It’s Game Over, Man, For Aliens: Colonial Marines

aliens colonial marines

It’s “What We’re Playing Monday!” By now you’ve probably read all about the absolute cluster-eff that is Aliens: Colonial Marines, Gearbox’s six-years in the making supposed love letter to the Aliens franchise. What it is when its at home is actually a bland, buggy mess, more akin a budget shooter from earlier in the generation with xenomorphs tossed in.

Picking up sometime after the events of Aliens, Colonial Marines scatters any notion of canon to the wind, with several characters literally hand-waving away plot points in an attempt to get you back to killing xenos without much thought. Characters who are dead come back for no reason, and the mere presence of the Sulaco above LV-426 is enough to get even the most casual Aliens fan’s blood boiling.

Combat is a boring affair with xenomorphs running directly at the player, taking round after round without flinching until they fall over. There are several different types of aliens present throughout the game, including the infamous “butthurt” aliens (yes, they are supposed to walk like that) but for the most part they burst out of vents and run directly at you. There are also human mercenaries to fight who do incredibly dumb things during combat, but also have perfect aim and reaction time. It’s a frustrating combination.

The game also just looks bad, with textures that would be embarrassing on the PS2. Characters clip right through each other all the time and even using the power loader is a disappointed exercise. One positive thing about Aliens: Colonial Marines is that the sound of the pulse rifle is dead-on, but you can put a red-dot sight and flame decals on it, so I guess that’s a wash.

Has anyone else played Aliens: Colonial Marines? What did you think?

Written by

mitch@gamersushi.com Twitter: @mi7ch Gamertag: Lubeius PSN ID: Lubeius SteamID: Mister_L Origin/EA:Lube182 Currently Playing: PUBG, Rainbow 6: Siege, Assassin's Creed: Origins, Total War: Warhammer 2

One thought on “It’s Game Over, Man, For Aliens: Colonial Marines”

  1. It is nuts that this game is a total, absolute mess. Weird that everyone is so surprised that it wasn’t a great game. I feel like it always looked mediocre, but certainly not atrocious. Props to you for soldiering on.

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