As we saw in the film, the xenomorph is essentially nature's (or the engineers) perfect killing machine. It kills you when it's born; it kills you when it's alive; hell, this badass can kill you when it's dead. While the marines in the Aliens film were able to kill some of the creatures, they were quickly overrun and decimated. Now that being said, why was there the need to shoehorn in another bad guy in the form of Weyland-Yutani forces? And why are they harder to kill than the most evil killing machine in the universe?
I could see a point where they could be useful. They make for great alien cannon fodder and could explain how the Sulaco got back to LV-426. You could have a cutscene showing them getting torn to shreds by the xenomorphs or see evidence of their encounters by having facehugged W-Y guys give bloody birth, or seeing bodies on the floor. Making them harder to kill than the aliens is a bitch slap to the legacy of the monster and takes the focus away from the main character, which should be the aliens!
3. The Glitch Mob
There have been many reviews thus far that complain about the quality of the graphics in Aliens: CM, and it is a valid issue. The visuals in the game are a mixed bag ranging from fair to extremely dated. While the game has been in development for six years, the graphics, particularly of the characters look like they were the first thing done for the game. Are they six years old? I can get past that, though; a game is NOT all about the graphics. The thing is, there are so many graphical glitches, it gets hard to take the game seriously.
In the future according to Aliens, epilepsy must be cured, because there sure are a lot of friggin' strobe lights. Of course, the game tries to replicate that, but often times, particularly when not looking at the light source directly, it just looks like a crazy pallet flash for a second or two. That may not sound like much, but that is the least irritating glitch in the game. Weyland-Yutani must have developed the oscillation overthruster and mounted it on their guns, because they seem to be able to stick their weapons through solid matter and shoot at you, not to mention walk through walls. Shooting an enemy above you can have interesting physical results, as more than once I've witnessed dead aliens dangling from their tails and W-Y soldiers looking like they are attached to the ceiling via gravity boots. Get too far ahead of your teammates and they will just flash into existence right in front of you, Q-Style. Most laughable, while waiting for an elevator, I swear O'Neil was dancing Gangnam Style while waiting for me to catch up.
There are noticeable flaws in the sound design as well. I was forced to turn on subtitles, as the background noise was often louder than the characters talking. As bad ass as it was to hear the sounds of the pulse rifles at first, by the end of the game they were an annoyance at best.
Certain sections of the game had to be reloaded because my crack team of NPC's were stuck behind an object and couldn't figure out how to walk around. It just looks and feels sloppy; certainly not worth spending $60 on.
2. Character (or Lack Thereof) Development
In the opening minutes on board the Sulaco in Aliens (the film, not the game), you, the viewers, get to immediately bond with the Marines. Granted there are a few throwaway characters like Dietrich, Wierzbowski and others, but for the most part you get to know every single one of the characters at least partially. By the time the dying starts, you actually give a shit about a lot of them, and it's apparent on screen that they give a shit about each other. The problem with Aliens: CM is that at no point did I connect with any of the new characters in the slightest.
There are attempts to make us care or relate to the characters. The commanding officer Captain Cruz does his best to sound like he was trained right alongside Apone from the film. Instead he comes off as sounding like a Duke Nukem wannabe in uniform, even sounding like the Duke, though he was not voiced by Jon St. John. When your buddy is frantically searching for his "love" interest, he specifically describes their relationship as being purely sexual. He certainly seems determined to find his frak-buddy, even though he has specifically said he has no emotional attachment to her. Because of this, neither do you, the player.
Sadly, even when Hicks miraculously returns in the closing acts of the game, he is so poorly written and acted (his voiceover seems to have been phoned in by Michael Biehn, netting a paycheck for what seems to have been an hour's work) that I couldn't even care about him. I should have been excited to see him alive and to kick ass by his side, instead he just became random Marine number 36, but at least has a few lines.
One of the important things in the movie was how quickly the bravado was sapped from the marines. Wiseass Hudson was all full of piss and vinegar until he got his first look at a xenomorph, when he quickly became one of the most cowardly in the group. At no point did I feel that the disposable marines in the game ever got their situation, particularly in the beginning. They are in a floating tin can, trapped with a metric shit-ton of aliens who want nothing more than to eat them or face-rape them, and they are still treating the encounter like it was another day on the farm. One of the few moments I actually found myself giving a shit about the characters was when, in my explorations, I found the body of Ultimate Badass Private Hudson, his face contorted in pain as a result of having an alien burst out of his chest. Game over my friend, game over...
1. Captain Obvious and Major Oblivious, Freelance Writers
The people most likely to play Aliens: CM are fans of the Alien films. However, the game seems to have been written for a thirteen year old who snuck downstairs at night to play his dad's game, interested only in its M rating. Almost all tension is removed from the game, because the game loves to spell things out for you in crayon. When you encounter Bella, O'Neil's frak-buddy, she specifically tells you that she woke up gagging on a dead facehugger dick. So for thirteen year old Billy, that means a surprise later in the game (if he didn't get the idea of the chestburster in the beginning). For the rest of us though, it just means another character that is going to die, only by giving birth to a bouncing baby xenomorph.
Conversely, the game has plot holes large enough to fit the Prometheus through. During the briefing, Captain Cruz states that the Sulaco returned to LV-426. When asked by the apparently only intelligent person in the marines why the ship was there instead of Fury 161, she is promptly told to stop asking stupid intelligent questions and to go back in the kitchen and make him some pie. Are you kidding? That Lieutenant should be a fucking General! Sadly, that specific question is never answered, leaving only Lieutenant Reid and the rest of the frakking world to wonder how the ship got there.
The thing that drove me the most nuts with the storytelling came towards the end. When asked how he survived when he was ripped to pieces in the crash on Fury 161, Hicks tells you it's a long story and not another goddamn word about it. TELL THE FUCKING STORY!!!! MAKE ME READ IT IF YOU DON'T WANT TO PAY FOR THE VOICEOVER. HOW THE FUCK WAS HICKS BACK ON LV-426 WHEN HE WAS LAST SEEN WITH PIPES AND SHIT PROTRUDING THROUGH HIS DEAD ASS? FUCK!!!!!!!!! Pardon the momentary lapse of reason; I've had nightmares about this game, and not because the game is frightening.
Conclusion:
I really wanted to like this game but I just can't. It's not terrible, but it's also not particularly fun, with the glitches and issues above taking away from that limited amount of fun. When the game got something right, like Smart Gun combat, I felt a smile start to creep up on my face, but it was quickly dashed away, usually by a character opening their mouth or some horrendous glitch that killed any and all suspension of disbelief. Had the game kicked up the suspense, paid more attention to the stars of the game (the aliens), and tried to be more Dead Space and less Call Of Duty, I think they could have had a better product. Of course, some quality control would have helped as well, and there are a ton of indie games these days that feel like they have more production quality and attention to detail than Aliens: CM.
It's tragic really; the ending of the game leaves it open for a sequel, and with it being the highest selling game of the year thus far, it will most likely get one, a sequel which will most likely disappoint more than the original. At the end of the day, Aliens: CM is that kid on YouTube who yells "Look at me!" before falling flat on his face. Now excuse me, I need to go play some Borderlands 2 so I can remember that Gearbox knows how to make a good game.
"My mommy always said there no monsters - no real ones, but there are."
"Yes, there are, aren't they? They're called greedy game developers"
I completely and utterly agree with this entire article. Sure, the retcon point 10 I couldn't care less about because Alien Resurrection is a shit-hole of a movie, but otherwise this is an extremely unbiased review.
As a massive Aliens fan I too wanted to love this game. I feel that while this article picks out (fairly) all the problems with the game, it comes down to two massive problems. The gameplay sucks and the story makes no sense. If you had only one problem like this going for you while making such a lovingly detailed game (seriously when you first explore the cargo hold of the Sulaco, you'll understand what I mean) it'd be game over, man - but in the GOOD WAY.
However, as this article details, BOTH problems remain and therefore it's impossible to deny the sub-par craftsmanship.
My ultimate pro: Because this game is considered canon, Hicks LIVES!
My ultimate con: In Aliens, Bishop said the explosion from the atmospheric processor would be the size of Nebraska. YET, both the Alien ship (refuse to acknowledge Prometheus) and Hadley's Hope are in fine condition. I had a major problem with this.
Its on my list to play, your review sounds true and damning. That said were all gonna play it. No matter how bad the movies were we will inevitably keep playing these because Aliens 2 secured enough credit for us to continue playing these.
Gearbox knows how to make a good game. Embezzle money from Sega, and use that money to fund your own licenses. At least that is one of the many allegations floating around. And while some don't like the word "embezzlement", there have been multiple accounts that Gearbox had been lying to Sega about both progress and the number of people working on the project in order to keep collecting checks.
We'll probably never know where the blame really falls. Okay, it largely falls on Gearbox, who even in their best spin attempts was horribly inept. But I mean who made it so bad. Gearbox employees spun the blame to TimeGate. Anonymous TimeGate employees shifted the blame back to Gearbox. A Sega employee, who has since had his blog removed, went on a major rant against Gearbox, used the word "embezzled", and claimed the game was effectively made in nine months.
We have Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford lying (at the least by omission, at worst by outright lies), then going off in a tiff when people called him a liar. There are silly things like Pitchford blocking people on Twitter who were negative about the game, and then the only Twitter accounts he'd talk to were some suspiciously brand spanking new ones that had nothing but praise for Colonial Marines. There is the claim that Colonial Marines patches are being delayed while Gearbox focuses on Borderlands 2 DLC, which is weird in its own right as Gearbox has supposedly been outsourcing Borderlands 2 DLC.
The whole scandal has been more entertaining that the game itself will ever be.
Would it be a different gaming experience if this was on WiiU? I remember in 2011 when the WiiU was introduced one of the first games they touted was A:CM and it looked great with the use of the gamepad as the sensor. So is playing it on WiiU better or worse?
From what I'm reading it looks like it was primarily developed for PC and then ported to the consoles, and that said there is no control pad equal to mouse and keypad for shooting games
I say that ported games should be avoided in general, but I may be biased because ports from consoles to PC are 89.99% horrible unplayable crap, 10% basically bad fare and 0.01% decent game - never has a good (let alone great) game come from console to PC
Funny how you compare it to a Call of Duty outing, in that for a long
time I've wanted a Colonial Marines game that's patterned after
CoD...early Call of Duty, or Medal of Honor. As in, the USCM actually in a stand-up fight
with non-Xenomorph enemies. And, y'know, settings that aren't just the millionth iteration of Hadley's Hope.
The Colonial Marines Technical Manual, and even some of the comics and novels could provide fertile jumping off points...hell, depending on how the rights issues could turn out, maybe even elements from other sci-fi properties that have been crossed over with the Aliens canon. (Colonial Marines in Off-World Colony megacity urban combat, vs. replicant/synthetic insurgents? Encountering the unnerving predecessors behind the "Hyperdyne" android series? Stephen Lang as a USCM Colonel?)
Yeah, sure, there are a thousand ways you could still screw that up. But the same could be said for Aliens...and I can still dream.
Alien 3 did not happen. It was simply Ripley's nightmare in Hypersleep, where her surrogate daughter and love interest were ripped away from her, she underwent her worst fear of being impregnated by the aliens, and ultimately lost to the corporation, dying forgotten and unknown, so they could continue their push to acquire the creatures uninhibited.
@ComradeDread1 Funny, I just tell myself that the series ends after Aliens with Ripley and Hicks getting home and married off-screen while adopting Newt and that Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection were just MY bad dreams.
@ComradeDread1 That's also how I always saw it, especially given the last few lines in the movie:
Newt: Are we gonna sleep all the way home? Ripley: All the way home. Newt: Can I dream? Ripley: Yes, honey. I think we both can. [tucks Newt in] Ripley: Sleep tight. Newt: I-ffirmative.
9: If they retcon Alien: Resurrection out of existence, GOOD.
8: I got a handle on the aiming controls pretty quickly. The game was almost ridiculously easy after that, on any difficulty.
7: Throwing the Queen out of the ship was a very pragmatic way of dealing with her. I'm actually glad they went that route instead of going for a "cool" final battle. I can understand how that would disappoint others, though.
6: I never had this problem. In fact, I had the opposite one: my AI squadmates were SO effective, I almost felt unnecessary. O'Neal and his infinity smartgun chewed through enemies like Vincent Price chewed scenery, and the later levels where several Marines help you at once were even easier. I had to rush out way ahead just to get a piece of the action.
5: I've never played CoD, so I can't really comment.
4: I found the PMCs a lot easier to kill than an equivalent amount of aliens. Perhaps it was because the PMCs would fruitlessly attack my AI squadmates, whereas the aliens bumrushed me - and only me - in hordes.
3: The only glitches I encountered were 1) the Raven getting stuck in a wall and 2) an alien and PMC getting fused together somehow, so the alien was running around with a PMC stuck to his back.
2: No argument here. I didn't develop any sort of bond with the characters like I did in, say, Dishonored. I did sort of like them all by the end, though, almost in spite of the game.
1: No argument here, either. The, er, "story" was crap. I was glad Hicks was alive, though, no matter how poorly explained that fact was. Fuck the beginning of Alien 3.
Note: I played the PC version, which may explain why I didn't have some of the technical problems (like 8, 6, or 3) people playing the 360 version keep complaining about. I turned the graphics settings all the way up, and did not encounter any of the texture-popping or frame rate problems many reviews of the 360 version mention, either.
@363511 This is the part where I risk death but out of all the consoles the X-box 360 seems to have the worse game bugs in them. Some from good companies. It must be their development software. No system or game is not without it's bugs but 360's seem to have tons.
And reason number zero the game sucked: Gearbox took Sega's money, made their own games in the meantime, and then handed off A:CM to TimeGate to develop. Then once they finished with Borderlands 2 (note that during the time they were supposedly working on the game they also made Borderlands and acquired/finished Duke Nukem Forever) they took the project back and threw stuff together.
There's some good reading on the whole situation here, but the short version is that Gearbox basically procrastinated until they couldn't anymore and then just shoved something out the gate.
@GeneralTekno I was wondering if anybody was going to bring up TimeWaterGate. I spent YEARS looking forward to this game and have literally cried 3 times over its failure. Gearbox broke my heart, more than Ridley did with Prometheus. Prometheus was salvageable once you got past its large list of flaws. This game...GEARBOX IF YOU HEAR ME I HOPE YOU ALL GET CAUGHT WITH SOME ILLEGAL PORN ASAP. And Timegate? I hope your CEO is the star of said porn.
As an obsessed Alien fan, I can say with certainty that I will never ever forget this incident, and pray for the day Gearbox goes under. Borderlands be damned.
sounds like from this list that sadly aliens cm winds up coming up short for the aliens franchise as a good kick ass video game. espicaly the last part about hicks still being alive at the end after being ripped to shreds for normaly in a video game that means you are dead not coming back. plus how weak the acid blood is
to say that Gearbox is responsible for Duke Nukem Forever is a teeny bit disingenuous if you know what you're talking about. they took a game that was mostly finished albeit in development limbo, bought the rights, cleaned it up without making any major editorial changes, and released it because it was this great white buffalo that people were always wondering about. sure they're responsible for putting it on the market, but it's not their game in the sense that Borderlands is THEIR game. based on reviews they should have left it a mystery of course.
@ericaustlee That's a fair statement. DNF had so many hands in the soup that it's no where near entirely Gearbox's fault. That being said, they should have known the ire the were going to cause by completing and releasing a product as horrid as DNF. Was it all their fault, no. Was a lot of it their fault...yes in my opinion. But like you said, it was the Great White Buffalo.
On the flip side, the Borderlands series was so incredibly good that it restored my faith in Gearbox. I expected more Borderlands and less DNF in my Aliens. Just my thoughts.
@razgriz1138 Borderlands is itself a bit underwhelming. It's better than its competition, but largely because it doesn't have any competition.
Borderlands 2 did give the concept some needed improvements, but BL1 honestly wasn't that amazing a game. The game was too much ruled by level, and the DLC completely destroyed the already poorly planned experience curve.. The heavily hyped weapon randomization was largely hobbled by Gearbox, resulting in generally bland weapons. (Failed online game Hellgate had more interesting random weapons than Borderlands. Outside of uniques, where most of the weird effects were restricted to, Modern Warfare 3 arguably had more weapon variety than Borderlands 1.) Vehicles were awful. One of the DLC, Mad Moxxi's, was utter garbage and seemingly designed by someone who had no clue as to how the game worked or why people played it. Etc...
@razgriz1138 id be interested in seeing gearbox/nerve design a duke nukem game from the ground up though borderlands shows they can do it but doubt the demand is truly there. I truly tried to like DNF and did for about half the game but I wound up only beating it since I bought it not because I enjoyed it.
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