Title : Aliens : Colonial Marines
Publisher : SEGA
Developer : Gearbox Software (title was originally developed by TimeGate Studios)
Genre : First Person Shooter
Players : 1-2 (co-op) 2-12 (online multiplayer)
Release Date : February 12th 2013
Platform’s : Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows
With news this week of the next installment of the Alien movie series being in development, I figured that I would send out a review the 2013 release Alien : Colonial Marines. Now as a fan of the movies, YES I did say movies as I feel that even if Alien 3 and Alien : Resurrection are good even if they are not as good as Alien and Aliens, I can tell you that I was very excited about the release of this game. Sega has such great history for me but as of recently they games have been just an excuse to keep their name out on the market and hopes that whatever they put out can finance another installment of Sonic The Hedgehog. So I was quite skeptical about how this game would turn out until I found out that Gearbox was developing. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Gearbox, they have churned out two INCREDIBLE games in Borderlands and Borderlands 2 (I have yet to play Borderlands The Pre-Sequel as of this writing). I do know that they have also put out what I like to call a “nostalgic polished turd” in the often delayed Duke Nukem Forever. I know that not every time you step up to plate you can get a hit so I do not hold that against them. So I had a high hopes that this game would be the game that I have wanted since I first saw Aliens many years ago. 
The story takes place a few weeks after the events of Alien 3 with the escape pods of Ripley, Newt, Hicks and Bishop already ejected from the Sulaco. You play as Corporal Christopher Winter, a member of a rescue team sent to investigate the Sulaco and to find Ripley and the crew sent to investigate LV-426 (the planet they terraformed and went to shit in Aliens). Prior to your arrival another group of Marines were sent to investigate and never heard from again. I don’t know about you guys, but that sounds like a setup to me. The game goes completely to hell at that point. Member of Weyland-Yutani’s PMC are found to be using members of the first rescue team (the one sent before you got there) as hosts for the Xenomorph’s (Aliens). Like you are most likely doing right now after read that, my head was spinning trying to figure out just what the hell was going on. By this time the story gets all out of whack and takes a lot of twists and turns. 
Playing the game became just as frustrating as trying to piece together the story with all the loop holes in it. The Aliens in the movies didn’t go down as quickly as some of these went down in this game. Just a few shots from a pulse rifle and the acidic pile of mush is an after though that is if the shots actually connected. I ran into a ton of bugs in the game, doors not opening when you have hit the access button, clumsy AI where they will just stand around as swarms of Xeno’s rush you and worst of all was wall glitches in where I would get stuck in a wall. As stated in a pervious review, I have played my fair share of games. Issues like those I stated were big problems with games in the turn of the CD phase of games. The games then were understandably buggy due to most developers not understanding the developer’s not understanding the software they were using at the time or in some cases a preset release date causing rushed development. But most of those issues got better as studios started getting better at doing what they get paid to do, and that is make great games worth the money you paid for it. Also another issue I had while playing the game was while I was playing Co-Op with my friend, we had a lot of times where we would go down after being attacked and we were unable to revive the other, we would get separated and not have a way to find the other and one of us would show that a chapter we just finished was completed while the other would show that it wasn’t. 
The multiplayer was a complete cluster fuck. The issues that were happening for us in Co-Op were even more prevalent when playing online against others. The bullet detection and attacks for the Aliens seemed like they would connect or hurt whoever it wanted whenever it wanted. One of the huge selling points was a co-op mode called Bug Hunt. In this mode 2-4 players would start off on a designated map and have to survive against waves of Xeno’s and PMC’s. But once we got the game and started looking for said mode it was missing. We later discovered that this “mode” was going to be a downloadable pay for addition to the game. We were not happy Colonial Marines at that point. After several weeks few finally were able to play this mode and yet again were disappointed by the bugs that still were heavy in this game. It almost seemed that no matter how much they placed in the game nothing would save it from being a bug riddled poor attempt to keep a license and a franchise around. 
I did have really high hopes for this game, but again it seemed like this game was given to a developer just to make an Aliens title. I did play Alien Vs Predator (both the 1994 arcade game which has to this day never gotten a proper port and the 2010 release on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 ) and I felt that both games were solid and with the 2010 release being a predecessor to the Colonial Marines title in terms of how the game is played, this game should have been a leap forward in the game series not just a copy of that 2010 release in a different setting. I have gotten to play the newest Alien : Isolation game which is truly a survival horror game and not just a thrown together shit box that is intended to make money by putting a name on the box. I was very disappointed at paying $60 for this when it was released as I feel that if your going to put out a game that looks better in picture then it plays, you take out an announced game mode in order to make more money and you don’t debug your product you might as well lower the price or give us something to compensate the players. I would have taken a six pack of beer. You can now find this game, which is now over a year old for under $20 (I’ve seen it as low as $5 online), I don’t urge anybody to rush out and grab it unless you are a fan of the series. It’s one of those games that looks so good on paper but the product seems like a room full of drunk college game developers made this in a weekend while only half of them were on some form of acid, and I’m not talking the acid in the Xeno’s blood.
