17th, June

SG E3 2011: You’ll Want to Play with these Aliens

This game can be summed up in one sentence: it has aliens and guns… and it looks great! Aliens: Colonial Marines looks like it’s going to turn out to be a great experience filled with constant saliva falling from the ceiling and scared soldiers looking in the wrong direction before its too late.   Aliens: Colonial Marines is a continuation of the story after Aliens 3. LV-426 has been destroyed and these marines are sent on a search-and-rescue mission to find Ripley and the rest of the crew. The demo started off with the marines going to the Hadley’s Hope facility, or what remained of it after the nuclear blast. Aliens fans will be able to walk in the fictional spot where Ripley and the others had their final moments. Gearbox is using a new rendering engine exclusively for this game, with dynamic lighting in real time to make the game look even better and eerie. The big part of the game, obviously, is how the aliens can immediately overwhelm you. At every corner there are chances for many close encounters. One moment you’re making your way to a checkpoint and the next there’s a xenomorph on top of your character’s body, its teeth inches from your face. All the Xenomorphs look very gruesome and almost “lifelike,” with their bodies glistening in nastiness. There’s a new species of aliens called the crushers that look like an alien triceratops. This crusher chased down the marines into a bunker (it was too big to be defeated). The game will allow you to use a combination of weapons and melee attacks to rack up skill points. The weapons you choose are what determine your skill, not any specific character classes. That said, your weapons will sometimes become unusable unless you find somewhere to repair them. The game will have four player co-op that anyone can drop-in and drop-out of easily. You can also play locally via splitscreen. No details are really known on the multiplayer yet but there is something in the works for that. In the demo, when a second player joined the fun, the marines were quickly overwhelmed by more xenomorphs. Even though one player placed a turret in a hallway, the suppressing fire was not enough to keep the creatures at bay. The AI marines were being plucked away one by one. Some were attacked from the ceiling, others flanked from the sides, one was dragged away, etc. The final scene featured too many aliens (ah!) slithering out of a vent and then a xenomorph queen crashing in through the wall. She grabs the player (us!) and helps herself to a snack. This game is set to release on the PS3 and Xbox 360 in the Spring of 2012, with later dates for the PC and even the WiiU.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cFMMQie5RU&w=425&h=350]