Despite not officially releasing 'til tomorrow, a number of reviews are starting to pop up online for Sega and Gearbox's Aliens: Colonial Marines. Mostly negative reviews unfortunately, because I was looking forward to this one.
Since it's the most easily accessible, we'll start with a few choice statements from Games Asylum's review (a few spoilers in this review, so read it at your own risk).
- "The Xenomorphs themselves are plentiful in number, crawling along walls and out of air-ducts as you expect them to, but even on 'hardened' difficulty they go down with one shotgun slug even from afar. If they get too close they can be pushed away, and sometimes after being incapacitated by one there's a chance take it down with a pistol, akin to Borderlands 2's 'second chance' feature."
- "There's a lack of tension throughout and an even more notable lack of set-pieces designed to scare. Make no mistake - this is a very gung-ho experience. Although the iconic motion tracker is available from the start, it rarely has to be used due to emitting an audible sound when enemies are near even when it's not equipped. The torch too is a missed chance to build tension. The battery doesn't need re-charging and most areas are packed with fancy lighting effects which have seemingly been used to try to mask the roughness of the textures."
- "there are far too many instances when it feels like just another bug hunt. Given the rich source material, that shouldn't be the case."
Moving forward, let's go to Games.TM magazine, which gave the game a less than adequate, 4 out of 10.
- "Many of Colonial Marines' flaws could have been excusable back in the early days of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but now, when every title is polished to excruciating level of quality, it just doesn't cut it."
- "Graphically, it's one of the worst we've seen grace consoles in years. It certainly may have been acceptable in 2006, when the game was first conceived, but now it just looks embarrasing up against other titles coming out in the Q1 release window."
- "Colonial Marines does at time play with expanding the lore in a meaningful way but skirts over it almost immediately."
- "Even some returning voice actors voicing their digital characters can't save the train wreck of a narrative, and it certainly doesn't help to immerse you in the world when the lip-sincing doesn't even match up."
- "Without Cameron's guiding hand, the story never amounts to anything more than a vehicle to drive players from one disappointing corridor to the next."
One publication, itnewsafrica (whose review has since been pulled), seemed to be a little more forgiving, giving the game a 7.9 out of 10.
You can check back here tomorrow for our review, when Aliens: Colonial Marines launches, Feb. 12, for PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. The game arrive on Nintendo's Wii U in March.
