Aliens: Colonial Marines

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I was really hyped for this game since it was announced. This is one of the few games that I was looking forward to and I somewhat followed the news around it. The developers are huge Aliens fans and I believed they will do the series justice...oh how wrong I was. This is the rare case when the demo of the game looked much better than the final product. The lightning, character models and animations are so much worse in the final release. Some scenes that are in the demo aren't even in the game. It's like it's totally different product. The game lasts only about 5-6 hours on highest difficulty It is buggy, the AI is terrible, animations are awful, it's full of bad scripts, character models are ugly and the whole game looks like it's made in 2006. Yes, the game was actually 6 years in development with 3 different studios working on it. In the end the publisher forced it's release even tho the game wasn't ready yet. And it shows. As Alien fan I can forgive all technical issues but the biggest problem with this game is that it's not scary at all. It's so easy even while playing on highest difficulty and the xenomorphs won't be any threat to you. They die easy, move slowly and rarely sneak up on you. You can tore them to pieces from up close with a pulse rifle and the acid blood will just tickle you a bit. Hell, you can just melee them with a rifle or kick them across the room in quicktime encounters. There's no sense of dread and after killing waves of aliens, it will just become a choir. But even aside from the gameplay, the biggest problem I have with this game is just that it's not original in any way and doesn't try anything new. The director said he wanted to make the "true" sequel to James Cameron's Aliens but you can't really call this a sequel. It feels more like a tribute. It's a bunch of moments and set pieces from Aliens recreated as a video game. Just a big deja vu filled with cliches. You're back on the planet LV-42, there's a female dropship pilot once again, you have to use powerloader to fight aliens, there's a mission where you must place turrets to defend against alien swarm... If you fill the game with exact same scenes, how can you call it a sequel? I'd rather have an original story. There's so much cool things that you can do with aliens and alien universe is already rich enough that you can draw from it. They did add new types of aliens tho. There's a sewer level with a weird fungal aliens that can't notice you unless you're moving, so you have to sneak around them. While they are somewhat interesting, they are not scary. The way they walk is funny and when they come to you, you'll see the bad character model up close and personal and you won't be in any danger as long as you're standing still. Way to kill suspense. The other new type of alien looks something like triceratops and it will charge at you full speed and try to hit you. Adding this type of enemy just feels so video-gamy and out of place in alien universe. The story continues after Aliens, it totally changes everything but still ties to Alien 3. During the game you meet Cpl. Hicks, once again played by Michael Biehn. When they asked him how come he's still alive and whose body was in the cryopod, I was really looking forward to an answer. Instead he said something like "there's no time to talk, let's move" and they never bring it up again. Ever. Nothing is explained. Besides Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen also reprises his role as android Bishop. But the other characters are just cliches with no personality. Voice acting is pretty good, especially from the famous Aliens cast. Multiplayer is pretty good but there's lack of maps and it has some balance issues. Marines feel much stronger than aliens. Even tho I wanted to play it just for the story, I ended up enjoying the multiplayer more. Is this review or what? I don't know. I just felt like I needed to vent and when I started writing I just couldn't stop. Here are some questions for you. What do you think of this game? How does it hold up to the old classics like Aliens Versus Predator games? What would make a good Aliens game?