Aliens: Colonial Marines - the story

  Again I watch the full cinematic story of a game, without playing it, to examine its story. Aliens: Colonial Marines is a first person shooter, so you move around ships and compounds being hunted and attacked and killing stuff. There is a plot, but it is quite simplistic compared to the action, which is a good thing in a game like this. No need for complications as the hapless marines need to kill everything while slowly learning what we, as Alien fans, know already.

  The graphics are that of a 2013 game, nothing to be very proud of, either. They do the job. The story is about a ship of marines that encounters the Sulaco, sometime after the events of Alien 3. There are aliens, and mean Yutani-Weyland people and chest bursters and all kind of mad frantic action. Hicks makes an appearance, in the era when anything Alien had to have some personal connection with movie characters, but he is basically a cameo.

  At this point I would say what I liked about the story and what I would change, but there is no need. Even if much more streamlined than Dark Descent, I had more fun watching this one. There are multiple chapters, each feeling like a standalone story. And in every one the phrase "Leave no man behind" is repeated obsessively, while most of the time someone runs through hordes of xenomorphs to save some person or another. It gets old, but the action provides compensation. And what I liked is that most "command decisions" are taken when talking on the radio with someone while being attacked by aliens. No people slowly walking in a room to confer. That could have been an email!

  Bottom line: I would much more enjoy a modern Alien game that is based on the same concept as Colonial Marines than the Starcraft-cloney Dark Descent. The new graphics card power and AI graphics would bring a lot of value to a game such as this, even for someone like me who would rather play the alien.