Well, I got Aliens: Colonial Marines for Christmas in 2015, and played through a lot of the levels, but stopped playing it by early 2016 and never played it again. That is, until recently, when I kind of got into the Alien franchise again. So I finished the level I was stuck on, progressed quickly from there, and what do you know, I’ve finished the game now.
And what a mess it was.
First off, the graphics are awful. I know the game had been in development since 2006, but couldn’t Gearbox have held off releasing it until they had tweaked the graphics so I don’t think I’m playing a game from 2003? The voice acting, likewise, is terrible. The main characters all have obnoxious voices and say terrible lines (I really hated the delivery of the guy playing O’Neil), and Lance Henricksen and Michael Biehn just phone it in. The combat is easy, the Xeno’s go down like fish in a barrel, the PMC’s are only a tiny bit harder, and the boss battle is hilariously anticlimactic.
But my biggest complaint is with the story. Look, I know video game stories never are as good as movies, but this had so many plot holes in conjunction with the films, I can’t fathom why 20th Century Fox declared this abomination “canon.” Right off the bat, the colony, Hadley’s Hope, is all fine and well, as if a nuclear bomb hadn’t hit it 17 weeks prior. Also, all the architecture is out of whack in correspondence to the film. Bishop’s legs are still in the Sulaco hanger bay, despite the fact that they would have been sucked out at the end of Aliens. And then, the sheer number of Xeno’s makes you wonder why exactly Weyland Yutani were so obsessed with getting the Queen chestburster out of Ripley in Alien 3, or why General Perez mentions that Ripley wiped out the species in Alien Resurrection.
SPOILERS for a four year old game that you should never play!
But my biggest problem is that they retconned Hicks’ death from Alien 3. Now, I quite like his anticlimactic end in that film. I think it’s a good introduction of how all the characters die in it. Bringing him back makes no sense, and they don’t even explain it. The DLC released to explain this makes no sense either. It’s like that novel that explains that Ripley actually went on another adventure in between Alien and Aliens, but even that was better explained that this. To top it off he plays a pitifully insignificant role in the game. Just awful.
I’ve vented enough. I think this is my longest post yet. I strongly advise you not to play this and seek out the better Aliens games out there.