Aliens: Colonial Marines (PC) - Part 2

Click the highlighted text to return to the horror of part one.

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CHAPTER 4: NO HOPE IN HADLEY'S.

So Bella woke up cocooned to a wall, with a dead facehugger still on her face, and now she's got a sore throat huh? I don't want to alarm you guys, but I think we should confiscate her grenades.

Previously in Aliens: Colonial Marines: some bad stuff happened in space, a few of us took a dropship to the surface of LV-426 (just like in 'Aliens'), we ended up smashing the thing in to a million fragments (just like in 'Aliens'), and now we’re going to have to hike over to the nearby town of Hadley’s Hope (just like in 'Aliens'). I’m actually pretty surprised that the place is still around seeing as the nearby atmosphere processor facility kinda exploded with the force of a 40 megaton bomb at the end of the movie, and I got the impression that it took out both the town and the alien derelict ship that caused all this crap in the first place.

This level is still pretty much a narrow linear path like the rest of them, but now there’s room enough for me to stray a bit from the other characters I’ve noticed that the radio filter on the dialogue turns on and off depending on how close someone is. So there you go, there’s another nice thing I can say about Colonial Marines. Though on the hand I can also walk through the NPCs here, so... it's no all good news.


A SHORT UNEVENTFUL WALK LATER.

Oh man, ain’t it pretty. Probably. I can barely see a damn thing in here, but I’m sure if they turned the lights on Hadley's Hope would look just like it did in 'Aliens'.

With a little exploring (I walked into the only room off the corridor) I found an audio log of a phone call recorded by Newt’s mother, asking for money to pay for the trip back off world after her husband was killed by a chestburster. I'd almost forgotten about the audio logs to be honest, as they're surprisingly rare. Or perhaps just too well hidden for me. Either way, I'm not expecting to stumble across the complete story of Hadley's Hope's last stand in here.


2 MINUTES LATER.

Now that we've set up base in the blasted remains of the operations room, Captain Cruz has sent me out into the movie sets to place some motion trackers, for the sake of pacing or tension or whatever. To be honest I've gotten kind of bored here and have started comparing the place to how it looks in the movie. They didn't quite get it right, but it's still cool.

I know this seems like a pointless screenshot, but this is what the game is like sometimes! It especially likes to lock me in a room, listening to O'Neal going on about how worried he is about Bella, or whatever. Maybe they could've sent me crawling in through the vents instead, on my way to clear some wreckage from a door so the others can get into the operations room or something. The game could use a bit more Half-Life-style solo base exploration in my opinion and I can't believe a game based on 'Aliens' has had zero vent crawling so far.


LATER.

I finally get to use a SMART gun like Vasquez in the movie! My buddy O'Neal's got one too, so I'd better not catch him missing a target ever again, as the thing’s got auto-aim and utterly destroys anything it hits. In a narrow corridor like this, hold this gun means I’ve basically got cheat mode on. Fortunately the game is all narrow corridors, so I’m in luck, well until the ammo runs out anyway.

Aw crap, the ammo ran out. Well that was nice while it lasted. I mean I don't need auto-aim as I'm playing this using a mouse, but the gun was a whole lot better at spotting the things at a distance than I am.

I miss it already.


SOON.

Yeah I'm wrestling with a xenomorph, what of it? Gotta mash the action key to push it away!

This is one of the smooth head 'Alien 1' xenomorphs, like the one guarding Keyes at the start of the game, and he's a bit more 'ninja' than the ridged head 'Aliens' xenomorphs I've been gunning down by the dozen. He scurried up to me so fast I barely had time to see him coming, never mind smack him away with a melee attack. They like to play hide and seek, which I guess is more of what people wanted from the game, a bit of tension and terror... but I don't do hiding, and they die in a few shots, so that doesn't really materialise. Alien: Isolation this ain't.


CHAPTER 5: THE RAVEN.

The assholes caught and cocooned me! Fortunately I’m an ultimate badass and was able to free myself before the aliens could arrange to have a facehugger egg brought over.

They took my guns as well though so now I’m playing a game of hide and seek with this guy, just like when Newt hid from the Alien Queen under the floor at the end of 'Aliens'! Only in this case there’s clearly enough room for this guy to come in and grab me, he just can’t be bothered. Also he always replaces the floor afterwards to make sure everything’s just as he found it.

“Find a way out of the sewers”... the mission order I never wanted to see. And yet here I am.

This is actually a surprise stealth level as well, as it’s being patrolled by shambling blind xenomorphs that rush straight at anything they hear and then explode. Metroid borrowed from 'Aliens' and now 'Aliens' is borrowing from Metroid! So all I have to do is keep an eye out for them, and stop moving if I see one awkwardly shuffling past, simple! Though they also like to stop and take a break every now and again, crouching down amongst the alien corpses scattered across the sewers. Yep, any one of these husks could suddenly jump up, run at me and then detonate in cloud of concentrated molecular acid.

It's just a shame that it draws attention to the fact that all the other dead enemies in the game have fizzled away in green acid to avoid filling up the consoles's limited memory with corpses.

I remember when the game first came out, people were sharing GIFs of this guy waddling around as an example of how dumb and broken the game is, with terrible animation and etc. But now I’m staring at one up close (and really trying not to make a sound), they look like of… dumb and broken. I mean deliberately so, like he's some kind of mutant or failed genetic experiment. At least I hope that’s the case, as it’d make absolutely no sense to have a xenomorph that blows up the people it’s meant to be capturing as a host. Grown xenomorphs with a nest nearby don't kill people if they can help it, it's the chestbursters that kill people.


SOON.

I met up with O'Neal again on the other side of the stealth level, and he'd brought all my weapons to me in a huge bag! I'm actually starting to like this guy now. Especially after the dumb radio conversation they had in the sewers earlier after I turned on a loud pumping station and ran to hide in a corner.

Winter: "God damn, man! You didn't tell me those guys exploded!""
O'Neal: "They exploded?!"
Winter: "Yeah it's not good. They were like, 'Uh--oh, what's that noise?' And then they fuckin' exploded!"

Well it made me smile anyway. They nailed the line delivery.

Right, now we've met up with Bella again and a pilot called Reid, and I've been tasked with keeping the aliens off their back while they rewire something. Fuck that though! They're immortal and Winter isn't, so I'm hanging around on top of this container looking after myself, shooting the aliens as they jump up at me one at a time. It's not proving to be a huge challenge so far.


LATER.

Oh man, ever wondered how much fun it’d be to wrestle an oversized mutant alien in a Power Loader? Turns out it’s not fun. Not even slightly.

There are ways to make first person brawling work, Chronicles of Riddick and Zeno Clash for instance took a decent stab at it, but the developers apparently didn’t know about them. I'm pretty much just waving my arms back and forth trying to connect with the giant-sized alien, and wishing real hard that this bit ends soon. This is really really bad.

Gotta mash the buttons harder, it looks like it’s working this time! Sometimes I manage to choke him like this for a bit and he doesn’t like that, but I can never find any airlocks around in this junkyard to drop him into and he just escapes again.

Oh, I just won; well that’s nice.

I feel like turning this crap off after that, but at least I'm done with the Power Loader forever. In fact, that's the halfway point of the game, so I'm starting to feel like I can actually finish this now!


CHAPTER 6: FOR BELLA.

Huh, seems this alien’s gotten stuck on O’Neal. He’s not attacking, just pinning him down and stopping him from getting back up again. Bella's up there on the top left and she's not getting up either, so I guess I’m going to have to go over and give this xenomorph a poke with the butt of my pulse rifle before we can get moving again. The game does have a few bugs in it still even after all the patches, but it's been holding together reasonably well for me so I'm not complaining.

Also look, we're going through caves instead of corridors this time! Sure they’re still dark, blue, and misty, and I still can’t see shit, but it’s somewhere new!


CHAPTER 8: RAMPART.

Oh damn, it’s a big-ass space jockey with some suck-ass lighting. Uh, I just mean that it's really dark, I'm not actually criticising the quality of the renderer or whatever. I'm sure this would all look pretty good if they'd brought in a couple more spotlights.

Also that's the original 'Aliens' pulse rifle I'm holding now, so it is actually in the game. You can relax.

Aliens versus Predator (PC)

Here's how the same room looks in classic PC game Aliens versus Predator for comparison, not that I've got any point to make here except that we've come a long way in 14 years.

Funnily enough the alien derelict in Colonial Marines is actually another human fighting level, though I got all my health shot off near the start and had to let O’Neal finish most of them off for me while I hid in a room. They game barely ever lets me use the welder to seal doors up instead of cutting them open, but fortunately it seems that enemies are too dumb to use a door handle so in this case there was no need.


CHAPTER 9: HOPE IN HADLEY'S.

Well it’s certainly nice to be back outside Hadley's Hope again, in the same streets I was running around an hour or so ago. And they still won't let me visit the bar. This chapter kind of feels like filler put in because the game was running short, but who knows. Maybe we just came back for more shooting because that’s what happened in the movie. I wouldn’t say this was desperate last stand against an overwhelming force though, more like cleaning out an infestation that’s only going to end up coming back.

You'd think there'd be a bit of an alien shortage on LV-426 after 'Aliens', seeing as there could only be a maximum of 157 aliens to begin with and most/all of them were shot, incinerated, run over and nuked during the course of the film. But Weyland-Yutani really were dumb enough to ship in people to sacrifice to facehuggers. And they were bloody efficient at it too, seeing as they managed to get ships here, build a research base, and breed about a million of the xenomorphs before Sephora could arrive in orbit to answer the distress call.

Now I have to go back through the same corridors to save a couple of marines, shooting aliens along the way. Fortunately whipping out the motion detector gives me an objective marker pointing me in the right direction so I don't have to look around for them, but I do appreciate that I could've had to look for them, that the interior isn't just a straight line path like everywhere else.

A map would’ve been nice though.


CHAPTER 10: DERELICT RECLAIMED.

Damn, this last third of the game is giving me deja-vu. We even returned to the alien derelict again, though we at least took a different route through the ship. This time though things have gotten a bit more chaotic outside, as some other Colonial Marines have come to back us up for once. Plus we’ve got dropships flying overhead, AA guns that need blowing up, three factions facing off against each other, and a bit of proper mayhem going on.

I’m finding it much easier to catch an alien on camera than a merc, seeing as the typical ridged-head aliens always mindlessly charge right at me, but there’s been plenty of combat against the humans. I’d estimate it’s been two thirds aliens, one third humans so far, and I don’t really dread fighting either group. Especially not now I have my sniper rifle so I can actually aim straight. There's an upgrade for the weapon that puts targeting boxes around enemies so I'll actually be able to see them, which I'm looking forward to getting hold of. I'm a few ranks away from unlocking it, but it seems like it'd give me an utterly game-breaking advantage.

Damn, now I'm honestly feeling tempted to replay the earlier levels with the weapons I've unlocked along the way. The game's broken me.


CHAPTER 11: HOME.

Here’s the last boss fight for you, just in case you thought it might not be another Alien Queen.

This actually confused me for a while, because I’m not supposed to shoot her to death (thankfully), instead I have to shove her out with this cargo catapult thing by flicking switches in the middle of the room. I was told that I need to make sure the Queen is standing in its path when I flick the final switch though, so every single time I ran out of cover I spent a while struggling to lure her in front of the catapult before hitting the switch. Then I'd watch as the thing was pulled back an extra step instead, before running away and hiding again.

Turns out it’s not actually meant to be that difficult, as the final switch is behind the catapult. I just waited by it for her to come over and hit me, then flicked the switch and sent her out the window instead. And that’s Colonial Marines finished.

One thing that amused me here, is that the victory achievement for completing the entire game gives you the same message...

... as the quit game window. Win or quit, either's good!

Quitting's faster, but winning shouldn't take you too long either. It's apparently just 6-7 hours long if you're not rushing through, though it felt longer to me. It's possible that I may have wandered away from the game for hours at a time though.

The ending sets up a sequel, which ain't ever going to happen now, so there's not as much closure here as there could've been. But then I didn't really care about these people or their problems anyway, so it's no big deal. Spoilers: certain characters survive and they get off the planet.

But before I stop playing, I have to mention the multiplayer!

You can play various types of asymmetrical multiplayer as a xenomorph with a spiked collar. Also there’s a drop-in, drop-out co-op mode which I haven't tried either, but I hear you can bring up to four people into the same game, bumping into each other in the tiny corridors and dominating all threats with overwhelming firepower.

Right, I think I've pretty much covered everything now, in exhaustive excruciating detail, so switching it off.

Wait, why isn't it turning off? I mean it shuts down fine, but then it just starts right back up again! C'mon Colonial Marines, knock this shit off, it ain't funny. Well it looks like I'll be stuck playing this forever then. Probably what I deserve.


CONCLUSION

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Quake 4, Wolfenstein: The New Order, Project: Snowblind, Star Wars: Jedi Knight, Doom 3, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Call of Duty 2, Bulletstorm, Rage, maybe Duke Nukem Forever... these are some of the first person shooters I’ve played over the last twelve months or so that I’d say were better than Colonial Marines. Just making sure you know where I stand on this, so you don’t think I’m going too soft here. But is this one of the worst games ever made? Not even close man. Have you SEEN all the games ever made? Have you seen all the 'Aliens' games ever made? It’s certainly not in the same tier as something like Ride to Hell: Retribution, or Daikatana, or even the single player campaign of Battlefield 3.

Colonial Marines is about two things, corridors and combat, and the combat wasn’t all that fun for me... at first. I replayed some levels afterwards on the hardest difficulty, carrying a battle rifle upgraded with high velocity rounds and a targeting system that could spot enemies behind walls, and man it's so much better when you can see people trying to flank you, before successfully shooting the living fuck out of them. But that first playthrough with my starting equipment didn't impress me all that much. It rarely pissed me off either though and that puts this way ahead of a lot of the games I’ve played. There's no escort missions, no QTEs, and the checkpoints are fair. Well okay the way the characters kept saying “Oorah to ashes” kinda made me want to throw a brick through the screen, but the actual gameplay seems functional enough, even at the times I was just mindlessly blasting away at targets crawling out of the walls.

The story is… functional too, though it's basically a remix of everything we've seen in the films. The characters aren't going make it into anyone's top 100 list, though I have to admit that O’Neal and Winter conversations genuinely made me laugh once or twice. The marines seen in this would seem entirely out of place amongst the 'Aliens' crew though, and the cutscenes feel like they belong to a slightly earlier era of games to me somehow. They're a bit... Xbox. Oh plus it annoyed me that after listening to the marines continually go on about promising to put a bullet in each other’s heads if they ever got impregnated by a facehugger, when the time finally came they all just stood by and did nothing while their friend was killed by exploding ribcage! Didn't they ever see the dinner scene in 'Alien'? That's not the way you want your friend to go out. What a bunch of assholes!

Aso I was a little put off when they pulled the “it’s a long story” card to get out of explaining a plot hole. At first because it seemed lazy, but later I found out that it’s actually explained by DLC, which seems worse somehow. I should probably mention that this Stasis Interrupted DLC story shamelessly retcons part of  'Alien 3' to explain both the presence of the Sulaco and a certain character who should be dead. Not usually a fan of that, but after what 'Alien 3' did to the ending of 'Aliens' it seems only fair.

Would I recommend Aliens: Colonial Marines? First time through I would've said no, but it's growing on me. I don't regret playing it, that much I'm sure of. Plus if all you want from it is an interactive tour of the 'Aliens' sets, then it's got you covered; some good corridors in this one.

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So the first person shooter got a star from me, the person who likes first person shooters. Could anyone have seen that coming? Doesn't mean the game's good by the way, it just means I'd play it again.

Anyway, what do you folks think about Aliens: Colonial Marines, my writings, my site, or whatever else you feel like passing judgement upon? You can share your fine opinions in the box below.