Aliens: Colonial Marines Mod Makes Game Fun
By Evan Hopkins 26 March 2016
A lone modder releases an extensive mode that drastically overhauls the notoriously bad Aliens: Colonial Marines, turning the laughably stupid Aliens into relentless killing machines.
While developer Gearbox Software has built quite the franchise in the Borderlands series, the studio does have a large blemish on its sterling record: Aliens: Colonial Marines. Billed as the game Aliens fans had been waiting for, Gearbox set tongues wagging with a truly impressive trailer at E3 2011. But when the game finally released, gamers found it to be a buggy, broken mess.
The titular Aliens were programmed with laughable A.I., weapons were nearly useless against the bullet sponge enemies that populated the in-game world, and the title simply wasn’t that much fun to play. The game was so bad that it resulted in a lawsuit being filed against Gearbox and publisher Sega over the apparent misrepresentation of the title in trailers. The game ended up losing Gearbox a whopping $10 million, and fans labeled the game a lost cause. However, one dedicated fan is working singlehandedly to turn Aliens: Colonial Marines into the game it always should have been.
An Alien superfan going by the handle Templar GFX Modding has been diligently working on a mod intended to improve the notoriously messy Aliens: Colonial Marines, publishing the massive patch on ModDB. Billed as a mod that lets gamers “experience Aliens: Colonial Marines as it should have been when it came out,” the mod essentially overhauls the game top to bottom. The laundry list of changes includes improved lighting, tweaked weapons, and bug fixes, but it is the enemies of the game that get the most focus.
Colonial Marines received criticism for its dumbing down of the fearsome Xenomorphs, turning the notorious killing machines into prone-to-walking-into-wall bullet sponges. Templar GFX Modding’s mod extensively retools the A.I. of the Aliens, increasing the decision making speed of some enemies by a whopping 500 percent, turning the creatures into smart, tactical forces to be reckoned with that actively work to adapt to changing situations. As a trade-off, the Aliens now take less damage to kill, eliminating a major gripe with the original release of the game that enemies took too long to defeat.
In addition to fixing the extensive enemy issues Colonial Marines had, GFX’s mod works to better immerse players into the Alien world, with the mod eliminating the game engine from sweeping away dead bodies and blood. Instead, the mod ensures that every drop of blood, every spray of acid, and every slain body remains in the game, allowing players to see every instance of carnage brought on by battling the remorseless Aliens.
While the consensus among Aliens fans seems to be that Creative Assembly’s pants-wettingly terrifying Alien: Isolation has done the best job at capturing the spirit of the beloved franchise, GFX’s mod just might turn the notoriously terrible Aliens: Colonial Marines (which was assigned a 1 out of 5 by Game Rant) into the game Aliens fans always wanted.
Source: ModDB
