Aliens: Colonial Marines Review

*Contains Spoilers*

Fast-Paced Xenomorph Hell

In the single player campaign, you play as Corporal Christopher Winter, a member of a team of Marines deployed in response to a distress call from the USS Solaco. The Solaco, as Winter will soon discover, has been overtaken by Xenomorphs and very few humans remain aboard. As you might imagine, things go from bad to worse and you are forced to fight for your life and the lives of your teammates as you face the harsh reality that the Xenomorph infestation may go far beyond the Solaco.

If you have played Alien: Isolation before, you will immediately notice a difference in pace. While Isolation is a slow, stealthy experience where you are, for the most part, stalked by a single Xenomorph, Colonial Marines is a fast-moving nightmare where Xenomorphs show up in large numbers and without mercy. The action kept me on my toes at all times, but with an arsenal of powerful weapons, mowing down large groups of aliens became easy. A lack of a stealth mechanic (which would have echoed the tension from the 1979 movie) coupled with action-packed FPS gameplay desensitized me to what could have been (as we witnessed with Alien: Isolation) a very tense and terrifying game, which is something I believe hurts the overall experience. The player in Colonial Marines was too powerful and the action too constant and repetitive for me to feel invested in the experience. 

Graphically, the game was lacking. Cutscenes were underwhelming with facial movements that lacked articulation and environments that could have been more detailed. The only part of the game I found truly memorable was a bit that required you to slowly sneak through an area full of Xenomorphs without detection. It was tense, made your weapons virtually useless, and forced you to slow down and fear for your safety - something that all other areas of the game failed to do.

The soundtrack was, for the most part, tense and echoed the shooter-style gameplay. Honestly, the tracks I enjoyed the most were slow and eerie, evoking a feeling of being helpless and hunted. Unfortunately, the game as a whole did not evoke that feeling and moments of true stress and terror were almost nonexistent.

Overall, Corporal Winters was not a captivating character, and I found the story got lost in the repetitive gameplay. I did have fun playing the game but I did not find the experience exceptionally unique. I recommend picking this game up on sale, especially if you enjoy FPS style games, but I cannot recommend it for the nearly $30 price tag on Steam.

[Lady played Aliens: Colonial Marines on PC with a mouse and keyboard. Lady played Alien: Isolation before Colonial Marines and felt a mild comparison between the two games was appropriate, given their vastly different approaches to similar subject matter]