Well, that was disappointing.
Aliens: Colonial Marines has a good story, but the game itself doesn’t match expectations. Despite the involvement of Lance Henrikson and Michael Biehn, and direct ties to the movies, fans of the franchise will most likely want to skip over this game.
This isn’t to say Aliens: Colonial Marines is a bad game. It’s enjoyable enough, but plays out like it was initially released on the original Xbox, not the Xbox 360. The graphics are not nearly up to the standards we are used to for a game of this sort, and previews (including when I got my hands on the game during last year’s Penny Arcade Expo) seemed to indicate a game that was up to par with expectations.
Why are the character animations so jerky and voice acting not properly synched up?
Players take the role of Corporal Winter, part of a unit answering the distress signal sent out by Corporal Hicks at the end of Aliens. Of course things go sideways real fast, and it stops being strictly a search and rescue operation. It’s only a few minutes before players are firing away at the alien xenomorph creatures.
Where are the dynamic lighting effects we were shown in earlier versions of the game?
Instead of wide open areas where attacks can come from any direction, Aliens: Colonial Marines offers up the same false corridor type of gameplay that has been passé for years. There is absolutely no surprise when the xenomorphs will attack. 95% of the time you see them coming. If you don’t, you’ll most likely be able to dispatch them anyway unless you are playing on the hardest difficulty setting.
Why are the textures so flat?
When I played part of the game at Penny Arcade Expo, the game looked good. And while there is a difference between high end computers and the Xbox 360, one would expect there to be at least some sort of connection, visually. This just looks… old. Character animations are stiff.
Corridors? Really?
Walk around a room, go through a door, walk down a corridor, open a door, enter a room. Along the way you’ll shoot some aliens. Lather, rinse, repeat. You just aren’t pulled into the world they way you expect.
Was co-op play initially part of the game design?
Co-op play is great, but with the corridors being designed the way they are, bottlenecks occur and with the collision detection being as bad as it is, it’s easy to get jammed up. It feels almost as if co-op was tacked on as an afterthought.
I did not bother trying out multiplayer.
When you kill an alien, why doesn’t the acidic blood splatter do the same type of damage to the surrounding area as it would in the movies?
Aliens: Colonial Marines is not a bad game. It just could and should have been better, especially considering what we were promised by earlier looks at the game. If you’re looking for a first person shooter with aliens, this will work, but it’s merely “average” which is actually a disappointment considering the developer (Gearbox) is capable of so much more.