Aliens: Colonial Marines

Beneath this games bad story and AI, mediocre gameplay and graphics plus the worst final boss ever is a neat little game.

The setting and tone of this game is often near perfect, yes it's horror underdelivers aside from the first mission but you truly feel like you are in there fighting aliens, it has amazing collectibles, great multiplayer (not anymore cause uhm no-one plays this game), weirdly enough extra DLC and fantastic customization plus fun new Aliens.

If for whatever reason you find yourself interested in this game or are just a massive fan of the Aliens franchise check it out and you might get surprised.

I love Aliens Colonial Marines! The combat was fun; I really liked how the Pulse Rifles and the Smart Guns looked and sounded exactly like how they did in Aliens. All the attention to detail with the ships and the big futuristic facilities was very cool. I loved how they managed to bring back the characters Bishop and Hicks; I really liked their characters in the film Aliens so just seeing Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen come back to be them was a great joy to me. The story was a decent story about never leave behind nor betray your squad mates, always be selfless, and don't ever be greedy or lustful. The main corrections I'd make is I wish the camera was a first person camera for when you played as an Alien during the multiplayer, and as always I thought the gore and foul language was a bit excessive. Still though I definitely enjoyed it. Have a great day and goooo Aliens Colonial Marines!

Once upon a time the awesome Alien franchise was born... When i switched on my Xbox 360 earlier this week and played this game i quickly realised that the franchise, specifically in respect of video gaming, is dead and buried. The graphics are too sharp yet ill detailed and not at all Alien-esque... The titles are also juvenile attempts at mimicking the movies and are awful. The levels belong on an original xbox or PS2 release and are dreary, tiresome, repetitive and ill conceived. The interface isn't innovative in any way and must have been designed on the back of the blank cheque that Sega wrote Gearbox to bring this high school project to fruition.

I've been playing video games for 30 years and not ever has a publisher spent so much dollar on promotion for such a bland, weightless, empty shell of a concept that has not materialised into any semblance of a 21st century hi-def title.

In conclusion its like playing a several year old platinum title that has no place being in the modern era of video gaming. A poor poor title that'll keep you happy (in anticipation only) for about 10 minutes (if you're a die-hard Alien fan) before the disc is on its way to trade in for store credit.

What were 20th Century Fox thinking?! PS. Give the trailer director credit for clever editing, tricking us all into believing that we were actually buying something of substance.

The first thing you will notice is the absolutely dated textures, some fancy new design would have been nice as well but they have paid some attention to detail. Admittedly the game does look rather bland in 2D but crank up the 3D eyewear and it looks quite good. Its rather surprising that this game has garnered so many negs as it really isn't all that bad. There are some quite tense moments where you are just waiting for a face-hugger to suck your face off but all in all It looks as though they threw something together just to cash in. Actually playing the game isn't all that bad. Other game manufacturers go all the way and pay so much attention to detail but not so this crowd. For instance a lot of the time you are shooting at an Alien and your team mate gets in the way - other games you would be severely admonished "Hey stop shooting at me"! but this one your team mates don't mind. (so much for reality) NVidia rate this game as average in the 3D rating but I found it virtually unplayable until I downloaded the Helix fix. If you want to play in 3D it is recommended that you apply this fix. You need to be slightly higher than a casual PC user in expertise to be able to extract the fix to the proper directory but it is well worth doing as before the fix, lights from other marines helmets were on the wrong plane and torchlights were in 2D - the whole thing looked messed up. Do a web search for Helix 3d fix etc, its only a tiny 33KB download. Why cant you simply install a game on Steam without having to perform an hour of updates? That is so annoying especially if you only play the single player campaign. The majority of the updates are probably multiplayer fixes. Don't be put off by the negative reviews, its worth a look just buy it when the price has gone down to $20.00 or so, maybe get it from a bargain basement seller! If 6.5 out of ten were there that would be my rating maybe even 7!

Despite the negative reviews, this game is actually pretty good and worth playing if your a fan of the Alien movies. It takes place just after Aliens (the second movie) but has a new set of characters on a different mission, however Hicks and Bishop from the second movie both appear as supporting characters and they are both voiced by the actors that play them in the movie (Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen) which is pretty awesome. The plot is above average, but it is really just there so that the action has reason to play out. The action is great however and the gameplay and controls are good (despite what some users have said about messed up controls). The aliens in the game are well done and there are a good variety of them. The graphics are good but they could easily have come from a game made ten years ago. On the downside, there are one or two glitches every so often (however they don't prevent you from moving forward in the game) and sometimes the AI is a little buggy and it occasionally affects the gameplay in a negative way. Also the game just suddenly comes to a halt and just ends unexpectedly, in a weak and uninteresting way and it may make you angry. Overall, I would recommend this game because, despite its flaws, it is a lot of fun and the multiplayer is well thought out and very enjoyable. 6.5/10. (Additionally, the game does a good job of being scary; particularly when you get to use the Alien radar machine which detects Aliens closing in on you and makes a beeping noise which gets faster and faster the closer they get).