Aliens: Colonial Marines

[Ranualf]

well i`ve finished the game- on soldier level, now onto hardened, then Ultimate Badass

So far the pvp bit is great fun, although coms is a must, as we showed the high level players yesterday, a bunch of noobs can stick it to the man... we were all lvl 13/14 and they were 25/26 and got themselves killed. By us- laughing all the way
Then they basically copied our plans, but we killed them really fast, as we identified the potential weakness in the plan(swarm technique) FTW !

The campaign is pretty good, although the story line is somewhat stretched, and the ending.. not my choice, and rather .... ...

Gameplay wise its great, it looks exactly like it does in the film (bit of a Aliens nutter) and the sounds, and looks of the weapons is perfect, right down to the stutter of the pulse rifle when you unload a extended burst into the aliens face...

so overall i`d give it a good 8/10
Yes the graphics could of been sharper, and more fancy, bit its supposed to be dark, scary and gritty, so it works for me
The story line is weak after.. a certain part, but it flows quite nice, end wrap up is not my taste.. i feel it needs more violence

But it leave room for expansions, lets hope they have them out soon

So overall its a great game if your a Aliens fan if you not, and you plays "fancy FPS" then it`ll be ok.. but great fun at a LAN

OORAH to Ashes !

[ArithonUK]

"That… could have gone better."

The pulse-rifle "sound effect" is a sound clip that plays, but doesn't match the gun animation - it's basically a sound-bite from Aliens applied like an amateur mod. You'd be less phased if you pulled the trigger and it clucked like a chicken!

The xenomorph A.I. is terrible - they run in circles or just stand around. When attacking they walk (yep walk) up to you and stand up in front of you an swipe repeatedly at your face, at which point you are prompted (every time) to "Press V" to knock them back. When killed they fade to smoke.
That's nothing compared to the dire state of the Non-Player Character A.I. - I've seen three Aliens standing next to my NPC "squad mate" who switches to his motion tracker and turns his back on them. The aliens then danced the funky chicken next to him for a bit before one peeled off and attacked me, once, then walked away. Huh? They didn't attack him, he ignored them.
At one point my NPC got stuck in a doorway and I couldn't proceed because he was required to open a door. Start again.

As has been said elsewhere, the Non Player Characters randomly teleport from place to place and the motion tracker only picks up aliens that have spawned, so an empty room (according to the tracker) spouts a dozen aliens from thin air as you walk into the room. And they don't crawl or climb in, for the most part, they teleport in half-out of a vent or doorway. The motion tracker measures in metres. But metres in what universe I have no idea! It detects movement in front of you 3M away when clearly nothing is there. The alien being detected turns out to be about 20m down the corridor outside the room and not in the direction indicated.
Major flashbacks to the monster-in-the-closet scenario of DOOM3. They mostly come out of thin air, mostly.

The Alien animations look more like something from a DOOM II mod than an Unreal 3 Engine game. They have two positions (1) stand to attack (2) run on all fours, with no transition. It's horrible to behold. We’re on an express elevator to Q.A. hell, going down!

After playing a while you start to unlock weapons. Like the flamethrower - that doesn't throw flame further than a zippo lighter - it has, at most, a 2 metre range. Nothing like the eight metre jet of flame Ripley enjoyed.

I have yet to try the multi-player, which by all accounts it a lot better than the main game.

They've lovingly applied sound effects to the menus (they're great) which have been made authentic to the Aliens universe. Yet the game feeling jarringly thrown together. All the right elements are present, but they just haven't been put together right or made to work at all.

With the curved-glass HUD the game made me think this was a hastily made Aliens mod for Star Wars: Republic Commando (another unreal engine game).

If GearBox made this game (which is in some doubt), then they deserve an award for making the first "Daikatana" of the 21st century.

Did SEGA sabotage the cash support and jettison the developers on the trip home? It was a bad call, SEGA. A bad call…

What were they thinking? My verdict: “You Steam Sale that sh#t, Hudson!”.

Nuke it from your wish-list. It's the only way to be sure.

[Milli]

From what reviews are out and what has been posted here.

What I'd really suggest us playing the game co-op.  as that's what I've been doing and why I found the poor reviews as harsh as they were.

I agree some aspects of the game have glitches - teleporting in front for example is annoying.  If I'm locked out behind doors then that's my fault and should die due to it or have to cut the door back open for example.

But back to my main point - play it co-op and I believe you'd have a better experience.

[ArithonUK]

From RPS today:-

the short version claimed in the post is that Gearbox kept delaying  Aliens in favor of other projects (Borderlands, Duke, etc), and Sega  finally cracked the whip. Gearbox, however, decided to outsource so it  could keep focusing on breadwinners like Borderlands 2, which is where  TimeGate, Demiurge, and Nerve entered the picture. Then things allegedly  got very, very messy.

Somehow the schedules for [Aliens' codename] Pecan and Borderlands 2  managed to line up, and GBX realized that there was no ****ing way they  could cert and ship two titles at the same time. Additionally, campaign  (which was being developed by TimeGate) was extremely far behind, even  as Pecan’s Beta deadline got closer and closer. In April or May (can’t  remember which), Pecan was supposed to hit beta, but GBX instead came to  an agreement with SEGA that they would push the release date back one  more time, buying GBX around 9 [month] extension.

Explains why the campaign was so dire.

The multiplayer is very good and once I'd got the controls down, it's cracking. Even playing the campaign co-op!?

So play online only and you're five by five.

[DarkAngel]

Being as this is released on both PC & Mac; will their coop and multiplayer combine both platforms?

[kregoron]

The game is absolutely rubbish... its even worse then the previous..

The Graphics, certain bits are pretty enough, tho most animations are as Arithon nicely put it, looks like something from DOOM II..
The physics or lack of same are probably some of the worst ive seen in recent years, the game feels incredibly static and has no flow.
The A. I.... or whatever they claim it to be, reminds me of the A.I. from Redline (a 1999 game) had the same bugs, and acts quite similar, run past a enemy and they fail.


Like Arithon said, they got all the right elements, its just been throw together in the worst possible way.. 2/10 from me (if in doubt, read arithons post again, hes absolutely right(man hes actually spot on, who would have guessed that to happen ))

[Milli]

Well there is an 8gb patch supposedly in pipeline very soon so hopefully will sort out a lot of the flaws everyone hates.

[BrotherTobious]

thats not patch thats a new game!!!!

[Tutonic]

8GB! That is a patch of Soldner-esque proportions. What are they going to do, re-animate everything?

[kregoron]

They need to completely redo most of the game... so 8Gig is a bit on the low side...

[kregoron]

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Aliens-Colonail-Marines-FPS-Bomb-Gearbox,21092.html


i love the video in the end tho

[BrotherTobious]

Well I still have the game in shrink rap and I am too depressed to even install it

[kregoron]

Install it brother, you might like its quirky nature

[BrotherTobious]

what are you trying to say about me mate?

[kregoron]

oh sorry didnt think id touch a nerve there


 i love you m8