Aliens: Colonial Marines
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Aliens: Colonial Marines is a video game, released by Sega in February 12, 2013 for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game has been developed by Gearbox Software (in association with TimeGate Studios, Nerve Software, and Demiurge Studios) who aimed at creating a First-Person Shooter (FPS) Aliens title which will retain the atmospheric look and feel of the Alien films while leveraging next-generation technology to create an entirely new interactive Alien experience. Events will take place after the death of Ellen Ripley in Alien 3 with the USCMC investigating the incident on LV-426 and taking them to other environments such as the spaceship USS Sulaco and the derelict alien craft. There has been a number of production problems with the game including various release delays, a similar titled RPG game had been cancelled before completion.
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Gameplay
Edit
Aliens: Colonial Marines is a sci-fi/horror first-person shooter which puts the player in the role of a United States Colonial Marine as seen in the film Aliens. Player will have access to iconic weapons from the movie such as the flamethrower, pulse rifle, smartgun, pistol, RPGs, and robotic sentry turrets, they will also be able to use welding torches to seal doors and motion trackers to detect unseen enemies (as in the films).
Initially it was announced that Aliens: Colonial Marines used squad based gameplay, allowing the player to issues orders to AI controlled marines using context-sensitive commands. However, Gearbox later revealed that this feature was dropped to make gameplay more accessible and is now a drop-in/drop-out game, players are AI controlled with the ability of allowing other players to join in co-op. Aliens: Colonial Marines was originally planned to have no HUD to provide the player with onscreen information.
Gameplay types have been described as "Gauntlet Runs", where players must fight enemies as they travel from point A to point B, and "Last Stand" moments, where players must defend a specific area by welding doors and/or setting up automated sentry turrets.
In Aliens: Colonial Marines players will gain experience points when killing enemies and completing certain objectives. These experience points will allow players to customize the appearance of their character, purchase upgrades for weapons, and unlock other skill sets. All of which carry over to other gameplay modes.
The primary enemies of the game are the Xenomorphs from the first three films, which include the Facehugger, Chestburster, and "Drone" alien from Alien, the "Warrior" and the "Queen" aliens from Aliens, as well as the "Runner" alien from Alien 3. The game will also features never before seen xenomorph types created by Gearbox Software. The specifics of these new alien types have been kept a secret up until a few months before release, with the exception of the "Crusher" alien, which was revealed in the E3 2011 walkthrough demo. Along with being able to traverse different surfaces from any angle, Gearbox and Sega have also stated that the aliens' AI will use the environment to set up sneak attacks, and group tactics to overwhelm the player. Not all enemies will be aliens as players will find themselves also fighting human enemies in the form of Weyland-Yutani grunts, burts and hazmats.
Multi-playerEdit
Aliens: Colonial Marines features a campaign with dynamic drop-in/ drop-out cooperative multi-player for up to 4 players online or 2 players locally via split screen. There has been gameplay that dos show players fighting as aliens against marines.
A newly unveiled Escape Mode features a four-versus-four multi-player mode. In Escape, the players are choose sides between the Marines or the Xenomorphs. The Marines are charged with fighting their way to a safe zone, while three distinct breeds of Xenomorphs have to stop them. Another multi-player mode called Survivor requires Marines to survive at all cost against the Xenomorph horde.
PlotEdit
The game begins with Corporal Hicks making a video log just before going into cryo sleep (in Aliens the film), Ripley, Newt, Bishop and him are the last survivors of the group sent out to LV-426 (it is revealed in the game that PMCs board the Sulaco causing a fire and events continue from there and Hicks appears on LV426 and not Fury 161).
17 weeks later, the marine corp dispatches the USS Sephora and intercepts the Sulaco which is now orbiting LV-426. Captain Cruz sends a detachment of marines to locate and recover the flight data recorder, unfortunately the group was attacked by unknown entities. Corporal Christopher Winter is awaken from cyro after the first group of marines ran into unknown trouble and assigned to board the Sulaco bring the marines back. As Winter is getting suited up, Bishop (not the same Bishop from the movie) is also onboard inspecting Winter's health. Just as Winter is nearing the Sulaco's airlock, an explosion occurs and Cruz is forced to disable the umbilical airlocks. Upon arriving on the Sulaco, Winter meets Sgt. O'Neal who is tending to the wounded and is given an order by Cruz to search for any missing marines and return them back to the Sephora. As Winter enters into the hanger bay, he sees the lower half portion of Bishop (who was torn in half by the Alien queen). When Winter reaches Keyes, he sees Keyes has been cocooned to the wall with an empty alien egg next to him. Before cutting the cocooned marine, Winter is surprised by an alien drone but quickly kills it. After being freed, Keyes request to continue finding the Sulaco's flight data recorder. Cruz orders both Winters and Keyes to return back to the Sephora but Keyes disobeys. Cruz reluctantly gives them 5 minutes to retrieve the recorder. Upon regrouping with O'Neal and the rest of the marines, the aliens began swarming the survivors just when Keyes opens the airlock door and everybody starts running toward the umbilical. Suddenly, Keyes holds his chest in pain and then a chestbuster breaks through his armor. In an act of desperation, Keyes pulls out a grenade and blows up the umbilical killing one of the marines and exposing Winter to the space vaccum. Winter, holding for dear life manages to climb back into the Sulaco with O'Neal's help and closes the airlock doors. After recovering, Winter and O'Neal are ordered to the hanger bay and along the way, they find hardware belonging to Weyland company installed on the ship's computer. They asked Cruz only to be rebuked and ordered to return to hanger for extraction by dropshop. Bella manages to reach Cruz, Winters, and O'Neal by radio informing she had a long disturbing nap and just woke up with an ugly spider creature next to her. While enroute to the cargo bay, Winter and O'Neal are attacked by alien soldiers and open up the main cargo door to suck the aliens out while Lt. Reid, one of the dropship pilot manages to land onboard. Suddenly Weyland PMC ambushes the marines and Bishop reports to Cruz that the controls for the Sulaco weapon system has been hacked. Cruz then gives a new order to shut down the Sulaco's weapon as the ship is firing its guns at the Sephora. While enroute to the bridge, O'Neal reunites to Bella who reveals the PMCs are guns-for-hire and are there to cover up Weyland's involvement. As O'Neal, Bella, and Winter heads to the bridge, they manage to disable the weapon system, unfortunately the Sephora is destroyed due to heavy fire. Cruz informs that most of the marines have evacuated from the Sephora and are on the Sulaco waiting for Winter, O'Neal, and Bella. As all the marines are on the dropship, Reid flies through the Sephora's Cargo Bay damaging one of her engines and later forcing Reid to crash land on LV-426.
On the surface of LV-426 after everybody recovers from the crash, Bishop tells Bella she has an alien in her and that she may have a few hours or at least a day to live. At first she doesn't believe it, but after hearing from Cruz and Winter of what happen to Keyes, she sinks into despression with O'Neal trying to comfort her. Since Hadley's Hope is not far, Cruz moves the squad to what's left of the colony in order to get some protection from the weather. Along the way, they encounter the APC that Ripley was driving while Reid ask Cruz what really happen to the colony and the marine detachment from Aliens. Cruz then sets up a command post in Operations (the same room where Ripley and the other marine survivors were except the explosion took off a large portion of the structure exposing it to the elements). Cruz breaks everybody into groups with O'Neal and Winter orders are to position motion sensors while Bella and Reid are to secure the communication link. Just as Winter places the fifth sensor in the infirmary room, the xenomorph soldiers, runners, and drones begin to attack the survivors. With Operations now compromised Cruz orders Winter and O'Neal to get the girls back and regroup. As Winter enters the sewer, he gets seperated from O'Neal, retrieves Hick's shotgun but is captured and knocked unconscience by the Raven (a scared alien). Winter wakes up to find he is cocooned to the wall by the Raven who then suddenly leaves. Winter manages to break himself free but has no way to defend himself as he is stripped of all his gears. Along the way in the sewer while hiding from the Raven and other aliens, he finds Hudson who was last seen being taken away by the aliens. Along the way, several of the original aliens from the movie (Boilers) are still alive but have been exposed to radiation and can explode themselves. Just as Winter is almost out of the sewer to meet up with O'Neal, the Raven pursues them but they manage to escape back out to the open. Bella meets up with guys and tells them Reid got captured. O'Neal, Winter and Bella then make a dash attempt to rescue Reid which they do and she is able to hack the communications array while the others would defend her. Suddenly the Raven burst through forcing the group to seperate which everybody regroups back in a large cargo room. Just when things are calming down, the Raven's soldier swamps the room and O'Neal gets captured. Bella and Winter makes plan to rescue O'Neal but Reid pulls rank on them. Winter however tells Reid nobody gets left behind and goes out to find O'Neal. Just after finding the missing marine alive and well, the Raven returns as the group makes a dash escape. Unfortunately the Raven corners them forcing Winter to use a power loader to fight back while Bella, Reid, and O'Neal provides the cover fire. After a tense battle, the Raven finally falls and the group returns back to Operations.
Cruz, very angry at the fight between Bella and Reid, reminds them he is also responsible for other marines and cannot have internal problems. With that settled, he grants Winter and O'Neal's request to go to the Weyland facility to find a way to get the alien out of Bella. However, the condition for the mission is to download and uplink the manifest list of all personnel before finding the cure. Winter then drives O'Neal and Bella to the other side without detection using the surface crawler (the same mobile vehicle that Newt was on). Just nearing the facility, the three go on foot where they find some parts of the Sephora has crashed on the surface. They also find some of the EEV that was ejected from the Sephora but the survivors were killed by the aliens. As Winter, O'Neal and Bella enter into a cave, they are attacked by the spitters, an alien that spit acids at long range. After killing most of them, they finally reach a Weyland module that appears abandon with its defends up and running. However, the module is not empty as they are attack by more aliens and placed turrets. After getting up to the main office, the group downloads the manifest and find there is a USMC soldier among them. Now that the manifest has been downloaded, Winter and O'Neal began the mission to get the alien out of Bella, but the situation changes when Cruz informs them the manifest has a marine who is still alive and was taken from the Sulaco. Their new order, besides saving Bella, is to rescue the captured marine and bring him back alive. As the three enter the medical facility, O'Neal captures a scientist and force him for information on how to remove the alien from Bella. Sadly, the scientist said there is nothing he could do as the alien is part of her body and removing the chestbuster before it develops would be fatal to the host. Bella lays on the medical table with O'Neal closed to her making him promise that he will get all the marines back alive. O'Neal gives her his promise just as a chestbuster comes out. The chestbuster is killed and with nothing left, O'Neal and Winter request hostage mission parameters and begin to rescue the captured marine. As O'Neal and Winter goes farther into the facility, they find Weyland is doing major experiments on the aliens and using people to make aliens. To shut down the facility and let the aliens kill the scientist and PMCs, Winter and O'Neal disables the security grid and lets all hell break lose. Unfortunately, the alien mother queen that is held captive breaks free after the containment fails. The two then exits the facility and finds the derelict where Weyland has setup a facility where Kane saw thousands of eggs. As they exit out on the other side, Winter spots the captured marine about to be move into the APC. After killing the guards, O'Neal and Winter tries to contact Cruz but realize they've been tricked.
When returning back to Hadley's Hope, O'Neal is very angry that Bella died in vain and Cruz didn't tell him about the FTL capital ship nor that there was no hope to save her. Winter calms him down and confronts Cruz about the marine. The captured marine is revealed to be Corporal Hicks who is alive and well. Just before Hicks reveal anymore information, Reid reports that hundreds of aliens are now heading for Hadley's Hope. Hicks and Reid however are to go into the APC and drive away for safety while the rest of the maines began to defend themselve. After swarms of aliens are defeated, Winter finally meets the Crusher and kills it after a tense battle. After the marines are in Operations, Hicks returns to Cruz and tells everybody that Hicks was awaken by the Sulaco's computer because Michael Weyland PMCs troop boarded the ship illegally and the EEV was ejected without Hicks. Cruz then tells all marines that they are to attack the PMCs and capture the FTL ship as Weyland is now packing everything up and leaving. During the battle, the marine groups try and stop Weyland from shipping the queen on board the ship as many of the marines destroyed the cannon and anti-aircraft installations. After destroying the last of the defense installation, one of the RPG hits the Queen's trailer and she manages to start killing both the PMCs and some of the marines. She then turns and walks away where Cruz orders everybody to head for the FTL ship instead. As Winter and the marines come close to the FTL, the ship takes off leaving everybody behind. The marines then load into the dropship and crashes into the FLT after blowing up the cargo doors in order to get on board, take over the ship and turn around to pick up the rest of the marines still on the surface. Cruz however is stuck and injured at the cockpit of the dropship orders everybody to get behind the door before the ship reaches the atmosphere and exposes the whole cargo bay to space vaccum. Winter then orders Reid, O'Neal, Hicks, and Bishop to get into the ship before reaching atmos while Winter will try and rescue Cruz. All of the sudden, the Queen was already in the cargo bay begins to attack Winter. After getting the Queen behind the cargo launcher through hiding and getting her into proper position, Winter launches her out the door. Just as everybody is relieve that she is gone, the queen was actually hanging on the edge and suddenly starts attacking the dropship with Cruz still inside. Cruz then gives the last order to take over the ship, return and pick up the marines, and take down Michael Weyland and Weyland Yutani. He then turns on the engine and flies the dropship with the Queen in front and they both crash back into LV-426, killing them both.
O'Neal, Winter, Reid, Hicks and Bishop then go into Weyland's room and confront Michael Weyland who pleads with them not to kill him. O'Neal walks in first holding a pistol threatening to kill him to avenge Cruz, Keyes, Bella and the rest of the marines. Everybody pleads for O'Neal to calm down while Michael knees down and begs for mercy. Bishop then walks in front and calmly tells O'Neal that Bella wouldn't want that. O'Neal then calms down but Hicks forces him to shoot Michael. Everybody starts yelling at Hicks to stand down but Hicks grabs O'Neal's hand with the pistol and shoots Michael right between the eye. Hicks then points to everybody's surprise that Michael Weyland was nothing more then an android. Bishop said that the android is a special model and that he can download everything into his data. As Bishop is downloading, Reid and Winter ask if he got anything concerning the events. Bishop then replied saying they got every dirt about Weyland Yutani as the FTL is going back home with all the marines now safely onboard.
Voice TalentsEdit
- Bishop .... Lance Henriksen
- Christopher Winter .... Derek Phillips
- Bella .... Nisa Ward
- Cruz .... Jason Douglas
- Reid .... Ashly Burch
- O'Neal .... Travis Willingham
- Marine .... Zach Hanks
- Soldier .... Adam Epstein
- Xenomorphs ....
- Aimée Leigh
- Pat Miller
- Pryz .... Gene Pyrz
- Goodens .... Pat Miller
- Drake .... Mark Rolston
- Apone .... Al Matthews
- Dwayne Hicks .... Michael Biehn
- Michael Weyland .... Lance Henriksen
DevelopmentEdit
A previous game titled with the same name was developed by Check Six Games and was to be published by Fox Interactive and Electronic Arts for the PlayStation 2 in 2001, but was cancelled before its release. A more traditional first-person shooter, it shared the same subject matter and setting as the upcoming Gearbox-developed game. Its story was to be set between the events of Aliens and Alien 3, concerning a rescue team of Colonial Marines searching for the Sulaco. Despite the similarities in gameplay and story, however, Gearbox has claimed that their upcoming game is unrelated to this early version.
On December 11, 2006, Sega announced they had purchased the electronic rights to the Alien franchise from 20th Century Fox. On December 15, Gearbox Software and Sega announced that they were working on a completely new game based on the franchise. In February 2008 the game's title was officially announced as Aliens: Colonial Marines and it was featured as the cover story of Game Informer magazine.
The development team took great pains to recreate the vehicles and settings of the films by using original set designs to recreate the exterior and interior of the Sulaco and LV-426. Concept artist Syd Mead, who had worked on Aliens, was hired to design areas of the Sulaco that did not appear in the film but would be used in the game.
A Shacknews article dated November 21, 2008, reported that the Aliens: Colonial Marines game had been delayed, supposedly because of layoffs at Gearbox Software. However, Gearbox president Randy Pitchford insisted that development on the game continues.
According to a Kotaku article, Sega said that their new Aliens vs. Predator game is to be released in early 2010 would be the first of their Aliens games to be released, meaning that Aliens: Colonial Marines will be sometime afterwards.
At the 2010 Penny Arcade Expo (PAX), Gearbox showed five new screenshots and stated that the game remains a priority for them.
In the beginning of June 2011, Gearbox unveiled a teaser trailer and officially announced that Colonial Marines would be presented on E3 2011 and that the game is expected to be released in spring 2012.
On January 26, 2012, Sega announced that it had decided to delay the game yet again, pushing it to a fall 2012 release date. In addition, Gearbox Software also announced that they would be releasing a new trailer. On May 21, 2012, Gearbox Software has announced a February 12, 2013 launch for Aliens: Colonial Marines on PS3, 360 and PC with Wii U version announcement "at a later time".
Gearbox Software has officially announced that Aliens: Colonial Marines is now finished and will meet it’s February 12th release date.
Collector's Edition/Pre-order BonusEdit
The Collector's Edition includes a Powerloader vs. Xenomorph statuette and a USCM dossier containing a mission brief, a schematic of the USS Sephora, a recruitment card, iron-on badges, recon photos and a USCM graduation certificate, as well as the ability to play four bonus characters: Pvt. Hudson, Pvt. Drake, Cpl. Hicks and Sgt. Apone.
It also includes Ripley's flamethrower, "additional marine customization options," two bonus multiplayer weapons ("Sonic Electromagnetic Ball Breakers", "Phase Plasma Rifle" and "S.H.A.R.P. Rifle") and an exclusive level, the USCM Academy Firing Range.
The Pre-order of the game included the four bonus characters, customization options and Ripley's flamethrower, but none of the other content/toys.
The Seasonal Pass of Aliens: Colonial Marines allows early access to all four add-on content packs that are scheduled to be released from March through to summer 2013. The Aliens: Colonial Marines Season Pass will gives access to campaign content, additional multiplayer maps, new modes, character customization and more.
GalleryEdit
CoverEdit
