The first blog - Aliens: Colonial Marines

A quick welcome to you all, this is my attempt at blogging. Any constructive criticism and feedback is welcomed, I’m just getting started. I know the layout and aesthetics can use some work, but Google Blogger seems a bit weird to me. Anyway, let’s start with a hotly discussed topic in the recent weeks - Aliens: Colonial Marines.


Nugget can't even revive this lifeless carcass

What the heck happened? I’ve been keeping track of this game since its conception in 2006 and, perhaps foolishly, I assumed Gearbox was getting it done using their development time wisely. What has emerged, in reality, is that this project has been dragged through development hell between two developers and a pushy publisher. Ideas became jumbled as SEGA demanded a more Call of Duty-styled shooter, while Gearbox gave very little to Timegate to work with once they began development on the game around 2010. The game lacked solid foundations, and suddenly was becoming a hodgepodge of steaming crap. Gearbox finally invested into the project in 2012, only to find Timegate had been crafting something not up to snuff and which couldn’t even function on the PS3!

While development sounded like hell, playing it was worse. I cannot stress how sad I felt trudging through this dated, ugly shooter. It gets the idea of Aliens right, a cruel joke in itself, with pitch-perfect audio for guns. But the Xenos are so neutered that you could adopt them as household pets. There’s zero challenge as you trudge through tight, linear corridors and shoot without blinking. Co-op is squandered by friendly fire, meaning you all too often gun down your own friends, and multiplayer is buggered by balance issues. It was depressing to admit, but Colonial Marines is one of the worst, most disappointing shooters to come in the 360’s lifecycle. It’s a shame too, because had the Xenos been a little tougher, had the story not completely debunked the series’ canon and had the game looked better than something from 2006, it would’ve been a hot contender.

And it's a shame, because this game could have been a AAA game. Maybe if Gearbox ditched Nukem and focused on A:CM and Borderlands, a better product could've shipped. Perhaps Gearbox should've applied a kind of Borderlands-template to the game, offering a more polished shooting engine and better graphics, as well as programming the same kind of aggressive AI found in that game. Co-op could've also been better implemented, especially removing Friendly Fire, and perhaps a more interesting challenge system and upgrade skeleton could've been borrowed from the RPG-Shooter hybrid. But that sums up Aliens - a game of could'ves and possibilities which were all squandered because it became an unloved project.

I ended up trading the game in only a week after getting it. This was down to multiple reasons: CEX were offering a nice £30 for it, meaning I’d only lose £10 instead of the full £40. But more disappointing was the attitude everyone seemed to be showing towards fixing the damn game. Pitchford blocked anyone on Twitter who attempted to criticise him, his lying and the game while SEGA and Gearbox made no kind of hints or discussions of patching it. Would I buy the game again if it’s patched? Well, considering how borked the game is, it’d have to be a damn big patch. And even then, I don’t think I would. I almost distrust Gearbox at this point, because they clearly took the project on, got all big with Borderlands, ditched it for B2 and Duke Nukem (which boggles my mind) and then realised “Oh shit, this game needs to be released or we’ll get sued, slap together any old shit and it’ll sell because it’s Aliens!”. That’s just bollocks.

It's proof that a popular license cannot be utilized without finesse and merely exploited. The sloppy story is particularly woesome, with a late-game cameo which makes no damn sense in terms of the series' canon. Even in game, when a question is raised about this guy's presence, he merely says "that's a longer story". Just what in the fuck is that sposed to mean? I do have one thing I disagree with other critics: the horror aspect. Sure, the Xenos most definitely lack punch, but I personally do not think Aliens is that terrifying. Perhaps it was the comfort of having armed Marines packed to the teeth with weaponry which removed some of the terror - compared to the first film with a dozen or so unarmed engineers who are prey to this creature - but at the same time, I can see people's frustrations with the lack of horror. I don't think a shooter based on Aliens will ever be scary though, and if it is, it will also be very frustrating for casual gamers as Xenos tear you to shreds.

How you'll feel while playing this poor game

So, what can we learn from this escapade of mediocrity? Well, I certainly won’t be jumping on pre-orders anymore. I don’t want to plonk down £40 for a game only to have it be shit, besides most games seem to go cheap within a few months. Gearbox Games will not gain my immediate attention anymore because my trust in them has been tarnished over this whole incident. And long development times do not equal major success. The evidence is piling up: Duke Nukem Forever, Prey, Too Human and now this. If anything, the rollercoaster development processes these games suffer only seems to produce a worse product.

 

Also, the likelihood of a good Aliens game coming out soon has dropped from a possibilty to zero.