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.

Ms. Splosion Man iPad Preview April 8, 2012

As I’m sure you can tell from the video I took of Chainsaw’s live performance, I spent a lot of time at PAX 2012 at the Twisted Pixel booth. Let me tell you, I had a blast.

Twisted Pixel was showing off a lot of their classic games to the PAX crowd in exchange for prizes and praise by the developers. However, they did a lot more than just promote games that have already been released, they were also allowing demos of their latest project, Ms. Splosion Man for the iPad.

Ms. Splosion Man was a sequel to Splosion Man, which were both Xbox Live Arcade exclusive releases.

iPad in hand, I was given the chance to experiment with the controls. The game had a dynamic thumbstick, there were only two directions that Ms. Splosion Man could go, left or right, and moving your finger in the appropriate direction from wherever you felt comfortable holding the device seemed to work pretty well. Ms. Splosion Man does not jump, she explodes, and that is accomplished by tapping on the screen. Up to three explosions can be done before she runs out of juice and you’ll have to run around a bit in order for her to fully recharge.

Now, I’m ashamed to admit it but I went into playing this game on the iPad having never played the game (or its predecessor) on the Xbox 360. Because of that I paid very close attention to the instructions that the technician told me, but there were still several things I had to find out for myself, like wall bouncing.

The level I played was a very difficult challenge map. I have no idea if it was exclusive to the iPad version or if it had previously appeared in the Xbox 360 version (UPDATE: It was level 1-6 on the Xbox 360 version). The developer told me that this was one of their harder challenge maps (but not the hardest) and I was being timed and hopefully would complete it in under three minutes.

Having no familiarity with the Splosion Man control system, it took me a very short while to become accustomed to the way the game controls, but had I played the Xbox 360 version I probably would not have needed that time. In fact, since playing this demo on the iPad I went back and played through the trial of Splosion Man on Xbox Live Arcade and found I had the game’s controls down pat already.

I was able to complete the level, deaths and all, in about ten minutes, but that was not having any previous knowledge of the control system or how to navigate the level. Had I known the solutions to the puzzles before reaching them my time probably would have been a bit shorter. The solutions to the puzzles are not laid out for the player, but the level design does its best to hint to the player the solution on how to progress, of which there was only one (at least in the level that I played). The fact that I was able to complete the level cold was quite impressive.

Framerate was pretty solid, and there were plenty of great effects used. It wasn’t the smoothest game I ever played on a handheld device, but there were no hitches, slowdowns or framerate drops.

I don’t know which version iPad I demoed the game on but Twisted Pixel promised me that they would be releasing the game for iPhone, Windows Phone 7, PC (through STEAM) as well as iPad. No price point or release date was announced, but they said they were aiming for the summer. They also didn’t know if the game would support Apple Game Center integration for achievements.

I also asked if Twisted Pixel was planning on bringing any more of their already released games to multiple platforms following the release of Ms. Splosion Man (like for example, Comic Jumper: The Adventures of Captain Smiley), and while they made it clear to me that only Ms. Splosion Man was officially announced for the multiplatform re-release, that didn’t exclude the possibility that other games may get ports further down the road.