Man the reviews for Aliens:Colonial Marines are pretty abysmal, think I’ll wait for MGR instead and try to catch this one in the bargain bin. Dated visuals, horrible AI seem to be the biggest complaints, but after watching someone’s playthrough, this game might have some serious continuity issues with the films…
The opening had the Sulaco back above LV-426. A character even mentions that it was last seen over Fury-161(Alien 3’s setting) and wonders what it’s doing over LV-426…but the opening stage had the Sulaco completely infested with an Alien hive. I hope they explain that, cuz the egg appearing on the Sulaco in Alien 3 was one of the biggest plot holes in the entire series…
Other thing that disappointed me was that Hadley’s Hope is a setting you play through. Yeah, the Hadley’s Hope that was supposed to become a vapor cloud the size of Nebraska in the film when the atmosphere processor went nuclear. They even mention running across the empty Sentry guns from the extended version of Aliens…so they’re either disregarding film events to make the game work, or they’re gonna be unveiling Weyland Yutani conspiracies that are are probably gonna wind up lame? Was really hoping they be smart enough to explain some plotholes away rather than create all new ones. I wanna try it but those reviews are scaring me. Like Ninja Gaiden 3 level of disappointment
<blockquote class=“Quote” rel=“AlphaZero”>Man the reviews for Aliens:Colonial Marines are pretty abysmal, think I’ll wait for MGR instead and try to catch this one in the bargain bin. Dated visuals, horrible AI seem to be the biggest complaints, but after watching someone’s playthrough, this game might have some serious continuity issues with the films…</blockquote>
I’m not quite sure what they’re talking about in some of these reviews, the visuals certainly don’t look dated to me and has a very dark and claustraphobic feel to them. The AI differ depending on the Alien, Soldiers will run at you as they do in the movie, but others will not, some actually actively hide and try to outflank you or come at you from behind after escaping into a vent or onto ceiling grating. Thus far I haven’t encountered a single “dumb” alien as stated in the reviews. I even read one review where they stated the pulse rifle sound effects are “annoying”, I wonder if these people have even seen the films because the sound effects are exactly the same!
<blockquote class=“Quote”>The opening had the Sulaco back above LV-426. A character even mentions that it was last seen over Fury-161(Alien 3’s setting) and wonders what it’s doing over LV-426…but the opening stage had the Sulaco completely infested with an Alien hive. I hope they explain that, cuz the egg appearing on the Sulaco in Alien 3 was one of the biggest plot holes in the entire series…</blockquote>
The egg thing at the beginning of A3 has always bugged the hell out of me, was the Queen supposed to have grabbed an egg on her way out of the Atmosphere Processor and carried it with her? It was really stupid. It seems that WY acquired the Sulaco and have been using it for their bioweapons experiments which of course - as we all knew - would go horribly horribly wrong.
<blockquote class=“Quote”>Other thing that disappointed me was that Hadley’s Hope is a setting you play through. Yeah, the Hadley’s Hope that was supposed to become a vapor cloud the size of Nebraska in the film when the atmosphere processor went nuclear. They even mention running across the empty Sentry guns from the extended version of Aliens…</blockquote>
I think my personal bias for the movies is letting me ignore that one, I actually really enjoyed going into Hadleys and seeing the sites of where the movie battles took place, especially the epic fight in Operations from the movie, where they left evidence of what transpired all those weeks ago.
I’ve always wondered why Devs haven’t made a multiplayer-centric Alien or Alien/Predator game. You know, like COD or any other modern FPS in that the single player is <i>there</i> but the meat of the game is in the multiplayer.
The only, repeat, <b>only</b> game that did that was Monolith’s AVP 2 and that had some balance issues but it had tons of modes, class-based multiplayer, and even had mod tools.
I’m curious to see how the multiplayer turns out because I like the classes of Aliens that they have going on -obviously imitating Left 4 Dead- but I doubt they will release map-making tools or mod tools for PC.
If all else fails I suggest checking out Natural Selection 2 which is basically an Aliens game but with the focus entirely on multiplayer.
Oh man, I loved the AVP2 Multiplayer, it was actually my first online MP experience and boy was it fun back then, I absolutely loved playing as the Aliens running all over the ceilings and walls and dropping down on unsuspecting marines!
At the moment, there’s not a huge amount of meat in the MP, I’d expect that to be fleshed out in DLCs (sadly), though Escape could be a very promising game mode when there’s more than 2 maps…
At the moment, there’s not a huge amount of meat in the MP, I’d expect that to be fleshed out in DLCs (sadly), though Escape could be a very promising game mode when there’s more than 2 maps…</blockquote>
Ouch. That doesn’t sound good. I’m getting deja vu of Rebellion’s AVP 2010.
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I think my personal bias for the movies is letting me ignore that one, I actually really enjoyed going into Hadleys and seeing the sites of where the movie battles took place, especially the epic fight in Operations from the movie, where they left evidence of what transpired all those weeks ago.
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Yeah, but the whole acceleration of the Aliens finale starts when Bishop says Hadley’s is gonna blow…but it doesn’t blow up now? I can buy the Derelict still being intact, but Hadley’s Hope is supposed to be a cloud of dust…
I 100% agree with you, Hadley’s absolutely should NOT be there because it was vapourised in the finale explosion, even if the Marines were to go to LV-426, they should have found the area where Hadley’s was as a smoking wreck. This was clearly done purely for fan service which sort of already paradoxes the idea that it’s an official continuation of the movie and is quite a big oversight when they’re claiming the game should bridge the gap between films and make sense of it all. In fairness, even the atmosphere processor shouldn’t be there, but it is (albeit a broken wreck, but still). Having anything be classes as official canon clearly shouldn’t be suffering these issues and I don’t think it would have been a big deal had it not have been canon - it’s not the first time Hadley’s has been in a video game after it was presumably destroyed. If you think about it however, they shouldn’t even be able to go anywhere near the site or the derelict simply down to the fallout and radiation in the area, unless 40 megaton blasts now have a half life of weeks…
I think I must have gotten rather lucky, I’m playing the PC version and haven’t encountered any of these bugs thus far. Graphics aren’t so bad, granted some look poor when up close, but it’s not like games like Skyrim broke any graphical barriers either, there’s nothing to stop SEGA releasing a high res texture pack like Skyrim and Crysis 2 have for example.
Considering you can buy a season pass on Steam for 4 DLCs, I’m actually quite surprised that any kind of emergency patch or otherwise hasn’t been released yet in order to fix the issues and bugs people are having.
I’m having a great time playing, perhaps I wouldn’t if it wasn’t such a huge nostalgia kick for me, but I am none the less. The biggest complaints I have so far is that the Marines you’re sent in with know nothing of the Xeno’s, yet when you’re traversing the Sulaco for the first time, one of the marines will yell “Lurker!”, how the fuck does he know what Xeno type it is when he’s never seen one? :S Oh yeah, I also agree with the reviews that enemy PMC are more of a challenge to take down than most of Xenos, but again, it’s still only the Soldiers that I’ve had mindlessly run at me, the lurkers have actually been quite smart. Xeno’s in MP are slightly disappointing for me simply because they are switched to third person, apparently because some people found the first person view in AVP games to be disorienting - I had that shit down pat, so it feels more like a removal from immersion to me to see my character in front of me instead of seeing through their eyes, not to mention how fun it felt bounding from walls and ceilings in first person - I would have preferred the option to switch to FPV or Third Person instead of being locked into it.
Having no official statements from SEGA or Gearbox after complaints and general bashing, it’s hard to tell which direction they will go in, but they could redeem themselves somewhat by seriously fleshing out the MP aspect as the potential is definitely there and a lot of people don’t buy FPS games for a single player campaign. If they put more work in, it could be excellent. Dropping mod tools I’m sure would make a lot of people happy to make their own maps etc.
I guess I’m the kind of chump the game is aimed at, one that will be carried away by the fanservice that I’ll potentially waive other issues.
Believe me, it’s hard as hell for me not to play it…maybe Ill try and redbox it or something. Heard the PC version has way less performance problems, but I’m kinda of prepared to be disappointed…I just don’t wanna end up pissed off at it, and while I don’t trust most reviews, a few have mentioned that it totally messes with the Alien canon.
To be honest, if Alien 3, Alien Resurrection, and Prometheus are considered canon, then I’m open to other ideas. They should’ve made the Dark Horse comics continuation into a movie and called that Alien 3, but alas…
Prometheus was fine, people just too hung up the snake scene and Charlize not turning left.
Sounds like they’re messing with Aliens(the film) canon though…They couldn’t fire the pulse rifles in the atmosphere processor because it could cause a thermonuclear explosion, they send Bishop out to the relay because the reactor will explode, killing them all. If the explosion was gonna leave Hadley’s intact, why would it matter…and all that.
Alien 3 was what it was, they just should have explored the super facehugger concept to explain the Alien presence on the Sulaco. The conveniently placed egg sucked. The idea of facehuggers clinging to the queen when the shit was going down was more plausible(but never explored, even in the Assembly Cut)
Resurrection is 200 years removed from the regular series so they don’t ever have to bother reconciling that load of shit.
There’s ways they can go that would be far more interesting…it just has to make sense. Hadley’s hope gets destroyed, the derelict does not. Weyland Yutani builds a new colony/site near the derelict, shit goes down as usual. Have the Colonial Marines discover the Sulaco adrift in space after the Alien 3 opening, let you explore it(sans a giant alien hive aboard the ship for fucks sake), then have the marines backtrack to LV-426 some time after the Aliens events to discover Weyland/Yutani secret new complex or some shit and go from there. The design of Scott’s and Cameron’s worlds is strong enough that they don’t need to rely on you stumbling across set pieces from the movies IMO.
Aliens Tribes would have been a great concept to adapt into the alien universe. The Infestation is loose, a religious movement based on the concept that the alien’s duty is “cleansing” humanity from the galaxy(which ties into the Prometheus ideas)…
Dunno if anyone read Tribes, but the plot was Marines securing a orbital medical facility. The marines plant implosion devices around the station, and have forty eight hours to clear the infestation or they blow the whole thing. Once the queen was located, they would literally wheel in a Section 8 psychotic in a modified power armor suit, pump him full of adrenaline, and send him on his way…
Don’t they know? She’s not an ambiturner! I had a lot more issues with it than that, I didn’t care about the snake, I get that the whole idea was that the engineers had bioengineered weapons and this was just one form of them. I was far more annoyed about things that were glossed over or just completely ignored - Call breaking into Vicker’s quarters to use the surgical machine calibrated for male would find a lot of foreign body tissue, not to mention after her surgery is done, she stumbles into Weyland and everyone is just all “hey lets go to the Engineer cryotube!” nobody bats an eyelid or even cares what just happened to her or where the hell the creature in her chest has gone considering they all knew about it. David was also by far the best character in that movie.
Indeed! Hive was decent, some of those old Aliens stories had some great ideas. I also liked Aliens Book II about some nutjob high ranking officer who thinks he can train the Aliens to become his own personal army to take back earth - most of the stories around this time had involved Earth being lost, I think mostly because of the hype over the first Alien 3 trailer having the tag line “This time it’s Earth” before they decided to change everything. A lot of the original stripes also focused a lot on Hicks and Newt with Ripley having had some kind of infamous exit that was mentioned in a negative sense, but I don’t remember it ever being explained.
Don’t they know? She’s not an ambiturner! I had a lot more issues with it than that, I didn’t care about the snake, I get that the whole idea was that the engineers had bioengineered weapons and this was just one form of them. I was far more annoyed about things that were glossed over or just completely ignored - Call breaking into Vicker’s quarters to use the surgical machine calibrated for male would find a lot of foreign body tissue, not to mention after her surgery is done, she stumbles into Weyland and everyone is just all “hey lets go to the Engineer cryotube!” nobody bats an eyelid or even cares what just happened to her or where the hell the creature in her chest has gone considering they all knew about it.
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Yeah, alot of the deleted scenes would have helped(where the hell is the director’s cut by now anyway?)…the male calibration on the machine was a “one to many” clue that Weyland was aboard the ship for me. Vickers does mention the “thing screaming in the medlab” in the longer version of her scene when Weyland wakes up. David acknowledges it in his own way I guess…I still like Prometheus immensely, but I found myself agreeing with Jon Spaihts alot in his and Lindelof’s writers commentary. Lindelof still used a lot of Spaiht’s scenes, but he had trouble accepting them as a viewer because shit was a little loopy.
So do they explain why there’s different types of Aliens in Colonial Marines? Alien it has human traits, Aliens they have human traits, Alien 3 has the runner because of the dog/Ox being the host body…do they try to explain it here? That’s another concept I’d like to see explored in Aliens…what happens if the aliens get loose on farm colony or zoo?
I really do like Alien 3 (Assembly Cut) and Prometheus was okay… But my idea for an Alien movie -if I ever make it to the top- is to set it possibly hundreds of years after the events of Resurrection BUT it would start at the end of Aliens. We don’t know if the creatures can survive the vacuum of space. The Alien at the end of the first film seemed to be very much alive and was in one piece when it was ejected from the escape ship. So, it would follow the Queen drifting through space and a random ship bumps into her and starts the process all over again.
If Fox were to do another Alien movie not tied to Prometheus that would be the way to do it I think. That, or explore where the Derelict craft on LV426 came from -if this isn’t explored in Prometheus 2 that is-.
I like Alien 3. I wasn’t bothered by Hicks and Newt getting killed, just that fucking egg on the Sulaco.
Oh yeah, watched the whole set on Blu-Ray.
Alien looks fucking amazing, seriously one of the best looking Blu-Ray tranfers I’ve ever seen. The depth of Ridley’s lighting and the amount of craft in the production design is really crazy here. I’d say it looks better than Prometheus on Blu-ray, and that was no slouch for visuals. I watched Alien in HD off of cable and it looked nice, the Blu-Ray edition looks 10 times sharper.
Aliens…does not look good, especially if you go right from Alien to it. Movie is still badass as ever, but even Cameron himself says that most of Ridley’s filming/lighting techniques were well beyond Cameron’s abilities at the time. He mentions not really missing the Newt’s family finding the Derelict cuz it didn’t look nearly as good as Alien’s derelict.
Alien 3…looks good too. They did go through and ADR a bunch of scenes in the Assembly Cut with the original actors so the sound is consistent throughout now. A bit disappointed they didn’t go back and CG some of Alien’s sizing issues(the puppet looks too skinny in some scenes when they transition to the live action suit)
