Aliens: Colonial Marines is a 2013 first-person shooter developed by Gearbox Software and published by Sega for Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. Based on the Alien universe and set shortly after the events of James Cameron's 1986 film Aliens, the game follows a group of Colonial Marines, a fictional military unit, as they confront the Weyland-Yutani corporation in an effort to rescue survivors from the Sulaco spaceship. The game features a campaign mode that supports both single-player and cooperative gameplay, and a multiplayer mode in which players compete in different scenarios.
Colonial Marines was developed over six years and suffered from a tumultuous development cycle. Because Gearbox decided to focus on other projects like Duke Nukem Forever and Borderlands 2, they outsourced a significant part of the game to other studios. The game was heavily inspired by Cameron's film. Concept artist Syd Mead, who collaborated with Cameron to design the Sulaco, was hired to design locations. Four downloadable content packs were released, adding multiplayer maps, a new cooperative mode, and a new campaign mode that takes place before the campaign of the base game.
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Colonial Marines sold more than one million copies in the United States and Europe, but received unfavorable reviews from critics, who criticized its technical problems, low-quality graphics, and weak artificial intelligence of enemies. It is considered to be one of the worst video games ever made. The competitive multiplayer mode was highlighted as its strongest aspect. The game drew a significant controversy for featuring a lower graphical quality than that of the press demos. This led two players to file a lawsuit, claiming that Gearbox and Sega had falsely advertised the game, but it lost class-action status by 2015. In 2017, a modder improved the game's artificial intelligence by correcting an error in the game's code.
Although Gearbox is credited as the primary developer of Colonial Marines, multiple development studios contributed to the game's production.[22] Initial work on Colonial Marines, internally codenamed Pecan,[23] began in 2007 with the creation of a prototype by Demiurge Studios,[17] who also helped Gearbox with the networking and multiplayer aspects.[24] Between 2007 and 2010, Gearbox did not focus on the development of the game, instead preferring to work on other projects like Borderlands and Duke Nukem Forever, a game that took over a decade to develop.[25] The game was built using Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3,[26] but Gearbox spent a considerable amount of preproduction time developing a custom real-time lighting and shadow renderer that is "plugged" into the engine to capture the feel of Aliens.[27][28] Nerve Software, a company that handled the multiplayer of the 2001 first-person shooter Return to Castle Wolfenstein,[29] built multiplayer maps for the game.[24]
When Gearbox took the project back in mid-2012, the company was not satisfied with TimeGate's work, partially because the game could not run on the PlayStation 3.[25] With a release date set for February 2013,[30] asking Sega for an extension was not an option because the game had already been delayed several times. This resulted in Gearbox only having nine months to revise TimeGate's work and finish the game.[25] How much of the game was actually made by Gearbox was highly questioned by TimeGate.[22] According to Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford, TimeGate "contributed 20-25 percent of the game's overall development time."[24] However, without considering Gearbox's preproduction time, Pitchford said that TimeGate's effort was equivalent to theirs.[24] A moderator on the official TimeGate forum revealed that the studio worked on the weapons, characters, Aliens, story, and multiplayer component, while some TimeGate developers estimated that 50 percent of the campaign mode in the released game was made by them.[22]
Prior to its release, Colonial Marines was criticized for not featuring any playable female character. When a petition was formed to change this, Gearbox included them in both the cooperative and multiplayer modes.[49] In addition to the standard edition of the game, a collector's edition was made available for purchase. The collector's edition included a Powerloader figurine inspired by the film, a Colonial Marines dossier, character customization options, exclusive multiplayer weapons, and a firing range game level.[50] Players who pre-ordered the game could also receive some of the collector's edition content as a bonus.[50] Shortly after the game's release, Gearbox released a patch that fixed numerous campaign and multiplayer bugs and offered various visual improvements.[51] The Wii U version, which was being handled by Demiurge,[17] was canceled in April 2013.[52]
Colonial Marines supports additional in-game content in the form of downloadable content packs. Between March and July 2013, four downloadable content packs were released for the game. A season pass to these packs could be purchased before the game was released.[53] The first pack, Bug Hunt, was released on March 19, 2013, and adds a new cooperative mode that involves up to four players fighting increasingly larger waves of Xenomorphs and hostile soldiers across three new maps. Players earn in-game money by killing opponents, which can then be spent on different options like buying ammunition or opening up new areas of the map to increase their chances of survival.[54] The second pack, Reconnaissance Pack, was released on May 7, 2013, and extends the game's competitive multiplayer mode with four maps and more customization options for Xenomorph characters,[55] while the third pack, Movie Map Pack, was released on June 11, 2013, and adds four maps set in locations from the first three Alien films.[56]
Journalists primarily criticized the gameplay for the weak artificial intelligence of enemies.[68][2][66][69][70] They remarked that Xenomorphs simply rush toward players, making the motion tracker useless.[4][69][3] According to GameTrailers, "there's never really the sense that you're being stalked by an intelligent enemy, and you'll always get a warning ping anyway."[66] The setting and level design were praised by Electronic Gaming Monthly,[65] but GameSpot noted that the levels were clearly not designed for cooperative gameplay.[3] VanOrd explained that additional players do not take the role of companions that are controlled by the game's artificial intelligence, but are simply added to the game, resulting in crowded matches with players fighting for space and trying to shoot enemies.[3] The Survivor and Escape multiplayer scenarios were highlighted as the strongest aspects of the game.[70][68][3][4][8] PC Gamer said that they encourage Colonial Marine players to coordinate their actions with motion trackers as Alien players try to hunt them intelligently.[70] However, the longevity of the multiplayer mode was questioned due to the limited randomization it provides and the lack of computer-controlled bots.[70]
Unfortunately ACMO is not a miracle patch that turns the game into what was promised and teased back in the day and there are still many bugs and issues that remain that cannot be fixed with a hex editor.Despite that buried under bad design choices, rushed development and typo's there is a decent game to be found, certainly better than the one that was released by Gearbox. When you play ACMO you are still playing the same game, its just everything works better, everything looks better and as a result the game is much more enjoyable.The AI can still get stuck, and sometimes they still bug out and just stand still but it happens less often and is much less likely to impact gameplay progression than before. Human vs Human combat is not exactly what you would call tactically sound and their choices are often still suicidalDue to how these changes have been applied to the game, it is one change for the entire game and all the modes. This can lead to pacing issues with your ally marines either leaving you behind or not following at times. Triggering the next sequence will make them catch up if they are behind or they will wait there for you. If you are seperated to much they will eventually be teleported to you.When its all working however you can expect much more satisfying and enjoyable encounters, especially with the xenomorphs who move much more like they did in the bullshot video crawling over everything and being much less predictable foes
What to expect :Unfortunately ACMO is not a miracle patch that turns the game into what was promised and teased back in the day and there are still many bugs and issues that remain that cannot be fixed with a hex editor.Despite that buried under bad design choices, rushed development and typo's there is a decent game to be found, certainly better than the one that was released by Gearbox. When you play ACMO you are still playing the same game, its just everything works better, everything looks better and as a result the game is much more enjoyable.The AI can still get stuck, and sometimes they still bug out and just stand still but it happens less often and is much less likely to impact gameplay progression than before. Human vs Human combat is not exactly what you would call tactically sound and their choices are often still suicidalDue to how these changes have been applied to the game, it is one change for the entire game and all the modes. This can lead to pacing issues with your ally marines either leaving you behind or not following at times. Triggering the next sequence will make them catch up if they are behind or they will wait there for you. If you are seperated to much they will eventually be teleported to you.When its all working however you can expect much more satisfying and enjoyable encounters, especially with the xenomorphs who move much more like they did in the bullshot video crawling over everything and being much less predictable foes
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