, that has become a popular expression of exclamation. Secondly you never really feel or care about your fellow marines O’Neal and Bella. In the film Aliens there were great characters, the iconic film heroine Ripley, the cool Hicks, the tough Vasquez, the stiff Gorman and the arsehole Hudson. I loved these characters. I cared about their lives and deaths, I still get choked up when I see Gorman and Vasquez’s final scene even after seeing it many, many times and who cannot come to love Hudson and likewise feel emotional when he finally meets his maker. Instead we have the very two dimensional cookie cutter marines Bella and O’Neal. Bella is the tough and sassy Latino marine, who cannot hold a candle to the hardcore Vasquez of the Aliens film a character the developers are so obviously trying to emulate. I also found weirdly that there is not enough NPC banter. Sure, they have lines during the cut-scenes, but it would have been nice to have them shouting some encouragement during the many fire fights, maybe a ‘I am reloading’ or ‘Here they come!’ (I know a little clichéd!) But instead they are strangely mute throughout the action portions of the game and this only added to my lack of compassion for them. You even find out that one of them has been impregnated by a face hugger and is going to have a possible unpleasant ending, but I really could not have cared less. Reading this you might think that I am after a hug hunt, rather than a bug hunt, but story is important to me and this is where Aliens Colonial Marines fails; I had no empathy with the characters and only appreciated them as a couple of extra guns to help fend off waves of Xeno’s and mercs.
Okay, major negatives out of the way, there are good times to be had in the multi-player and co-op improves the campaign (more on that below), but most importantly the game sounds and looks great, faithfully reproducing the futurist concept designer Syd Mead’s outstanding work on the Aliens movie and the sound of one of the coolest sci-fi guns ever conceived, the Pulse Rifle. James Horner’s Oscar nominated rousing and often enigmatic sound track is present, but whilst the music and sound effects are terrific the voice acting is only just about serviceable; but having Michael Bien and Lance Henriksen reprise their roles from the film does add some provenance to the storyline.
A lot of the game has you running and gunning down claustrophobic corridors, that capture perfectly the industrial feel of the film, and make for some exciting and tense encounters such as being blinded by steam as you panic fire into the general direction of incoming Xeno’s. The Xenomorph’s are graphically awesome, they look, sound and move just like they should. It is really quite sweat inducing watching the hissing spidery blighters scrabble along walls, ceilings and pipes towards you and your fellow marines, knowing that their intention is to give your cranium an extra hole you can do without.
There are some great set pieces where the gameplay really shines, which have you stand off against relentless waves of Xenomorphs whilst tracking their movement on your motion tracker, another feature faithfully reproduced from the film. One of the most exciting stand offs has you fighting in the authentically reproduced Hadley’s Hope (complete with Wey-Yu branded tricycles). But these are few and far between and I found fighting the mercs tedious. The addition of human enemies was obviously implemented to combat repetitiveness, but this to me backfired. I found fighting the Wey-Yu mercenaries monotonous and often couldn’t wait to get back to shooting Xeno’s in the face. I hate to say it, but there just wasn’t enough alien slaying in the main game.
The campaign has four difficulties, recruit to ultimate badass and can also be cooperatively played with up to four players. I managed to play a few missions on ultimate badass with two other players and this changed the game completely, not only were there faster tougher Xeno’s, but fighting the mercs became less repetitive and a lot more tactical. To really enjoy the campaign this is the way to go, get online with other players and be prepared for a great challenge [after all, this is what Gearbox do best – Ed.].
To mix things up different types of Xeno’s have been introduced which are also playable classes in the multi-player. As well as the basic but lethal soldier Xenomorph, there are also Lurker’s, Spitter’s, Boilers and the Crusher. The Lurker’s are a quick moving Xeno with emphasis on speed over brute strength and the Spitter’s are an agile Xeno that has the ability to shoot acid at you for a long-range attack. The latter two are special units that appear in the campaign as mini bosses and in the multi-player as a kind of pick up. The Boiler’s appearance in the campaign is in one specific mission which plays out as a kind of stealthy musical statues and a mission that I felt was a little tagged on, I appreciate that Gearbox was again trying to mix the action up, but I found it was odd that you don’t see them again in the campaign.
During the game, not only does Cpl. Winter have his trusty Pulse Rifle there is also a lot of other USCMC ordnance available. There is a selection of guns to choose from (some of which are Legendary collectables) and these weapons are upgradable and can all be accessed on the fly from your inventory. So, if your Pulse Rifle is running dry, you can whip out your tactical shotgun or assault rifle to carry on the carnage.
As you play you will also be ranking up Cpl. Winter, you will gain XP for kills as well as completing missions. There are 60 ranks to complete and as you do you will earn commendations that can be spent on weapon upgrades for your arsenal as well as skin mods for your multi-player character. You can also earn bonus XP by completing challenges. The majority of which can be completed in the campaign, but there are also multi-player specific ones. The challenges don’t stack; rather a new one opens up after having completed the prior one. In all there are 86 challenges over three categories, this along with the level cap of 60 offers some sound replayability. Neatly your progress transfers to the multi-player, so any rank progress made in the campaign, including weapon unlocks are at your disposal for your online battles. There are also collectible dog tags (many of which have the names of the original Sulaco crew), usable legendary weapons that pay homage to the original film and audio logs that do help to pad out the story.
I did encounter a few glitches in the campaign, a few times my fellow NPC’s got stuck on scenery without me realising and I had to back track and lead them away from the offending obstacle, but gladly these occurrences were few and far between and I did not have to reload the game to sort it out. Also I found that the human enemies were occasionally able to annoyingly shoot me through their and my cover. Hopefully these minor issues will be addressed and patched.
The multi-player aspect of the game is gladly a lot of fun and in no way feels tagged on. There are four game types available, in which you play each mode taking it in turns to play as Marines or Xenomorphs. There is the obligatory Team Death Match, Extermination which is a kind of king of the hill, where the Marine team scores points by occupying a set area of Xeno eggs until they are destroyed and the two standout modes Escape and Survivor.
Escape has the marine team progress through a level in order to get from point A to B and ‘escape’; the attacking Xeno teams objective is to stop them. This makes for some exciting game play and team work from both sides, with the marine team working desperately to make it to the next check point intact and the Xeno’s working to together to plan ambushes and traps.
Survivor is a horde type game that has the marine team try and stay alive for 5 minutes with a finite amount of ammo and only one life each, whilst the Xeno teams re-spawn rate decreases and they get access to more Crusher and Boiler spawns. This is my favourite mode and made up for the lack of stand offs against Xeno’s in the main game and I can see myself playing a lot of this in the coming weeks.
Playing on the Xeno team takes some getting use to, the aliens have the ability to scale walls and ceilings and the camera changes can initially induce a feeling of motion sickness. But the controls for the Xeno’s have been implemented well.
Just like your Marine character, you can also level up your Xenomorph classes, making them quicker, more resilient and adding powerful moves to their repertoire.
What is odd is that Gearbox has forced your hand to play as the Xeno’s, each multi-player mode is played out in turns, and you have no choice but to take turns playing as Xeno’s then marines, whether you like it or not you are going to have to get your head around the Xeno controls. I just hope players don’t start dropping out of games because they don’t like how the Xeno’s handle.
The Marine team during multi-player has access to some devastating pick-ups there is nothing better than picking up a Smart Gun and turning the tide in a Team Death Match. But not to be undone the Xenomorph team can also access the Boiler and Crusher from the campaign that act as the Xeno teams special weapons. The Crusher is like a Xeno on steroids, which you can charge around the level crushing any marines stupid enough to stand in your way with its huge reinforced carapace and the Boiler is a walking acid bomb and both are very cool to use. The multi-player is a lot of fun, I hope that a strong community builds up and that players are not put off by the initially bewildering Xenomorph mechanics, trust me, persevere with the Xeno’s and you will soon be pulling off some great and immensely satisfying marine kills.
Aliens Colonial Marines is a step in the right direction and a much better game than the Xeno’s last outing, Rebellion’s Aliens vs. Predator, but is let down by a lackluster story arc, crappy dialogue, characters you do not and cannot care about and some boring mercenary killing (unless in co-op). There is a lot for fans of the films and newcomers alike to enjoy, however I cannot shake the niggling feeling that if the Aliens element was taken away this could be any generic 1st person sci-fi shooter released over the past ten years and this leaves me wondering how to score it. From a fans point of view I am a disappointed, but the art design is faithful and the game sounds great, if I weren’t familiar with the films, I would probably be wondering what all the fuss is about. It’s not perfect, but when it gets it right this bug hunt is a lot of fun. Just make sure you bring along some fellow marines and you will have a blast.