Aliens:CM looks how you feel
Overview
Without going into too much detail regarding story as anyone reading this MUST - I repeat - MUST be an Aliens fan, I will keep it relatively brief. The game takes place after the catastrophic events of "Aliens" (James Cameron) and is considered the true sequel to the much loved 1986 action movie. The game puts you in the acid boots of United States Colonial Marine named Cpl. Christopher Winter, the game's seldom silent protagonist. Winter is part of a USCM rescue team sent to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Ellen Ripley, Dwayne Hicks and all of the other unique characters you came to know and love/hate from the movie. The game quickly reminds you that this is indeed In the Aliens universe and of course this isn't going to go smoothly any time soon as you board the U.S.S. Sulaco for the first time.
Gameplay
The game opens with a 1st person view of Cpl. Winter putting on his standard issue marine helmet while checking the ammo count on his pulse rifle. This is already a ticked box in terms of fan service. Letting the player feel like a colonial marine in this well established little cutscene. After you are made to feel like a badass, you proceed to board the U.S.S. Sulaco where, of course, everything goes to shit. In fact you are in control of Winter for precisely 1 minute before said shit....goes. After lengthy corridor crawling, distressed radio chatter and not so effective pipe related jump scares you come across the first alien. AT LAST! Your reward! You get to pull the trigger on an M41A Pulse Rifle! The sound is fantastic and the fact Gearbox were allowed full privileges over the sound effects from the movie rings true in this weapon alone. You get a basic feel of the how the game is going to play after this brief encounter. Standard first person shooter mechanics - left trigger aim - right trigger shoot. Simple, right? The aiming feels a little off, however I imagine this was a deliberate design choice to give the pulse rifle that frantic, loose feel which is felt so convincingly from the movies. I found myself more comfortable firing from the hip, something I rarely do in FPS games. It felt right and more in nature of the game. There is a whole armory of guns in the game which look and feel how they should. The only ones you need to care about though are the Pulse Rifle and Smart Gun which fire exactly as you'd imagine. I am however a little disappointed in the lack of the latter gun. Another very effective touch is the ability to pull out your motion tracker to detect incoming enemies which in accompanied by that heart stopping fluxing "beep" from the movie. You can not shoot while you hold the motion tracker which introduces a unsettlingly tense risk/reward situation.
However accurate the guns feel, the down side is that the aliens, or "xenos" if you're a dick, are a little too easy to kill. Half a sprayed clip in their general alien shaped direction will down the foe no problem. I have come to understand that this is in the nature of modern FPS games and it would be stubborn to ask anything more. Enemies need to die quick to keep the gameplay fluid and the action moving. I have mixed emotions toward the lack of acid blood upon killing an alien. On one hand it keeps the pace of game moving without being stuck burning in a tight corridor with your pants round your ankles. On the flip side it denies basic Aliens lore. Over all I am happy with the trade off.
Most of the story sees the player running from point A to B, setting up motion trackers, turning switches and other general mundane tasks. The intrigue from the game comes from the tense atmosphere and revisiting around 70% of the sets from the movie. The attention to detail is incredible, not to mention almost creepy. A prime example is the room where Ripley and Newt slept in the movie. The bed is flipped upside down, the room is a mess and there is a facehugger jammed againt the wall by a table where Hudson shot it. As I mentioned before, being a fan is a MUST. Allowing the player to do all the little cool things such as setting up turrents and welding doors are a large chunk of why I gave this game 3 stars. If you don't have a huge pair of rose tinted glasses attached to your face at all times like me, this game isn't for you
Graphics
It isn't all sunshine and chestbursters. I find it inconceivable how a game in development for six years can come out of the ass end of space like this. All fan service aside, this is a shoddy game. Hidden by not so clever dark lighting and shadows, jaggies lurk. Granted I am reviewing the xbox 360 version and I'm sure the PC version will kick up the resolution, there is still no excuse for this. The overall visual style of the game reeks of Duke Nukem Forever. Which in terms of development history, is a distant cousin of Aliens:CM. It looks as if It dropped straight out of 2006. Not the game's strongest feature.
Multiplayer
They always say end on a song and the multiplayer is a song and dance. Just as Aliens VS Predator did on the pc all those years ago, Aliens:CM manages to create the scariest multiplayer imaginable. This isn't two teams of soldiers fighting in some Afghan desert while dropping nukes packed full of dogs on each other's head. That alone is a breath of fresh air. This is so much more. As well as the drop in - drop out co op, there is a team deathmatch mode. This puts a group of human controlled marines against human controlled aliens. The game forces players to rely on team work as both factions are stupidly over powered while working together. Marines will pack together and set up defences while the aliens plan and lurk in the shadows. When both teams finally give up with the tension foreplay and go full assault, the battles can be amazing. The sounds of pulse rifles firing and aliens screeching puts you in the heart of the movie in real time. An Aliens fan couldn't ask for more.
