Recognisable but monstrous. Organic yet mechanical. H.R. Giger’s original Xenomorph is life at its most brutal and basic – the snarling embodiment of those twinned Darwinian impulses to survive and reproduce. It remains the most elegant of movie monsters.
You’re being sent back to find out what the hell happened there.
A hissing, savage mouth concealed an even more vicious set of jaws. A long serrated tail provided balance and poise, yet also functioned as a cruelly effective harpoon. It’s blood was concentrated acid, capable of burning through floors and flesh: the perfect defence mechanism. But through the translucent dome that formed its otherworldly head, you could see something even more terrifying: a human skull. It served as a disturbing reminder that cinema’s most famous alien wasn’t entirely extra-terrestrial. It was the child of an unholy union, born to man and those he found waiting amongst the stars.
It served as a disturbing reminder that cinema’s most famous alien wasn’t entirely extra-terrestrial. It was the child of an unholy union, born to man and those he found waiting amongst the stars.
Aliens: Colonial Marines is another one of these unholy unions. It’s a video game based on a movie, but unlike so many of those abominable tie-ins it has a lot going in its favour. Firstly, it’s not a direct adaptation – you won’t be playing as Ripley or Hicks, trampling all over your favourite scenes from the movie. The game is smartly filling in the fictional vacuum left behind after Cameron’s movies. The film series continued to follow the adventures of Lieutenant Ripley, but this is the story of what happened on Hadley’s Hope, the ill-fated human colony established on LV-426. Seventeen years have passed since an entire regiment of marines were lost. You’re being sent back to find out what the hell happened there.
Along with Ridley Scott’s artful direction and a few standout performances, Giger’s Xenomorph and its unusual life-cycle elevated Alien to something much more than ‘Jaws in Space’ (as it was originally pitched). In the years following 1979, it spawned a series: some good, some not so good. But its first sequel, for many, surpassed the original. Shifting genres, becoming much more of an action slash war movie, Aliens confidently had its own identity. It was a Vietnam war movie set in the future with legions of marauding aliens.
Gearbox’s game gets a lot of things right. It authentically weaves itself into the world established by Scott and extended by Cameron, but it’s perhaps the sound effects more than anything that really sell that illusion. From the unnerving, anxious beep of the motion tracker to the spluttering plasma rifle, the game sounds exactly like the movie. And the visuals aren’t far behind: you’ll walk down corridors and through rooms that look eerily familiar. Remember the lab with facehuggers preserved in large perspex tubes? It’s one of the first rooms you’ll enter. But other, more subtle artefacts remain, such as the expended gun turrets the marines used to make their final stand in the movie.
One of the reasons why the original Alien film worked so well was because it created a thickening sense of dread. It grew to unbearable levels over the course of its 117 minute running time, and that tension was only very occasionally vented. Like Jaws before it, you rarely saw the monster – the imperfections were all hidden, leaving your imagination to fill in the gaps with horrors beyond the skill of any artist.
Aliens: Colonial Marines attempts to ratchet up the tension in a similar way. Once inside Hadley’s Hope, you’ll explore the dilapidated corridors, finding the debris of former lives. Poignantly, there’s a Weyland Yutani branded tricycle tipped onto its side. Audio logs chronicle a time before the terrible things came. At one point, you even come across Anne – Newt’s mother – pinned to a wall, imprisoned and impregnated by the xenomorphs.
However, this is a game, not a movie. And for it to work as one, certain concessions have to be made. While the tension is built up beautifully, it’s fumbled somewhat when the aliens pounce. It ultimately comes down to an unavoidable fact: the game has to show you the xenomorph. It’s a first-person shooter, after all. If they were constantly in the shadows, this would be a more authentic Aliens experience but the most infuriating FPS ever made. The xenomorphs are fast and aggressive, but they’re a lot less scary when they’re in full view, skating around on all surfaces and occasionally bumping into objects. This is Aliens: Colonial Marines at its most ‘game-like’, and least scary.
Like Jaws before it, you rarely saw the monster – the imperfections were all hidden, leaving your imagination to fill in the gaps with horrors beyond the skill of any artist.
There are similar moments when it feels very much like a game, undermining its authenticity somewhat. In true Gearbox fashion you’ll receive lots and lots of collectibles, some of which directly name-check characters from the movie franchise. It’s a tad on the nose, undercutting the brilliant atmosphere the game works so hard to create, but perhaps the most notable and hardest aspect for fans of the films to swallow will be the treatment of the xenomorph itself. Admittedly, it would be boring to face-off against the same enemy for an entire game, even with facehuggers and Queens for occasional target variety. But one of the strongest aspects of the franchise has always been that design by Giger. It was both elegant and terrifying, and unlike anything seen in movies before. Over the years, it was elaborated and diluted by the sequels (Giger thought the design used in Alien: Resurrection had more in common with a bowel movement than his original creation). The game’s senior producer Brian Burleson says the studio’s aware of this trend and the weight of the Alien legacy, but there are still a variety xenomorphs in the game, from ones that can spit at you from afar and gigantic hulking incarnations which some fans might dislike. He even hinted that some of the xenomorphs on LV-426 have mutated because of the radiation from the atmosphere processing plant and gone feral in the absence of a queen.
However, even the most pedantic of fans might forgive such flights of fancy given the promise of some great fan service. We already know that at some point we’ll encounter a Queen Alien in the game, and when I asked Burleson if players can expect to find a bright yellow power loader before this meeting, he said, “Yes. Maybe. No... Yeah.” As an alien fan, I hope so. I really hope so.
Aliens: Colonial Marines is out on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii U and PC is out on February 12, 2013.
Daniel is IGN's UK Staff Writer. He mostly comes out at night... mostly. You can be part of the world's worst cult by following him on IGN and Twitter.
Source : ign[dot]com
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