Rewind six years and we’d never heard of, let alone touched, an iPhone. Arsenal were a half decent football team (although they had gone a couple of years without a trophy) and we were all still living the high life before the bankers took down the world. Six years ago, Sega won the rights to the Aliens franchise.
Fans of sci-fi went crazy. Gamers rejoiced. Sci-fi gamers probably spontaneously combusted. Finally it looked like we would get a game that would allow us to relive all the horror and tense moments from one of the most highly rated films of all time. And then Sega told us the game they and Gearbox would deliver would be a first person shooter. Oh how everyone was happy.
But that was six years ago. Six years is a long time.
And truth be told, if Aliens: Colonial Marines had come out when it was first announced, it would probably be pretty decent. But things have moved on a lot in that time and unfortunately Colonial Marines hasn’t. It’s still stuck firmly in the last generation.
I’ve been playing this game alongside Dead Space 3. That’s the same DS3 that gamers have been complaining about with regards to not being frightening enough. A Dead Space game that has lost it’s horror. Well let me tell you this here and now, put the two side by side and Colonial Marines is pretty much on a par with Viva Pinata in the scare stakes. I’d probably go as far to say that it’s more tense watching one of your Pinatas hatch than it is wandering around a spaceship full of James Camerons finest. ‘Suspense’ should be the killer word with this title, but it’s hardly anywhere to be found throughout the relatively short campaign.
And that really is a shame.
Things might have looked a little rosier if perhaps the graphics and overall combat had been up to par. Sega though have happily chucked out something that would have looked good on the previous generation of consoles. In 2013 and on the verge of the next gen that really isn’t good enough. Non-playable characters are textureless and for the most part, lip-syncing is totally out, but that’s not even the start of it. These same NPC’s can quite happily flick from spot to spot whilst a video sequence is going on and they seem to have been spared an animation or five in both the cut scenes and the actual gameplay itself. Numerous times I’d be sat there listening in on to what one of my co-marines was blabbing on about when suddenly he would up sticks and run off.....mid-conversation! Even during the heat of the battle there are numerous times when you can find one of your men standing around looking at a wall, doing nothing and with no intention of taking on the bad guys. Things become more of a joke when your shooting skills see you despatch an enemy. Your bullets get fired in the general direction of the opponent but from there on in its a bit hit and miss whether a hit has been confirmed. Sometimes you can easily pile a full round into someone for them to still be standing, other times a single shot to the knee is enough to end his miserable life. Even then, while dying, things are of the standard of all but the highest jokes. The dead guy can, at times, fall to the floor, jump up again, perform a different type of death animation and then fall to the floor again. I haven’t seen anything like that since back in the days of the PS1!
The same thing goes for the aliens, those things that should really be the star of the show. Whilst they look ok (and nothing more than just that), scuttling around the ceilings and walls, as soon as they hit the ground and run for you they just look like some drunken crazed fool flailing their arms all over the place. I think your common Friday night high street drunken crazed fools would probably be harder to kill as well. These lot ain’t got much in their armoury. Run. Run. Bit more running. Die. That’s the life of a xenomorph in this game. That is unless the alien is a Facehugger. Those little guys seem to do a lot of damage, even being able to take down 3 full bars of health in an instant. Mind you, other times they are just as useless as their bigger brothers. It’s all a bit hit and miss for most things that go on in either the marines or the aliens head. That goes for the game in general as well.
Gameplay areas are bland and linear with very little room for exploration. There are a few little collectables like the usual audio logs but these really aren’t that difficult to find and usually crop up as the story plays out. Oh yeh, the story. I think there is one but I’m not really sure what its all about. I know it involved some aliens, some marines and a big arse bit of space junk but other than that, they don’t bother telling you too much about any back story. Besides, most of the time is spent following your marine buddies around. Again, that’s not the easiest thing in the world when they can quite easily be there one minute and then gone the next. Maybe this is why they made it so linear.....so you can’t get lost too much!
A little crumb of comfort for those playing the single player campaign is that at least you can work on the challenges and rank unlocks that you find attached to most first person shooters nowadays. These challenges allow you to unlock and customise your weapons before you go into battle in both the single and versus game modes and to be fair there seems to be a decent amount of customisation scope included.
And that brings us onto the multiplayer side of things. As the single player campaign is so poor, can the versus mode of Colonial Marines make it a value for money buy? Is the draw of being able to play as an xenomorph a big draw? Um, no.
With 4 different game modes there isn’t really an awful lot of variation in what goes on. ‘Team Deathmatch’ is self explanatory and does pretty much what it says on the tin. ‘Extermination’ gets you arming explosives in an attempt to wipe out xenomorph eggs in a 5 on 5 match, ‘Escape’ puts you in an alien infested territory in a 4 on 4 game mode whilst ‘Survivor’ needs you to survive an unrelenting attack from the xenomorphs, much like Horde mode in the Gears Of War series. The maps all seem to be tight and playing as a marine sees you having to work together if you wish to survive any length of time, but it really does get pretty boring, pretty quick. Playing as an alien is a little more fun and due to the lack of firepower, requires a degree of strategy but again, there isn’t much to keep you playing for too long a period.
The good news, if you can call it that, is some downloadable content has been earmarked for release throughout the next few months. DLC currently consists of a season pass which will allow you access to four downloadable packages with a decent sized discount. This will include new campaign content, more multiplayer maps, new modes and a greater customisation of characters. If that means they can chuck something decent into the mix then we can only hope they spend a bit more time on that then they obviously did with the full game.
Should this have come out when it was first announced? Should they have canned it once it was past a 3 year gestation period? Yes on both counts, but it’s a massive shame that neither happened because this has just turned into a jumpy headache inducing mess. If you’re a massive Aliens fan you’ll probably get on with it and will no doubt be prepared to look beyond the major issues just because of sentimental reasons. If however you’re after a first person shooter then you’re gonna be very disappointed.
Yep, six years is a long time.
