The Mog Blog

I don’t remember the last time I played any FPS game that took place in the Aliens universe. So, going into Aliens: Colonial Marines, I was not expecting anything. Sega was lining up people to play against the developers at Gearbox. The devs would be taking the side of the Aliens while the rest of us would be playing the Marines. The idea was a simple deathmatch like game, except there were distinct advantages and disadvantages with both teams.

The Marines have themselves a fancy array of weapons that they can use. For the sake of me not wanting to spray and pray my way to victory, I opted to go with a shotgun preset build that they had. The Aliens do not get weapons, instead they have their own set of attacks to subdue the Marines. The Aliens also can cling around walls and ceilings and can view the environment in a third-person perspective. The trade off is being extremely weak to head on confrontations. A good shotgun blast can mean the end of an Alien, and I made sure to follow the wishes of the developers by making it so.

As a team based game, sticking around is generally the best advice anyone can give. Because everyone is dark as crap, you need extra eyes. Those Aliens can pretty much destroy you in one attack, especially if you’re not paying attention. There were times where I didn’t spot check rooms and I ended up dead on the floor seconds later.

There’s quite a bit of “Oh shit” moments in these multiplayer sessions. Especially when the game decides to spawn you all alone, the only real thing you can think about is trying to regroup with your allies without being Alien fodder. Still, the shotgun was my best friend in the dark deep corners of the map I was playing. You do not have to be too close but you are mobile enough that you can essentially dance around an Alien as they try to swing at you. Eventually, it seems like the Aliens can spawn into a Crusher, a huge mutated alien that reminds me a bit of Left 4 Dead’s Tank. I was able to fight one of the devs mano-a-mano with him as a Crusher and me with my shotty. Needless to say, I came out on top, expletives were shouted, I felt like I contributed to a future nerf.

I had a lot of fun with this mode. After thinking about it for a bit, it does remind me of this game mode in the older Splinter Cell games called Mercenaries vs. Spies, except in this case it’s Marines vs. Aliens. The concept was pretty much the same, you have the FPS players with weapons vs. the TPS players with stealth tactics. It works very well and I can’t wait to dive into this more.

It will be some time before we see this game on store shelves. It is en-route to PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 on February 12nd 2013, with a Wii U release some time in the future.