Aliens: Colonial Marines PAX East 2012 Preview April 11, 2012

It has been seventeen weeks since the nuclear reactor on LV-426 went critical. The Sulaco was officially considered destroyed in orbit above the planet. Your job is to find out what went wrong.

Aliens: Colonial Marines is the unofficial third installment of the Alien series. The game follows the story of the second movie, Aliens, and tells the story of just what happened after Ellen Ripley, Dwayne Hicks, and Newt defeated the alien queen and took off into much worse movies.

You play as a marine selected as part of the team to investigate what happened to the marine squad who were at LV-426. They were not expecting to see the Sulaco, a ship they expected to have been destroyed, still intact and orbiting the planet, almost like a ghost ship. With no protection, you cross the glass-enclosed umbilical connected to the Sulco’s docking port. Since it’s fully enclosed you can really see the detail of the damage on the ship and the fear the vacuum of space can break through any moment.

Upon entering the Sulaco the player is greeted by several marines in triage, all with major injuries and with only one medic to attend to them. For the brief moments we were in this room, I asked myself, where had I seen it before? Then I realized this was a recreation of the cargo bay Ripley had fought the alien queen in, in the climax of Aliens. How could I tell this room was where the alien queen battle had taken place? The lower half of Bishop was still on the ground.

The player is then tasked with investigating the ship and find the ship’s logs, which might shed some light on just what happened on board. Of course on the way through this ghost ship, you torch through a previously sealed door and find yourself face to face with alien resin all over the walls. Yes, you are not alone on that ship. Eggs are all over the floor, opened. Hugger corpses are as well, and if you have seen any of the alien movies you know that if the huggers are dead that means they had…hugged someone.

You find someone alive embedded in the wall, and with the tap of a button you start to break him out of his prison with your plasma torch. As you start the process, an alien comes out of nowhere and leaps out at you! You give chase through the tight cocoon corridors, not knowing just what else is in there waiting for you. After defeating the alien, you go back to free the cocooned man. As you break him out, your superiors inform you over radio to get out of there and just forget the log book, but you won’t have any of it. You go further into the transformed section of the ship, eventually coming across the log inside one of the ship’s computers.

With the log secured and your freed companion in tow you decide to leave the ship via the umbilical you came through on. As you cross the halfway point your companion starts to act funny and begins coughing up blood. It looks like a hugger had indeed gotten to him. As the alien begins to burst out of his chest he pulls a grenade out of his pocket and detonates it, blowing himself up and severely damaging the umbilical, making the atmosphere vent out into space! Holding on for dear life, your only hope for survival is to crawl your way back into the Sulaco inch by inch!

We also got to play the game’s multiplayer component against the developers. The game features team deathmatch and pits a team of aliens against a squad of marines. As we played the marine squad we got access to all the firepower you’d recognise from the movie in the loadout options including pulse rifles (with grenade attachment), shotguns, and of course there was a minigun you could find on the map. Marines also had access to motion trackers, which could be brought up by tapping on a bumper, at the cost of lowering your weapon.

Upon seeing both of the multiplayer factions in action, I want to mention that it seemed the sides were imbalanced in multiplayer. The alien team was far too powerful. While they did not have any long-range firepower, the level design, their ability to climb to walls, and their ability to see enemies through walls made them powerful as hell to begin with. Couple that with their increased speed, heavy damage attacks, special attacks, and what seemed to be more resilience to damage and it didn’t make for a very balanced game. That having been said, it would seem that reducing the maximum health for the alien team would balance it out and make the teams more even.

Aliens: Colonial Marines is coming to PC, PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii U.