Alien: Colonial Marines review (Posted on Amazon uk

Alien: Colonial marines was released at the start of this year in February 2013 by the developer Gearbox and published by Sega. . The game is notorious for having a  tumultuous development history, originally set to be released as a PlayStation 2 title in 2001 by Fox Interactive, only to be abruptly cancelled.  After Sega purchased the rights to the Alien franchise from Fox Interactive at the end of 2006, Sega appropriated the remnants of the orginal project which in turn lead to a permutation in keeping with todays generation of games.

The game takes place on the USS Sephora military vessel, where the marines receive a distress call from the USS Sulaco, in orbit of the planet LV426. The player assumes the role of Christopher T. Winter along with a team of marines to investigate the beacon. However upon boarding the Sulaco, they discover the ship is completely desolate, setting the tone for a sinister plot orchestrated by a familiar antagonist.

A positive aspect of the game is how the environments are nicely realized with set pieces for the game taken from the second Alien movie. This includes most of the Sulaco, parts of LV426 including Hadley’s Hope and the extra-terrestrial ship containing the memorable Space Jockey from the first movie. Despite the low resolution of the graphics, players are given a nice vista of the environments, further expanding the setting of the movie franchise. The weapons are also decently designed and accurately replicate the movie’s props, including the iconic M41A pulse rifle, the M56 smart gun (heavy machine gun) and even obscure weapons such as the M240 incinerator.

The AI is probably the major fault in the game, where your comrade in arms and even the alien xenomorphs themselves become stuck in a frame of animation, behind walls, or glitched into weird contortions of their original designs. The mission objectives given to the player are quite unrealistic, as well as the narrative removing any suspension of disbelief from the player by including some questionable additions to the original continuity. The game itself attempts to become canon, existing between Aliens and Alien 3, but instead leaves more questions in the plot than providing answers. Despite broadening the settings, the game’s progression is very linear and contained, making very little use of the foreboding milieu available.

The appearance of fellow marines look awkward, presented with a rubber like texture. In addition to this, battles against bosses are very anticlimactic, where dispatching bosses surmounts to simply pressing a button for a crane or other macguffin to eliminate a seemingly imposing foe.

Weapon sounds are not accurate and reuse the M41A pulse rifle sound bite for nearly every weapon available. This reduces a recognizably stylish sound effect to a monotonous tinny crackle.

Universally panned by credited gaming magazine outlets, it’s obvious that Aliens: Colonial Marines was rushed to meet a deadline in an attempt to appease fans. There is very little content available for Alien fans to invest their time in. what is available does little to expand the alien continuity and instead convolutes the franchise as a whole. Not recommended.

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