Aliens: Colonial Marines Review

You'll wish it was Game Over, man. Every. Second.
For the sake of pure honesty in this review, this reviewer feels they should at least come out and say it right now: video games don't get much worse than Aliens: Colonial Marines. Or at least, for the sake of humanity sanity, we hope they don't get much more painful and downright excruciating to play than this. Coming in the wake of simply atrocious titles like Doctor Who: Return To Earth and Kinect Star Wars, that's quite a bold statement to make, yet in this instance it's completely and utterly apt.

So just what makes Colonial Marines such a borderline-offensive addition to Ridley Scott's famed science-fiction franchise? Sadly, the narrative actually plays a key role in making it all a chore to experience. Set after the events of Alien 3, the game's campaign storyline focuses on a second band of intrepid marines venturing onto the remains of the USS Solaco that have mysteriously appeared once again on LV-426. No-one knows quite how this ship has travelled lightyears across space with not so much as a single pilot to direct it back to its Aliens homestead, and quite frankly, the screenplay artists here couldn't care less about explaining this canonical error.

Such blatant disregard for the franchise's continuity will no doubt feel near-heretical to staple fans of the five-film saga. Of course, the most recent entry on the big screen was Prometheus, and despite all the continuity errors elsewhere, it appears clear that the writers wanted to shoehorn in as many attention-grabbing locale references to that mediocre 2012 prequel as possible. Indeed, in trying to make the plot accessible for newcomers who've only seen the modern film, the writers have in essence created a storyline which makes virtually no sense and worse still banded us with a dislikable team of 'heroes' with about as much empathetic charisma as Jar-Jar Binks.

Yet I hear you ask this- surely at the very least, with five years spent in development and constant delays, Gearbox Studios have got a 2013 FPS gameplay engine right? The answer to that question is as swift as the campaign's insulting four-hour running time: think again. You'll walk through AI companions as if they didn't exist, and when they do appear to enter the realm of dimensions, they'll still run haplessly around enemy-infested rooms with no idea how to aim, leaving you to face either worryingly weak Xenomorphs or over-powered Weyland-Yutani soldiers all on your lonesome- trust me, there won't be players looking to engage in co-operative play either, because that addition only doubles the pain of the experience.

There's honestly very little in the way of redemption here. Sure, the visuals of the classic Aliens locations themselves are occasionally lavish- Hadley's Hope, the Sulaco and LV-426 all ring true to their inspirations as promised by Gearbox- but the last-gen character models and dire repetitive soundtrack will white-wash out any positive memories the player carries of a single uninsulting aesthetic element. This reviewer can at least credit the gameplay designers for coming up with one or two innovative setpieces towards the end too, infrequently managing to actually match an ounce of the original horror tone of the Aliens movies.

Ultimately, though, it's any comparison made to the inspiration of this oh-so-clearly licensed duffer that makes the reality of Gearbox's failure dishearteningly apparent. For where Tomb Raider, Gears Of War: Judgement and BioShock Infinite (my verdict on which will land later this month, and which I can assure you is a lot more positive) have shown throughout this year how developers can push the art of the shooter to breathtaking new levels, this entry in the genre has shown spectacularly how developers can still get it all so wrong in 2013. It's quite the achievement when this reviewer can state a 'Best Of 2013' award winner without question this early on in the year, but unless something so staggeringly insulting comes along that it wipes the slate, then Aliens: Colonial Marines is an absolute shoe-in for Worst Game Of 2013. I rented it for £6 and still felt cheated- it's Game Over, man, for the Aliens video games franchise. Good riddance.
2/10