-
Aliens: Colonial Marines
19 minutes playtime
2 of 60 achievements
It might seem unfair to judge a game after less than 20min of game-time but… How did this game not get a lower review score? I mean it got 45 on metacritic, which is kinda low, but really, how did it not get lower?
I guess not everyone had my experience with it.
The game starts with a cutscene showcasing some really poor character models. Alright, that’s not game breaking, it just makes the game look a bit cheap.
Then there’s a section where you move through the ship with a motion detector in hand. It’s really predictable, you know what’s a fake blip that’s just there to startle you and when the alien will actually show up. Okay, so not a good start, but still not game break.
Then comes the alien. I stepped back, anticipating the attack of a foe I had not even seen and… the game had a scripted sequence that was supposed to throw you back a certain distance, and suddenly I was seeing the inside of a wall. Good quality there!
But alright, I got rid of the alien, stepped out of the wall, and the alien ran away into the next room. I shot it, the alien jumped me again, I pushed away the alien, and then… it started showing its behind to me. It was just standing there, proudly displaying its behind, not minding getting shot in its repeatedly. Well, it finally died and slumped over.
Then comes a sequence when you’re supposed to run from the aliens. Only the aliens slowly waddles towards you, being about as unthreatening as a bunch of angry ducklings. What’s up with that anyway, why are the aliens so slow? Why are they not using any of their famous agility to at least try to dodge out of the way? Why are they just slowly waddling towards me?
After a short while of slowly backing away from waddling aliens, I reached the point where you’re supposed to defend a person opening a door. It takes a while, and more aliens keeps waddling towards me. Kinda bored, I reach for my cup of tea, and then an alien pounces me, and I’m suddenly realizing that I’m inside a wall again. Only this is a wall I can’t get out of.
And so ends my short, and completely unrewarding attempt at playing Aliens: Colonial Marines.
Coincidentally I watched an interview with Randy Pitchford yesterday where he kept saying that he couldn’t understand why this game was so badly received, or rather that it didn’t have anything to do with the actual product but unreasonable expectations about the game. I’m not at all up to speed with this controversy but from what I could tell from the interview he seems completely intellectually dishonest.
This, however, got me interested enough to go looking to pick the game up to form my own opinion but this came to a quick end when I discovered the DLC mess. Maybe if sometime down the line they release a complete version, and purge the insanely priced DLC, I’ll get my chance to try it out.
I had low expectations for the game going on, having heard that it was quite bad, and even then, it failed to live up to them. Randy might just be delusional, not seeing the flaws of his product, and choosing to blame anything bad on others.
As for the DLC mess… the base game comes with all DLC these days, they’ve just set everything to the base price of the core game, for some reason. Just know that it’s a terrible game, so don’t pay more than a few € for it.
I’m pretty good with low expectations so I might find it enjoyable but yeah, I’m waiting for a deep discount. I managed to find Deus Ex: The Fall quite enjoyable coming in with low expectations but the abrupt “ending” still kind of sucked :P
Good to know about the DLC. I get instantly turned off when I see something like that so I wouldn’t have figured it out myself.
Aliens: Colonial Memes.
This review had me in stitches Fnord thank you
I guess being a meme is the only thing this game is good for ;)
Kinda bored, I reach for my cup of tea
Best line.
Glad you liked it. It’s rare to find a game so devoid of life as this one, where the enemies feel so non-threatening that you can just reach for your cup of tea in the middle of what the game wants you to think is a desperate fight.
It was savaged when it came out; I remember the uproar. After a short spate, though, a lot of people started posting that they were having fun playing it and it was actually a good game that had been judged poorly. I assume that’s why the ratings are middling.
Going with the experience I had, I’m surprised they were not worse, considering the game has been patched since launch. It’s still buggy, and just lifeless. Where Ubisoft games are also very buggy, they tend to be a bit entertaining at least, in a broken way, but this game… well, it was lifeless and buggy. So a sub 40 would be well justified. I agree with Jim Sterling’s 2,5/10 review score, that’s where this game should be, at least going by what I could see in my short playtime.
I’m not a fan of FPS so i just looked for location design, story, characters and in this regard the game is decent (AVP1 movie level i’d say), i’d give it 4-5/10 in the end.
In regards to the AI
Friend of mine had to play it on the hardest difficulty. From what i’ve heard when it came out, it was possible to just outrun the Aliens.
It’s still possible to out-run them. Or at least it seemed that way. They died really fast, so I did not do any rigorous testing.
The game has also been patched a few times, as incredible as it seems, you might have just played a more improved version of the original release, and updated difficulty options might have been on those patches
If this is the improved version, I’m really glad I did not play the original :P I mean, this game is broken like a Ubisoft game