Ever since release I knew that Aliens: Colonial Marines isn’t a good game. Yet, in space no one can hear how curiosity kills the cat. And it’s almost a shame that despite playing it 7 years later, despite patches, despite other experiences and possible change of perspective, I feel like I still don’t have much to say about this game that hasn’t been already. Not because it’s that bad, but because it’s that mediocre in its poor quality. But, I’ll try to explore this game at least a bit.
One thing that needs an immediate mention is that, probably the biggest issue with the Aliens: Colonial Marines release was in 2013 and why it’s still not completely forgotten as it would’ve been based on its own merits, is all of the controversy and lies that accompanied the release of the game. For one, it was famously incredibly buggy and, despite the patches, it actually still is. Most of the truly gamebreaking bugs were “fixed” in the clumsiest ways possible, but the rest exists. The final boss, for example, often clips through the crate it should be pushed by and while the patching team couldn’t synchronize the animations properly with patches, at least now when the boss still clips through the crate, the final cutscene will trigger nonetheless.
For another, there is still a lot of undisclosed mysteries about who the hell made the game and how. It’s presented as a “Gearbox production of a (5 studio names) game” and due to how things work in gaming industry, a lot of outsourcing, lots of uncredited work and other things that are sadly still normal 7 years later, could only be revealed in small anonymous confessions by separate people over the years. And since Gearbox were actively trying to sweep everything under the rug, not much has been revealed since 2013. And on top of all this, the game was marketed (and still is, actually) using the media that doesn’t reflect the visual fidelity of the game, including the so called “bullshots” and even the trailers based on the planned sequences and visuals versus the ones that are in the actual game.
So, this alone made the game infamous enough and started the truly bad reputation for Gearbox Software that they have, unfortunately, only continuously reinforced over the years. But what about the game itself?
Well… It’s just a really mediocre FPS at best. It’s rarely trying to go for the horror theme of the source material, quite quickly going with full on action. Also, quite infamously, focusing more on the conflict of Colonial Marines and the goons hired by Weyland-Yutani, rather than versus the titular Aliens, the xenomorphs. To be fair, the game isn’t truly overemphasizing one or the other in terms of sequences and shootouts as there’re plenty uniquely xenomorph sequences, including several levels more focused on the horror aspect of the franchise. But this is a title where you just shoot lots of stuff first and foremost and it doesn’t matter that much what’s in your aiming reticle.
What’s bad is that with so much shooting, none of it feels good. The combat sequences tend to work as your basic arenas, where you make a few steps into a location and then waves of enemies pour in and trying to push forward is ill-advised. I’ll give the game this much – it rarely actually locks you in, so if you’re quick you can run past some enemies and get into the next checkpoint. But that will only increase the bugs you can encounter which are aplenty already.
The game is also full of utterly bizarre core mechanics. Like, you have an experience system that unlocks weapons and attachments/upgrades to them. And you constantly (with few exceptions) carry the full arsenal on yourself, but can only set 2 weapons (also a pistol and a grenade) for the selection. It’s never properly explained, it’s really weird and inconvenient and it also seems like some of the opening parts of the game require you to die a few times to unlock a better attachment to your gun so you could progress easier (as the xp progress is saved between deaths). Also, the XP progress bar cannot be hidden and remains stuck to your upper right corner of the HUD. There are “challenges” which are no less bizarre and also linear in progression, so you might complete the requirements for one down the line, but it won’t count until it’s active. It’s… it’s just a weird mess and it’s hard to understand the logic behind it all. Oh and the DLC weapons are ridiculously overpowered, but in case of this game it’s a blessing.
The story exists, which is the nicest thing I say about it. The whole point of it all, and the only story DLC that the game received Stasis Interrupted, seems to be based on the “okay, we got Michael Biehn, let’s design the whole story as an excuse to have his character”. Because it never goes anywhere. Corporal Hicks is alive and for some reason that is very important even though the game never explains what’s so important about him (Stasis Interrupted mentions that his report can damage WY reputation, but that’s about it). We get a ridiculously tasteless brief revisit of the Ripley’s character, aka the actually important character of the classic film franchise, and no new characters to actually care about, just some basic typical oorah marines.
There are attempts to do something interesting here and there. The visual style is a curious attempt, for example, with lots of color grading filtering, heavy grain effect, very intentionally aliased look and high contrast. It doesn’t look good, but I can see what they were going for. It sadly makes the game look like it’s a title from 2002 with some of the more modern post-processing on top and high-res textures, but the team(s) that worked on the game clearly had an idea there. The section with the goofy looking aliens that react to sound is primitive, but really nicely done (if you ignore how good the aliens look). Some of the sound work is pretty solid as well, as are the recreations of some of the locations from Aliens. The music is boring, however, despite directly drawing from Aliens, not for the fault of its own, but rather due to how underwhelming the gameplay it accompanies is – it stands out in a weird way. Also the consistency of geography between levels is often absent entirely, probably due to how often chunks of the game had to be reshuffled and cut.
At the end of the day, however, it’s not an interesting example of an infamously bad game. It’s bland most of the time, infuriating during some sections. It has tiny nuggets of cool ideas, but those are never really implemented good enough to bother playing the game. I was curious and I tend to love exploring failures in games, but this playthrough left me with no discernible emotions. And if not for the lies and the controversies surrounding it, I’d say that this game should simply be forgotten. But due to the controversies, it should be remembered more for what surrounded its release than for what it actually is – an uneventfully bland game.