Aliens: Colonial Marines (2013)

Played coop with a friend, mostly as a goof. We were looking for a "good" coop game and I felt like I needed to experience this travesty while it was only $6.99 on Steam. The gameplay is boring, the story is contradictory to the films in many ways, the acting is awful, the writing is wildly terrible, and it looks like a PS2 game. Thankfully, it's easy and pretty short. I'm not going to give it a grade until I finish the DLC, Stasis Interrupted, which I started today. Currently it's a 2/5. The DLC, which for sure better so far than the main game, doesn't seem like it'll be good enough to pull that number up. But we'll see.

Whoever thought "oorah to ashes" was a cool thing to say constantly needs to find work elsewhere. Perhaps in an industry that allows for zero communication with the outside world.

First, this is Aliens and not Alien... I went in and was expecting the campy space marine romp, rather than a 'haunted house in space'. That's exactly what the game gives you... And for the most part, I found it to be a tastefully done one.

But hey, it's just a ride.

This game gets a lot of well deserved criticsm, but for one, the game actually tries to connect lore with the environments. (However, in some places its not exactly done proper, but most wont notice anything off) Maps look okay, you havea few moments that emulate shots from the movie(s). it's nothing grand slam. You can pull out a tracking device which not only locates enemies (or friendlies?) but also mission objectives and 'pathways' This was not a bad idea to require the tracking device (requires you to put up your weapon for a sec) rather than just telling you where to walk.

Aside from that, I felt the game suffers from generic-FPS-itis. you see multiplay mechanics getting shoehorned or beaten into the single player. Unfortunatly the FPS bar is quite high, and this title still isnt bringing zilch to the table. A multiplayer Model of various things sours the basic mechanics further and it bleeds into single player... Fans will find enough here worth a visit perhaps if they can stomach a bit of a sloggy FPS. And it can be a bit of a slog at times if you dont cheat your way through it.

At first I felt that few of the weapons felt right. It took a long time to get used to them. The iron sights are fantastic but ability to aim is strangely loosey goosey, and it's often random where the bullets go and you can't really fire the 'short controlled bursts' despite what our superior tells us. This is shame. Iron sights are in fact seldom needed or useful! And (aside from the scopes as they are the WORST) some of the iron sights are quite nice.

Combat is a blend of strange cover and spray and pray dynamics sort of like gears of war but also not really... since you dont take cover that way and also lack the finesse. Also cover isnt so reliable.

The upgrade system is a mixed bag as well and there's really nothing wrong with not even opening it up to look at it until you get into multi.

The AI is interesting. You move and clear one area to another with your space marine buddies. They perform quite well and need no instruction. That is, against certain kinds of enemies. They have good reflexes, however their tactics are lousy. Fortunately, they cannot die. That would likely make the game impossible.

There are some bugs and annoyances. I wont list them all but the big ones that would upset me the most were dissapearing or rather appearing models that would just load. This is usually your space marine buddies or enemy turrets. Suddenly a turret appears, and you die. My guess is it has something to do with maps loading as you move around and certain entites get swept up in the under-the-hood/on-the-fly map change...Another was the F11 button. Which converts the game to windowed mode and makes the game hang or crash. I also didnt like that aiming/recoil system/iron sights conundrum.

One notable thing is the music and sound sound very much on point and sounds like the original orchestral stuff of both movies. Complete with space synth and military drum taps. You also have dialogue, references and some recurring characters. There's also a lotta techy type stuff to look at if you are so inclined that seems like that same era of cobbled up hokey jokey special effects wizardry.

Even with mediocre gameplay this would be superb enough to make it stand out had it actually had a cohesive or rather strong story to tie it altogether... Which it doesnt, it's just toying and playing with the universe, aand kinda cobbled up and hodged, and not doing anything too terribly cerebreal with it. (However there are random logs scattered around pseudo-system shock style that are quite nicely done and tend to be lore-ish.) Still enough research was done and all that was done was done at least in good taste, so A for effort.

The DLC Campagin however, is a bit stronger in this regard. It introduces new characters and side stories, and actually (lightly) exercises the creative muscle a bit more. In a way this is better. Even better is it also ups the 'haunted house in space' factor. Unfortunately this is only 4 missions, they are a bit longer but its a rather short ride. It's also a discontinous tale of the main events in the game.. Ultimately it too, just dont hold up.

At the end of it all i've seen better, and i've seen far worse of things like this. It feels goofy at times, but i would not blame the game for that, the movie was goofy. I think that's something a lot of people forget going into this one. But one could fault this game for being a lackluster FPS more than anything else, grainy textures and blinding bloom is one thing but specifically these less than satisfying weapons taht dont really make you feel like a mighty space marine one bit were a let down. The other thing is various hits and misses with everything it does do right. Every little thing that is just right has some woeful flaw the closer you look at it. Little subtle things in the maps, like dead space marines, or the names on the lockers, or the symbols on walls, something is wrong with all the little details. CM got some things wrong, some things ok, but almost nothing perfect, save that music and sound.