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Game Reviews

Discussion in 'The Gaming Forum' started by luvgonzo, Jun 4, 2013.

  1. luvgonzo

    luvgonzo Pisshead

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    Fancy giving us a review on a game you've completed? Then do it here.

    Aliens: Colonial Marines review

    Colonial Marines is a first-person shooter that takes aim at the rich Aliens mythology... and misses.

    Of all the various genres and styles explored in the Alien films, the war-movie-in-space bluster of James Cameron’s Aliens is an obvious candidate for a videogame adaptation. It boasts tough-talking alpha males, industrial hardware, compensatory-scale firearms - basically all the things that games have anyway (frequently inspired by Aliens in the first place, to be fair), along with the most effective monster in modern science fiction, the sleek, psycho-sexually unsettling creature that the marines call the “xenomorph.”

    Aliens: Colonial Marines isn’t quite an adaptation of Cameron’s film, but a very direct echo. It’s a first-person shooter set after the events of Alien 3, but revisiting the locations and assuming the attitude and sandy vernacular of its predecessor. A fresh set of marines have been called in to investigate the xenomorph-related disappearance of the first squad, hauling the same battle-worn armour, spouting the same hard-assed one-liners, and duty bound to march directly into the same world of hurt.

    Promisingly, there’s an admirable meticulousness to the game’s recreation of the film’s sights and sounds. Strobing lights and shadows dance along the functional-future decks of the Sulaco, motion trackers whir with a familiar intensity, and a checklist of pulse rifle, shotgun and steadicam-rigged smartgun shows the marines’ armoury is all in order. The aliens, too, look the part, skulking, crouching and hissing in shadows and on ceilings.

    The problem is when you stop looking and start shooting at them, which is very much the central interaction of the game. At this point Colonial Marines’ approximation of the Aliens magic proves to be skin-deep. These aliens aren’t scary - there are too many of them, and they’re too easy to cut down. Worse still, they’re not the fearful Darwinist super-predator the films would have them be - sometimes they get stuck on the scenery, or pause and stare at you while you’re reloading, or sometimes they’ll lunge and miss. Even with the introduction of two new varieties of xenomorph - spitters, who use ranged attacks, and faster, more dangerous lurkers - the basic act of fighting the aliens feels chewy and repetitive.

    Another problem is the lack of Ellen Ripley. A determination to keep Sigourney Weaver in the film series was responsible for the direction of Alien 3, which if you’ve forgotten consisted mostly of being in prison with puritanical Yorkshiremen following the off-screen deaths of the rescued child and likeable male lead from Aliens. This direction is understandably unpopular with fans, who felt confused, betrayed, and in some cases like they were watching a really long, depressing Tetleys advert. It’s partly this perceived injustice that Colonial Marines attempts to rectify, and so it makes sense for the game to turn its back on Ripley too. But there has never been a standalone Alien film without her, and the game is a fine, accidental illustration of why. In Aliens, the marines add a rough, muscled edge to a story about Ripley’s struggle with the creature. Here the grunts take over, and their emotional journey becomes our emotional journey. No spoilers, but it’s a journey about a man with a big gun who gets angry.

    In fact, every deviation from the film seems to inadvertently demonstrate how soundly devised they were. Much of the combat in Colonial Marines sets you against human enemies rather than the aliens themselves, a consequence of the game’s unconvincing conspiracy storyline and, one suspects, recognised weaknesses in the design of the creatures. Even though it’s actually more precise and accomplished than the alien combat (a damning state of affairs) the enforced variety does more harm than good because it’s such a clumsy tonal digression from the source. The Weyland-Yutani corporation should be a shadowy power centre rather than a tangible antagonist - an omnipotent capitalist malice, not a manifest military force with strategically suspect white camouflage uniforms.

    The failure of Aliens: Colonial Marines runs deeper than a clumsy stab at sliding into the Alien canon, though. It’s not just a poor Aliens experience, it’s a poor game. There’s a stiffness to the movement and a lack of feedback to the vanilla weapon line-up that’s unexpected from Gearbox Software. After all, this studio gave us Borderlands 2, an accomplished, raucous celebration of firepower in which shooting was a fizzling, thunderous joy. This feels more like Duke Nukem Forever, the infamously delayed bad-taste shooter which Gearbox recently resurrected and sent to market full of archaic folly. There’s the same sense that playing the game is also excavating years of protracted development, with Colonial Marines having at one point been set for release at the end of 2008 before apparently being de-proritised, half-forgotten and finally restarted. Small things: the burst chests of marines fallen victim to alien impregnation are incongruously neat and circular, your AI companion will frequently disappear or hover obstinately in corridors, indistinct animation makes it hard to tell who’s talking during in-game sequences, and muddy audio makes it hard to hear them anyway. These aren’t just bad things - they’re things that feel like typical faults from four or five years ago.

    In other words, Aliens: Colonial Marines takes a shot, and misses. Conceptually it’s zeroed in on the most profitable place in the Alien chronology to expand and reiterate - there are wrongs to be righted in the transition from Aliens to Alien 3, and there must surely be a good game lurking somewhere in the style and bravado of Cameron’s marines. But this isn’t it - Colonial Marines feels dated, and even more damagingly fails to capture the essential terror of facing the creature itself.
     
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