Aliens Colonial Marines: Poor graphics, poor gameplay

Ridley Scott's classic 1979 film Alien is renowned as one of the pioneering horror films of its generation. The only horror you will experience in Aliens Colonial Marines is the realisation you spent a lot of your hard-earned money on it.

 

Aliens Colonial Marines

From: Sega, Gearbox

For: PS3/X360/PC/WiiU

Rating:

 

When you load up the game, you get an overwhelming rush of nostalgia. The protagonist picks up a rifle and looks it over, showing off every minute detail faithfully recreated from the film. You fire the gun and it's the same sound as the movie ... and then it all comes crashing down. The first thing you notice is the quality, or lack thereof, of the graphics. In some places it looks OK, but the vast majority of the environment, and the items within it, are flat out ugly. Obviously, being an Aliens game, a lot of the environments are dark claustrophobic corridors, but this is no excuse for the overall poor visual quality of the game.

I've always thought a game that looks awful could be excused if the gameplay filled the void, the Fallout series being a great example. Unfortunately for Aliens Colonial Marines, the poor graphics are just the start.

When I started playing, I hoped the gameplay would be a tense affair, with anxious walks down corridors, hearing the aliens moving in the walls beside you, waiting for their moment to pounce. What actually happens is a stark contrast to that. The aliens come out of the walls, run around in front of you and then launch at you in predictable fashion. Not only that, but even on the harder difficulties the aliens take so few bullets to kill they are hardly ever a threat. Couple that with the sheer volume of aliens the game throws at you and all tension is completely gone. The only time the aliens will get to you is if one of your squad stands in your line of sight. This brings me to the AI, in terms of both your squad and the enemies.

Your squad is occasionally useful for distracting the aliens, but it seems their main purpose is to just spout out military lingo cliches ad nauseum. I'm not sure whether the intention is to try to add some sort of realism or authenticity to the game, but it comes off as being completely forced.

There are just so many parts of this game that with a little care or effort could have been great. The upgrade system is a great incentive to keep playing, if only the upgrades were in a logical order for example. The multiplayer may provide a momentary distraction but the single player is simply not worth it. Usually the phrase ''fans of the series will enjoy this'' applies to games like this, but in this case I think they are probably the ones who would hate it the most.

It's poor game design masquerading as fan service.

If you want a decent Aliens game, play 2010's Aliens vs Predator, it's leagues ahead of this clumsy mess.

- Simon Bishop