Aliens: Colonial Marines

The Rad

• Lots of good Aliens fan service.
• Handles decently enough.
• Co-op is fun!

The Bad

• Not a memorable character in the bunch.
• Aliens aren’t as threatening as they should be.
• Unevenly polished.
• Utterly crap competitive multiplayer offering.
• Hella short.

I profess to not being a huge fan of the Alien franchise though that is born largely out of ignorance to it than any particular aversion. I saw and liked the first two movies. Didn’t see the other two. Saw Prometheus.

And the Aliens versus Predator movies, if you care to count them.

So with my limited knowledge of Alien lore the very idea of Colonial Marines probably wasn’t as initially appealing to me as it was to some more die-hard fans. I didn’t expect nor necessarily want it to build on the franchise in any meaningful way, I just wanted to shoot some Aliens.

And it’s probably a little sad that I, the not-very-big fan of the series is largely getting what I want whilst real fans are likely going to find themselves wanting.

All I wanted was to shoot Aliens and I got that.

Plenty of Xenomorphs to be gibbed.

The only thing is that I also wanted it to be at least some what challenging and it never is.

The Xenomorphs are fragile as all hell and whilst they generally have the advantage in numbers it’s never to an overwhelming degree. They are entirely outgunned. I know some folk miss the days of old-school shooters wherein you could carry like a dozen guns all at once, but I feel like CM could have benefited from stripping back the armory a little.

Go for a Halo/CoD style system in which you carry maybe two guns. Feel like it could’ve gone a fair way to adding some of the missing tension whilst also providing some more challenge.

In addition to the Xenomorphs there is an almost alarming amount of shooting other dudes what also have guns. I guess a little bit of that would’ve been fine but I feel like it’s almost a 50/50 split between shooting bugs and shooting guys. And I didn’t sign up for a game called “Aliens” to shoot guys. I can play a dozen other games to just shoot guys.

I didn’t run into many of the myriad of other technical issues that some have but the game is definitely lacking a certain amount of polish. Some areas of the game look pretty great, but others are decidedly ugly. There are parts that I’d say just look flat out unfinished.

But looking bad is about it in my book - my bro claims that when we were playing co-op he’d see me and our NPC compatriots walk through doors that on his screen didn’t open, but we didn’t really hit anything game breaking. Not gonna deny that it’s out there, other people are doing a pretty great job of showing how screwed up this game can be - but personally I didn’t encounter any of that.

Frankly the worst thing Colonial Marines does is just turn out to be an entirely average game. Having been in development so long and being based on such a beloved franchise I know people had higher hopes than this.

But I just wanted to shoot some Aliens with my bro, we did that and had a pretty okay time doing so.