Colonial Marines PC - bad reviews

[MasterBlaster76]

Quelle surprise. As soon as PC Gamer previewed this and showed concern, I was pretty sure the game would be messed up. 5/10 IGN and 6/4 community; what a disappointment. It's been ages since we had an Alien game, and even longer since we had one without the Predator sticking its nose in. I was looking forwards to a great Aliens vs Marines game with a super campaign and tension aplenty, but this review's final score isn't looking promising (I haven't read the review itself yet).

Campaign: six hours. That's the death knell as far as I'm concerned - this game is no longer on my radar.

The point is that like any decent theme park attraction, Aliens: Colonial Marines presents a fairly convincing facade but its thrills are forced and entirely superficial. You don?t ever feel like you?re actually in danger. You don't ever feel overwhelmed. In fact, over the course of its six hour campaign the game never gets even remotely close to replicating the genuine feelings of fear and dread that simmer throughout James Cameron?s cinematic classic, simply because its xenomorphic enemies are so mindless. These aliens aren?t sophisticated human hunters, they?re merely acid-fuelled fodder for the seemingly neverending rounds in your pulse rifle. Consequently, Colonial Marines is for the most part a disappointingly mundane, run ?n? gun first-person shooter that fails to captivate once the initial rush of nostalgia has worn off. At its worst, it simply feels unfinished - which is a surprise given how long it's been in development.

Not good.

...find an audio recording featuring an exchange between the orphaned child Newt and her mother. There?s plenty of great fan service like this tucked away throughout the campaign, and the presence of such easter eggs is certainly the game?s biggest strength.

And that's even worse - a game that has easter eggs as its biggest strength...

They're not smart enough to hunt in packs or take you by surprise, they just wilfully hurl themselves in front of your short, controlled bursts. There?s never a feeling of being outwitted or outmanoeuvred, just outraged that you?ve sat down to take on some deadly xenos in one of sci-fi?s most iconic settings and somehow ended up in the equivalent of a clunky, coin-operated shooting gallery.

Oh dear.

MP folk aren't going to be that much happier:

The multiplayer component runs low on inspiration as well. Aside from being able to play through the campaign in four-player co-op (complete with slightly shuffled spawn points for the enemies), there are four adversarial online modes to choose from - Team Deathmatch, Extermination, Escape and Survival. Escape is easily the standout among these, given that it?s essentially Left 4 Dead with aliens and requires a team of marines to hustle their way to an extraction zone, frantically welding doors shut behind them to stave off an opposing team of xenos. This is as close as the game ever gets to nailing the panic and terror you?d expect from an Aliens game; it?s just too bad that with only two maps available in the mode it soon gets old (although again, this will likely be fleshed out if you cough up for the upcoming DLC).

Oh yeah! Two maps, and then wheel in the cash cow.

 

[Biggy]

Yeah my mate bought it and says it was crap. Never crossed my mind to buy it and definitely not worth the $80 AUS they want for it.

 

[puddleduck]

Warning signs have been there for months. Any game that places a review embargo on is normally trying desperately to avoid everyone cancelling their preorders.

Silly really, as making a decent Aliens FPS shouldn't be particularly hard.

 

[Params7]

pity, i still believe there can be a good aliens game

 

[MasterBlaster76]

pity, i still believe there can be a good aliens game

Of course there could, but this isn't it. The whole thing sounds like a typical copy/paste FPS game with Aliens as the selling point. Alien games aren't like that, they're imaginative and different, and terrifying. The enemy doesn't just come straight at you, it comes through the floor, through vents and down from the ceiling. Make the xenomorphs a creature that just rushes straight at you like an enemy from Doom, and all that terror goes out of the window. Shame.

Who made the two great Alien games years back on the PC? Shame they haven't got the licence anymore.

 

[Deleted member 9102]

One of my housemates bought this and, although the single player looked poor, playing as a Xeno online looked like a ton of fun! It is a waste of a license though, they could do so much more!