Man, it seems that I have been on a real negative kick lately, and this week doesn’t look like it is going to break that trend at all. Sorry, I’ve simply had a very bad run of it lately, and I suppose you all will simply have to be entertained by my suffering once again. The source of my agony this week is “Aliens: Colonial Marines,” a spidery little failure of a game that chokes you with its mediocrity, and forces it’s franchise failures down your throat, before an explosive sense of disappointment erupts from your chest. As a huge fan of the “Alien” series, no one is more frustrated with the final product of the game than I. There is an old rule amongst gamers that a movie tie-in game will suck, period. There have been few exceptions over the years, and those that have been exceptions only have the distinction of being competent at best. “Aliens: Colonial Marines” is competent, in that the game functions (despite being buggy as crap), but as a fan of first person shooters (FPS), and as a fan of the “Alien” franchise, it left me screaming. And in space, no one can hear you scream.
The problems begin for “Aliens: Colonial Marines” with it’s very premise. It is simultaneously a good idea from a business perspective, yet completely lazy and exasperating from a writing point of view. Gearbox wants you to essentially play the plot of the “Aliens” movie, but bigger and better because it’s a video game. And that is fine, if lacking creativity. It actually starts off promising enough however. The U.S.S. Sulaco, the ship that Ripley and the other survivors escaped on at the end of “Aliens,” has reappeared in orbit over LV-468, and another detachment of Colonial Marines have been dispatched to respond to the distress signal that it is broadcasting. While the game never explains how the Sulaco came back from Fiorina 161 (the penal colony planet that it ended up at in “Alien 3”), this isn’t a bad setup. It is actually sort of logical for the military to investigate the disappearance of their own. You play as Corporal Christopher T. Winter, a character so bland I’ve forgotten his name in the time it took me to write this sentence. Seriously, Gearbox? We don’t have enough thirty-something, brown-haired white-guys? Anyway, you and your fellow Colonial Marines fight the Xenomorphs as you might expect, but only for a while. Great chunks of the game (I didn’t keep tally, but I would guess more than half of the game) are spent fighting Weyland-Yutani mercenaries. In an “Aliens” game. No really. The one thing that would set this game apart from the tasteless grey sludge of nearly-identical FPSs of the past decade, is fighting a variety of terrifying creatures in a survival-horror like atmosphere, and they ditch that goodness early on so you can duck for cover and shoot guys hiding behind crates for the ten millionth time. You may have noticed that I have stopped talking about the story. That isn’t because the acidic rage distracted me. That is pretty much the entirety of the story. More Colonial Marines show up to look for their fellows, Xenomorphs attack, Weyland-Yutani mercenaries attack (for some reason), kill everything for a few hours, and kill the Queen by pushing a single button once. Translation: a sucky game just appeared on your motion tracker.
This game is butt ugly to boot. Really ugly. A far step down from the demo level that they showed originally, a matter that Gearbox is claiming to be looking into, amidst rumors of embezzling the money that Sega set aside for them. Animations are stiff, and the detail level on the models is laughable, almost getting into full block-hands and flap mouths of N64 Goldeneye fair. The only thing that might make you smile, is the game HUD has that 80’s digital look, which is a nice little nod to the “futuristic” technology of the “Aliens” movie. The only, and I mean only, praise that I can give this game (other than admitting that shooting the Xenomorphs for the first ten minutes was fun) is the sound of this game. It is PERFECT. Every sound of the “Aliens” movie is recreated perfectly here. The electronic squeal of the Pulse Rifle, the bone-chilling hiss of the Xenomorph, and the epic music of James Horner, all make their presence known, much to the delight of any franchise fans out there. So if you absolutely must get the game, at least your ears can have a tasty treat.
If you are a fan of the “Alien” franchise, or just the movie “Aliens” specifically, the absolute most I can suggest if I was being incredibly generous, is a short rental. After the initial ten minutes, you will be so disappointed you will need a Power Loader to pull yourself up from your slumped over, crying position. Non-fans? Skip it. You won’t get anything out of it that you couldn’t get from fourteen billion other FPS titles out there. And it isn’t even that well made, as FPS’s go. Gearbox has a lot to answer for.
