Aliens: Colonial Marines

Aliens: Colonial Marines is aggressively terrible. It does so little right that it would almost set a new low for licensed games if that bar wasn’t already as low as it could go. The only time the game is even remotely interesting is when it is directly referencing Cameron’s “Aliens”. Aside from those moments, it’s a cut-and-paste shooter that fails to deliver on any of the promises that Gearbox had made. Colonial Marines is a disaster on all accounts. Gearbox, Timegate, Sega and whatever other parties were involved with the game should be ashamed that they unleashed such a half-baked wreck upon the public.

            Gearbox had been hyping up this game’s graphical prowess and lighting tech. By now, it is common knowledge that they were lying about it as Colonial Marines is an absolutely hideous game. I can’t speak for the PC version (which is reportedly better) but the 360 version is riddled with graphical glitches, clipping issues, muddy textures and graphical artifacts. Dead enemies will occasionally be stuck in a standing animation, explosions will leave behind a static explosion texture and there are times when the enemies will just drop dead without any sort of falling or dying animation.

            The game is wildly inconsistent about blood too. Some enemies will just explode into massive clouds of blood while others won’t bleed at all. Some enemies will die and then spurt out some blood like they fell on top of a ketchup packet. And these are just the human enemies; the Xenomorphs have it far worse. Their tails get caught on the level architecture which causes the entire corpse to flail around, the numerous appendages of the Xenomorphs will sometimes fly into the air upon death and sometimes they’ll just fall over. These often-hilarious death animations (or lack thereof) make it clear just how little care there was in fine-tuning the graphical aspects of the game. There’s a certain balance you need to achieve with your blood and gore and Colonial Marines does not achieve that balance.

            But it doesn’t stop there; Colonial Marines takes every possible opportunity to remind you as to why Alien and Aliens made sure to hide the titular creatures. The reason the best Alien movies hid the creature (aside from budget issues) is because a giant phallus monster isn’t that scary, especially when it holds up its claws like a hamster carrying food.  Colonial Marines takes it upon itself to show you just how goofy the Xenomorphs can be. From the blind Xenomorphs that stumble around until they spontaneously combust to the regular ones that saunter about until they decide to attack, all of their animations are a reminder as to why the best Alien stories keep the rape monsters in the dark. Without the proper lighting or atmosphere, your most threatening enemy goes from terrifying to adorable within a matter of seconds.

            Speaking of, Colonial Marines has absolutely terrible lighting. This should come as no surprise as one of the things that Gearbox was hyping up about the project was “how next-gen the lighting was”. In truth, I feel like the darkness in some spots was to cover up how muddy and dated the textures look. There are certain spots of Colonial Marines that look like they were ripped straight out of a sub-standard FPS from 2008. Even the art direction can’t save it since that looks terrible too. I won’t spoil it but there’s an iconic object from the series that makes an appearance late in the game that looks absolutely atrocious to the point where it’s barely recognizable. There is the occasional flash of effort though as Hadley’s Hope is faithfully recreated but aside from that, it is as low effort as they come.

            Your fellow marines are bland and lacking detail. Nothing about them is distinct and their facial animations are as stiff and robotic as Bishop. When a character tries to emote in any way, their body language and facial expressions do nothing to convey that. It’s expected that your partners would look a little hardened, they are marines after all, but they should not look this lifeless. In addition, the cut-scenes look incredibly compressed and grainy which only accentuates how ugly the character models are.

            Whenever you die, the game will playback your death in grayscale. I cannot fathom why this was implemented as all this does is make your deaths even more jarring. At one point, I fell down a bottomless pit. The camera immediately zoomed out to show my corpse tumbling into the unrendered abyss below. It looked beyond horrible. Other times, the game would just show my marine’s head exploding or my leg poking out from behind a wall. This playback feature does nothing to help the game. It’s not stylish, it’s not cool, and it’s not anything but obnoxious and revealing.

           

            And while the graphics are problematic; the core elements of Colonial Marines are its biggest problems. Everything from the guns to the level design to the ally AI just doesn’t flow. The guns, with the exception of the smart gun and the flamethrower, all feel exactly the same which is exceptionally disappointing when you consider just how iconic something like the Pulse Rifle is. The level design is incredibly simple and rudimentary. Certain areas feel like something out of a basic Doom mod. Other areas just don’t function like they should with a poor checkpoint system and an even poorer ally AI mucking up the already tepid shooting segments.

            The AI in general is just terrible. Your fellow marines will spend more time than not shooting at the wall or at a crate that blocks their path. There were numerous points where my allies ran into a different room behind me and shot at a wall. The Xenomorphs, which were supposed to have complicated AI patterns, have such predictable patterns that you can practically see the AI path. At one point, the game shoehorns in a stealth segment inside the sewers. This section promises scares but the hilarious Xenomorphs animations combined with the awful AI instead make this section a tedious slog.

            The terrible Xenomorph AI makes the addition of a motion tracker absolutely worthless. Since you always see the Xenomorphs coming for you, the motion tracker is only there for when the game wants to up the tension (which it fails to do). Much like the rest of the game, it’s wasted potential. Speaking of wasted potential, Colonial Marines is just barely an “Aliens” game. Combat with the Xenomorphs is already easy but the game has very little of it compared to the amount of time you’ll spend fighting Weyland-Yutani grunts. Thankfully, their AI is a bit better but if I wanted to play a game where I shot at guys with guns, I’d play literally any other shooter.

            The game is incredibly short too, probably clocking in at 5 hours long but this is a blessing as the game starts to feel stale right after you leave Hadley’s Hope. The basic formula of the game boils down to “shoot Xenomorphs, shoot guys, shoot Xenomorphs & guys” and it’s not a formula that works. There is very little variety in the game, the setpieces all feel similar (the game even has the audacity to have you backtrack towards the end) and the shoot-outs are disappointingly easy. The scripted sequences follow a basic template that only deviate from that template when the game glitches out.

            There was clearly no desire to animate any more than the team absolutely had to which ends up directly affecting the gameplay. Your teammates will automatically teleport to your location if you manage to outrun them or even reach a door before they do. This has its uses as the AI does run into walls quite a bit but the teleporting has the nasty side-effect of occasionally spawning your marines in front of you which can trigger an event or a firefight. This teleportation mechanic makes it far more difficult to actually explore the game than it would be otherwise. It's a solid idea in theory but it's poorly implemented.

            The story is another irredeemable mess. From unmemorable and unlikable characters, to plot twists that directly fly in the face of the series’ canon to just the sheer dullness of the overall plot, it’s a wonder why anyone thought this was a story worth telling. The Alien series has always had a penchant for being able to create memorable side-characters to back up Ripley but Colonial Marines has none of that. All of the characters are the same, bland G.I. Joes and Janes stereotypes that Aliens mercilessly deconstructed back in 1985.

            And the characters are just so gung-ho about their machismo, it is nauseating. The game makes no attempt to deconstruct these characters and actually supports some of their downright self-centered and destructive actions. It looks like the writers were trying to show that both the Marines and Weyland-Yutani were destructive forces but rewrites, poor direction and overall incompetence absolutely kills any point that the writers may have been trying to make.

            In truth, the game only has two positive qualities and both of them get the game nowhere. Gearbox had promised that Colonial Marines would have been loaded with fan-service and to their credit; they did not lie about that. You’ll visit locations from the film like the Sulaco, Hadley’s Hope and even the Derelict Ship. You can also find audio logs and dog tags which are neat winks to hardcore fans. In addition, you can find iconic weapons like Hicks’ shotgun and Hudson’s pulse rifle. Because a lot of these areas are faithfully recreated, they are sure to temporarily please any massive Aliens fan. Eventually Mr. Pitchford’s Nostalgic Ride stops and you are dumped into a totally soulless wasteland.

            The other positive point is the game’s surprisingly adept soundtrack. It properly evokes the soundtrack of the original Aliens film while feeling somewhat fresh and exciting. It even helps to make the game’s bland firefights a bit more enjoyable. It’s not anything game-changing but when the music starts to play, you get pumped. The music does its job exceedingly well considering the game’s quality in nearly every other area.

            The same cannot be said for the voice acting or sound effects though. Part of the reason the guns all feel the same is because the sound effects do very little to differentiate them. They all have the same stock RATATATAT noise that you hear in every modern FPS. The voice acting is a mixed bag too. Most of it sounds very tired and any time a character tries to really emote; it sounds forced. Even returning actors from the Alien movies, like Lance Henrikson, sound very tired and bored.

            In short, Colonial Marines is a forsaken mess of a game. It is a clear victim of mismanagement, incompetence and general carelessness. There are missteps in the basic formula of the game. The title may be glitchy but no amount of patching can fix a game that’s so totally broken at a fundamental level. It’s an ugly, dated game that promises scares, fanservice and solid gameplay but can only deliver on one of those things. It’s one of the biggest disappointments of 2013 and one of the worst first-person shooters in recent memory. Aliens: Colonial Marines is a disgrace to a franchise that is no stranger to black sheep.

Final Score: 2.5