Aliens: Colonial Marines Review
Aliens Colonial Marines is a first person shooter developed by Gearbox Software, and published by Sega. The game was released for the PS3, Xbox 360, & for Microsoft Windows. Probably should start by saying that this game was made as a sequel to the movie Aliens which was released back in 1986. And this game was in development for 6 years. Sadly to say, the game shouldn’t have been released. The story of this game, takes place seventeen weeks after the events of Aliens, the search-and-rescue Colonial Marine team on board the Conestoga-class space cruiser USS Sephora receive a distress call sent from the USS Sulaco. The Sephora sends squads to investigate the missing ship, in orbit around LV-426 and not Fiorina-161 as it was supposed to be during the events of Alien 3.
A massive xenomorph infestation is discovered inside the Sulaco, and several marines are killed. From this point on the game takes you through a series of events ranging from going to point A to point B. Sadly, there isn’t much to the story to grasp on to its player. As far as the gameplay goes, it’s no better. The game suffers from “Call of Duty Syndrome.” What that means is, they went with the same shooter format as the COD franchise, but it is executed very poorly, much like a long list of games that do the same. You are even given the ability to customize your own pulse rifle, understandable that it is a game mechanic a lot of games use, but it doesn’t seem very fitting in this game. Xenomorphs don’t act like they should, instead they charge right at you, instead of playing it stealthy like in the movies. Not to mention in certain events weapons proved to be ineffective, and gameplay elements do not work as intended.
I had issues recovering from stagger and from Aliens attacking me. Also poor camera controls gets in the way a lot. Graphics suffer horribly in this game. Background graphics take too long to load and textures suffers way too frequently. Also character models, along with the background, do not even look current generation, it look like a game that belonged on a N64, or PS2. The sounds of the game are nostalgic though. The sound of a firing pulse rifles matches that of the movies and music queues from the original movies is a nice touch. My biggest issue of the game is the lack of polish. If a game took over 6 years to make, there should be much more polish than this game has.
Bad Visuals, very poor frame rate, bad gunplay. poor A.I, glitches, and bugs. This game feels and looks as if it were rushed and made in a few months. Sadly, fans of the series will not be pleased. I cannot recommend this game to anyone, despite any price. This is not the first time this has happened with a video game, I sure gamers out there remember Duke Nukem Forever… and sadly this game has the same issues. Aliens Colonial Marines gets a 1 out of 5, and sadly it looks like the wait for a proper Aliens game is still on.
