Aliens: Colonial Marines has received quite a bit of controversy following its numerous delays during the past couple of years. With high expectations now set to Gearbox Software’s Aliens game due to the delay, was the extra time worth the wait? With the over populated shooter market this generation, many fans hoped that Aliens: Colonial Marines have something to make it stand out. Did Gearbox Software and TimeGate Studios somehow achieve this?
Let’s take a look on what’s HOT and what’s NOT in our review of Aliens: Colonial Marines.
HOT
Aliens Lore Galore
For someone who is an Aliens fan, playing Colonial Marines will put a smile in your face as the game successfully stays true to the franchise. The characters and eerie environments found throughout the game will be sufficient enough to make you realize that you’re playing an Aliens game. References to the movies are done in many fascinating ways such as collecting legendary weapons that characters from the movie carried, dog tags of the dead soldiers, and some audio logs that are straight from the movie.
Colonial Marines’ story is a direct sequel to the 1986 film where a group of Marines are tasked to follow up the distress call sent out from the USS Sulaco. As someone who has watched the 1986 film, many things from the movie are brought up to the game, giving fans some nostalgic moments to feel welcomed to the Aliens universe presented in the game. Expect to see a lot of familiar locations from the film where you can expect to see Xenomorphs crawling all the time from vents, to windows, and pretty much everywhere.
Intense Filled Campaign
When playing Aliens: Colonial Marines, expect to feel tension and intense moments during the main campaign. Regardless if you are playing by yourself or with a friend, there will be moments within the game where fear and tension will develop. The atmosphere of the areas that you will find within the game helps develop an eerie feel to it. Xenomorphs will quietly sneak on you where you can expect to jump out all of a sudden. There will be times where horde of Xenomorphs will come rushing and the only way to survive is go crazy in taking them down. For a shooter game, Colonial Marines has its moments – primarily the stealth level in the game.
Fun Multiplayer Mode
If you have a friend playing the game as well, you can team up with them for co-op fun. While it’s not really necessary to play the game with friends since the campaign is easy, you can add some fun in taking down Xenomorphs with a friend. Up to four players can join one party and people are ranked in an arcade style fashion. Every kill or challenge you do will give you points that you can use to upgrade weapons. Customization us there for anyone who wishes to make their weapons stronger but the selection are ample and not enough.
In addition to co-op, one of the good things about the game is the online competitive mode. In Colonial Marines, there are four modes that you can play; Team Deathmatch, Extermination, Escape and Survivor. From those four modes, one thing that stands out the most is Escape where the marine side must go through the linear map level and they must do anything to get out safely while the opposing Xenomorph side will try to stop you.
As for the Extermination mode, it’s decent as well as it will involve the Marines side trying to occupy a designated location for a set amount of time. Think of it as a Capture of the Flag mode where one side, which are the Marines will go to the objective location, hold that position and wait for the bomb to tick off, killing the Xenomorph’s eggs. For every successful extermination, the Marines will gain a point. As for the Xenomorphs’ side, all they will do is to stop the Marines from detonating a bomb in their lairs, though they will not earn any points for doing so.
In the last two modes, they are rather straight to the point and common. Team Deathmatch gives you the classic Xenomorph vs the Marines match while Survivor will just let the Marines survive for a set amount of time while the Xenomorph’s side takes them down. Pretty much, being on the Xenomorph’s side is the best one since you can do all sorts of crazy stunts that you see a Xenomorph can do in the campaign like climbing walls, going through vents, and stealthily kill someone.