Aliens: Colonial Marines is a 2013 first-person shooter developed by Gearbox Software and published by Sega for PlayStation 3, Windows, and Xbox 360. Based on the Alien 20th Century Fox universe and set shortly after the 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. It 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. As Gearbox decided to focus on projects such as Duke Nukem Forever and Borderlands 2 and outsourced a significant part of Colonial Marines to other studios. The Aliens concept artist Syd Mead was hired to design locations. Four downloadable content packs added multiplayer maps, a new cooperative mode, and a campaign mode that takes place before the campaign of the base game.
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, short length, and weak artificial intelligence of enemies. It is considered to be one of the worst video games of the 2010s. The competitive multiplayer mode was highlighted as its strongest aspect. Colonial Marines drew controversy as the game featured lower graphical quality than that of the press demos. This led two players to file a lawsuit for false advertising, but it lost class-action status by 2015.
Gameplay
Aliens: Colonial Marines is a first-person shooter based on the Alien science fiction horror film series. The campaign mode, which can be played by a single player or cooperatively by up to four players, features 11 missions that involve players moving from one checkpoint to another while fighting opponents controlled by the artificial intelligence. Opponents consist of either Alien creatures, also known as Xenomorphs, or hostile human mercenaries. Xenomorphs are fast and primarily attack with their claws or by spitting acid, while mercenaries are slower and use firearms.
As the fictional Colonial Marines military unit depicted in James Cameron's 1986 film Aliens, players have access to weapons such as pistols, shotguns, grenades, pulse rifles, flamethrowers, robotic sentry turrets, and smartguns, which automatically track and target opponents. They may also use welding torches to seal doors and motion trackers to detect unseen enemies. Ammunition can be found on defeated mercenaries or from certain locations in the mission area. The Colonial Marines are protected by a health bar that is divided into segments. If a segment is partially depleted, it will automatically regenerate over time. Med-Packs throughout the missions may be acquired to restore lost health segments. Players may also collect pieces of armor that protect the health bar with a secondary meter that does not automatically regenerate. Players have a limited time to revive a player whose health has been fully depleted. If they fail, the downed player cannot return until the surviving players reach the next checkpoint.
In addition to the campaign mode, Colonial Marines features a competitive multiplayer mode where two teams of up to five players face each other in four different scenarios. Each scenario involves one team playing as Colonial Marines and the other as Aliens. After a time limit has been reached, players switch roles and play once more on the same map. Scenarios include Team Deathmatch, where both teams must kill as many opposing players as possible; Extermination, where Colonial Marines must detonate bombs in egg-infested areas protected by Aliens; Escape, which involves Colonial Marines completing objectives to reach a destination while being assaulted by Aliens; and Survivor, where Colonial Marines must survive attacks from Aliens with limited health and ammunition resources for as long as possible. Unlike Colonial Marines, Alien players play from a third-person perspective and cannot use firearms, but have the ability to climb walls, run on ceilings, deliver attacks with their claws, and unleash streams of acid.
Players earn experience points by overcoming opponents, completing challenges, and finding collectibles—audio logs, dog tags, and legendary weapons, all of which are related to characters who appear in the film series. Challenges range from killing opponents in a particular way to winning multiplayer matches and completing campaign missions under a difficulty setting. Players have two ranks, one for their Colonial Marine character and another for their Alien character. When a sufficient amount of experience has been obtained, their characters rank up. Colonial Marine ranks unlock weapon upgrades for use in both the campaign and the competitive multiplayer modes. These include alternate fire attachments, telescopic sights, and larger capacity magazines. In contrast, Alien ranks unlock new combat abilities for Alien characters. Completing challenges also unlocks appearance options for both Colonial Marine and Alien characters, and new attributes that are exclusive to Colonial Marines in the competitive multiplayer mode.
Plot 17 weeks after the events of Aliens, the USS Sephora sends a full battalion of Colonial Marines to investigate the USS Sulaco, now in orbit around LV-426 moon. A massive Xenomorph infestation is discovered inside the Sulaco and several Marines are killed in the initial onslaught. Corporal Christopher Winter, Private Peter O'Neal, and Private Bella Clarison discover that hostile mercenaries working for the Weyland-Yutani corporation are in command of the Sulaco and have been breeding Xenomorphs on board for study. Shortly before both ships are destroyed in the ensuing confrontation, the Marines, along with commander Captain Cruz, Sephora android Bishop, and pilot lieutenant Lisa Reid, escape aboard her dropship and take shelter in the ruins of the Hadley's Hope colony complex on LV-426.
Although the Marines learn that Clarison has been attacked by a facehugger and needs medical treatment, Cruz orders Winter to travel to a nearby Weyland-Yutani research facility set up near a derelict Xenomorph spacecraft and recover a manifest that identifies an unknown prisoner from the Sulaco. In an attempt to save Clarison, Winter and O'Neal accept the mission and escort her to the facility, where they intend to convince surviving personnel to remove the Xenomorph embryo from her body. However, upon arrival, an interrogated Weyland-Yutani medical officer explains to them that Clarison's life cannot be saved because the creature's invasive placenta is cancerous and will eventually kill her even if the embryo is successfully extracted. Clarison dies when a chestburster hatches from her.
Winter and O'Neal recover the manifest they were sent to find and rescue the prisoner, who is revealed to be corporal Dwayne Hicks. Hicks explains that Weyland-Yutani intercepted and boarded the Sulaco before it arrived at the penal colony of Fiorina 161. A fire in the hypersleep bay subsequently caused the Sulaco survivors Ellen Ripley, Newt, and Bishop to be jettisoned from the ship, along with the body of an unidentified man who was mistaken for the corporal. Hicks himself was captured by Weyland-Yutani personnel and subjected to torture during interrogation, overseen by android Michael Weyland in an attempt to learn more about the Xenomorphs' origins and to gain control of the Sulacos weapon systems. From Hicks, the Marines also learn that an FTL-capable ship is docked at the research facility, representing the last chance for the Marines to escape from the moon.
After gathering the remaining Sephora personnel on the colony, Cruz orders an all-out assault on the Weyland-Yutani complex in the hopes of capturing the FTL vessel. Winter and Hicks spearhead the advance, but the ship leaves shortly before they can reach it. In a last desperate attempt, Cruz pilots a dropship up to the escaping vessel and crashes into its hangar. Winter is confronted by a Xenomorph queen in the hangar bay, and attempts to eject her using a cargo launching system, but fails when she climbs back aboard. Cruz sacrifices himself when he launches the crippled dropship directly into the queen, propelling both out of the vessel. Winter, O'Neal, Reid, Bishop, and Hicks confront Weyland, who is ultimately executed by Hicks. In search of useful intelligence, Bishop connects to the destroyed android and states that he has "everything".
Development Design
Colonial Marines was conceived by Gearbox Software after an encounter between the company's creative director, Bryan Martell, and the director of the original Alien film, Ridley Scott. When Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 was released in 2005, Gearbox was interested in working with an existing intellectual property and had previously considered Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner and Michael Mann's 1995 film Heat as candidates. Martell's discussion with Scott on the Alien universe inspired him to approach 20th Century Fox about the licensing opportunities. Sega, who bought the rights to publish games based on the franchise in December 2006, gave Gearbox complete freedom to present them with an idea for a game. Because Gearbox had experience with first-person shooters and the development team was composed of people who were fans of Aliens, the company proposed a first-person shooter that would be a direct sequel to it.
Although the final script was written by Gearbox writer Mikey Neumann, Bradley Thompson and David Weddle, writers of the 2004 television series Battlestar Galactica, collaborated with Gearbox during the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike to develop the story and characters. The game takes place shortly after the 1992 Aliens sequel Alien 3, but addresses the events that lead to it. As a result, Colonial Marines is considered part of the series' canon. Several locations of Aliens like the Sulaco spaceship and the Hadley's Hope colony were recreated for the game. To keep the same level of authenticity, concept artist Syd Mead, who collaborated with Cameron on the film to design the Sulaco, was hired to recreate its "mechanical mood" and design areas of the spaceship that did not appear in the film. Entertainment designer Lorin Wood was hired by Gearbox to take over Syd Mead's workload after his contract expired. Due to his industrial design experience and film industry work he helped the studio maintain a consistent aesthetic that Syd Mead and Ron Cobb established for the film. The development team also contacted Kodak to get color channel details about the film's film stock.
Originally, Colonial Marines was intended to feature squad-based gameplay, allowing the player to issue orders to Colonial Marines controlled by the artificial intelligence using context-sensitive commands. These would include hacking doors, sealing air vents, and setting up sentry turrets. In cooperative mode, players would then be able to directly control these Marines, who would have their own strengths and weaknesses. However, this idea was ultimately dropped to make the gameplay more accessible. Gearbox developed the game for Windows and the new PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles, stating that their technology would "do [the film] justice".
Production