Aliens: Colonial Marines – Thoughts

aliens_colonial_marines_1I normally wait to beat a game to put up my brief review (thus still no RE6!) but I had to chime in on a few things here. I’m working through Colonial Marines and it is a chore. I’ll beat it, but there are a number of irksome things to detail.

Since I’m playing New Super Mario Bros. U at the same time, we’re looking at completely different games. In that game, when I head to a curious corner; I explore it. There’s almost always something there. In Aliens, every dead end is just that – a dead end. There’s no reason to explore…simply because there’s never anything there. Of course, there are collectibles, but why might there be dog tags sitting on a desk? I don’t know who the guy is, nor why dog tags would be just sitting there. I’ll get a trophy for collecting them all, but since I know I missed some, why go back? Audio logs are a little better.

As for the visuals, it’s already been chronicled how questionable the game looks. From slow-to-load textures to an overarching shoddy presentation, it’s just wrong. Xenomorphs have stiff animations and they just disappear from time to time. Any sense of realism or fear is wiped away by these visual hiccups. The lighting sometimes look great (like with strobe light effects or during cut scenes) but other times things just look bad. Part of the problem is that the we were promised pictures like this one. I remember this scene in the game. I can promise you; it didn’t look nearly as good as what you see here.

But that’s not all. There are countless inexplicable problems. Death scenes could be so cool, instead, your character just dies and the screen turns grey. The powerloader sequence was utterly disappointing. Why do doors take forever to open?!

I mean, there are positives. Some sequences were very cool and I had a few moments of dread. Aliens did instill fear for a short while. But every time something awesome happens, the game would come back to me, washing away anything good. Now, I’m a bit more than halfway through, but why are there no tense facehugger sequences yet? No eggs hatching? This could be the greatest thing ever but instead I’m trying to find a doctor to save Bella, a character I have zero interest in?

I should save judgement because the game is not yet done. But there’s nothing that can be done to fix the issues I have already encountered. While my anticipation was outrageously high, it was brought back to earth by the poor reviews. Even with lowered expectations, this is still disappointing. Opportunities missed everywhere. Meh.

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