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Face-Off: Aliens: Colonial Marines

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  • Face-Off: Aliens: Colonial Marines

    Given the potential for fitting the Aliens universe into a suspenseful first-person adventure, the firm but fair Eurogamer score for Aliens: Colonial Marines comes as dismaying news, but perhaps we should have seen the fire on the horizon. The signs of development hell are writ large when a game's first unveiling dates back over half a decade and where the studio credits are divided across four separate offices. In this case, we see Gearbox Software at the heart of the game's lengthy span of development, while segments of the solo campaign and multi-player are outsourced to TimeGate Studios and Nerve Software, respectively. The journey towards nailing a final release date has been described by one former Gearbox employee as "a total train wreck" though the jury is still out on the condition of the Wii U version, currently being handled by Demiurge Studios.
    So what have we got? The game is built around Unreal Engine 3, with a modified renderer plugged in to allow for a more advanced dynamic lighting system. An early tech demo from E3 2011 showed this idea had real relevance to the tone of the films, especially when navigating around dark wastelands armed with just a flashlight to show the way. In a well-considered fusion of art and tech, designs of planet LV-426 were handed over by the film's original concept artist, Syd Mead, and backed up in this fashion by stencil buffers to cast stark shadows wherever you looked - a method that may call to mind other claustrophobic corridor-based shooters, such as Doom 3 or FEAR.
    From a level design standpoint, the source material is clearly well-studied, and the look of the umbilical bridges leading from the Sulaco spaceship, plus the spindly xenomorph egg chambers, impress on first sight. However, technical issues with the game bubble to the surface quickly once these areas are filled by skittish marine allies and weightless alien AI - all of which suffer from collision glitches around the environment.
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