Line #43 YMMV/AliensColonialMarines


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2	* AssPull:
3	** The revelation that [[spoiler:Hicks]] is still alive, having been abducted from the Sulaco by Weyland-Yutani, and that the corpse recovered in ''Film/{{Alien 3}}'' was apparently a body double. This revelation is handwaved by the character as being a "much longer story". Assuming that the corporation was able to find the Sulaco and find a suitable body double for [[spoiler:Hicks]], why would they go to all the trouble to abduct one person? And while they were aboard, why didn't they take [[spoiler:Ripley, Bishop (who is their product, and could give more information on the mission) or Newt (who was the only survivor from the colony)]] with them too?
4	** ''Stasis Interrupted'' attempts to explain [[spoiler:Hicks' rescue]], but its explanation simply causes it to make [[VoodooShark even less sense than before]]. [[spoiler:Somehow, the Queen laid a facehugger egg in the cryopod chamber room, which is not only not big enough for her to fit into, but is several rooms over from the cargo bay. A colonist from the Legato just happens to take Hicks' place (who is now wearing different clothing). The evacuation order for the Sulaco is now not only caused by a fire in the cryopod compartment, but a firefight between Stone/Turk and Weyland-Yutani PMC's that nearly kills a facehugged Ripley]].
5	** The Hadley's Hope colony surviving and being still semi-functional was explained by the devs as the 40MT blast (aptly described by Bishop as "this area's gonna be a cloud of vapor the size of Nebraska") being a vertical explosion, a claim that simply doesn't hold up with was established and actually seen in the movie.
6	* CompleteMonster: [[AdaptationalVillainy Michael Bishop/Michael Weyland]] is the face of [[MegaCorp Weyland-Yutani Corporation]] and the mastermind behind their [[PlayingWithSyringes experiments]] on Xenomorphs in hopes of creating a perfect [[BioweaponBeast bioweapon]]. Ordering his subordinates to build a massive Origin Facility on Acheron LV-426 moon under very harsh and deadly conditions and capturing the Xenomorph Queen to produce facehuggers, Michael kidnapped hundreds of colonists for his experiments, turning them into the hosts for the Xenomorphs, which always resulted in their agonizing deaths. Capturing Corporal Dwayne Hicks, Bishop tortures him for information, and after Colonial Marines discover his atrocities, Michael ordered his troops to destroy their ship, resulting in over 300 of the Marines dying.
7	* ContestedSequel: Despite the fact that the game is reportedly considered as canon by 20th Century Fox, fans rejected it for being slow, buggy and nowhere near the concept it was made out to be in early previews and demos. After all that's said and done, and the initial hatred died down, as well the highly received DLC and patches[[note]]most notably fixing the non-existent xenomorph AI[[/note]], the game still won its own fanbase, though many remain bitter towards the game regardless.
8	* CriticalBacklash: Despite being considered by many as one of the worst video games of all time, there's a group who believe that the game, divorcing it from its controversial nature, isn't as awful as a lot of people say it is, seeing it as SoOkayItsAverage at worst. It helped that the game ended up reciving patches after the game's release that improved the game's visuals and patched the many bugs present in the game, as well as reciving story DLC that's considered superior to the base game. As a result, the game sits at "Very Positive" on Steam thanks to those fans.
9	* CriticProof: In spite of the largely negative response to the game, the title was still the 26th best-selling video game of 2013. Though this might have had to do with their aggressive pre-order pushing, misleading trailers, and the post-launch review embargo.
10	* DisappointingLastLevel: The final level (and boss battle) of the game involves Winter running around the cargo bay of Michael Weyland's personal ship as a xenomorph queen chases him around. While you still have all of your weapons, you cannot make a dent in her with any of them - you must run around the deck and activate a series of switches before using the final one to (attempt to) knock her out of the cargo bay doors into the upper atmosphere. Fans hoping to have a retread of the Ripley/Queen powerloader fight from ''Film/{{Aliens}}'' are likely to be disappointed (although a similar scenario appears earlier in the game when a loader must be used to defeat two Ravens).
11	* GeniusBonus: The Raven doesn't look or act very raven-like, does it? That's because it's named for older, variant definitions of "raven"--"to seize violently" or "to tear apart," which is where the word "ravenous" is derived from. Given that it does the former and looks like it received the latter, it's simultaneously fitting and ludicrously obscure.
12	* GoddamnedBats: The Weyland-Yutani [=PMC=]s have impeccable aim and can kill you quite quickly.
13	* HilariousInHindsight: At one point in the ''Stasis Interrupted'' DLC, Lisbeth manages to evade an alien by hiding in a locker, pressing back, and hoping it doesn't sniff her out, which would be a common tactic in VideoGame/AlienIsolation.
14	* ItsShortSoItSucks: Well, more like it's short ''and'' it sucks, but you can beat the whole game in about six hours- especially bad when you consider it sold itself primarily on the campaign.
15	* MemeticMutation: "Press Backspace to Fix Videogame", after it became widely known in 2018 that the game's infamous ArtificialStupidity was partially the result of [[https://www.moddb.com/mods/templargfxs-acm-overhaul/news/the-biggest-bug-in-the-game-is-just-one-letter-long a single spelling error]] in the game's code wherein the word "tether" was misspelled as "[[RougeAnglesOfSatin teather]]".
16	* {{Narm}}:
17	** The Boilers are blind creepier-looking Xenomorphs that can walk right up to you and explode. It's too bad that when they walk up to you, they do [[http://i.minus.com/i212wUcwcU0eE.gif this]].
18	** The game's obsession with modern military aesthetics and clinical jargon, like constantly saying "Rhino 2-3 Actual". It tries way too hard to ape ''Call of Duty'' rather than the MildlyMilitary "'Nam in space" tone of the original film, despite taking place weeks after it.
19	** Turning on the skiff fuel pumps in ''Stasis Interrupted''. A moment that's supposed to be creepy, but is made absolutely ridiculous by the cheesy twinkling piano and the hide'n'seek Xenomorph scurrying between pillars.
20	* NightmareFuel: It's to be expected given the territory.
21	** During some footage shown at E3 and in the demo, there is a sequence in which, while you and other marines are fighting the xenomorphs, a massive Alien Queen shows up out of nowhere, grabs an unlucky marine and rips the poor bastard in half, before it turns to you and charges at you. [[MissingTrailerScene This is not in the final game]].
22	** Something that ''is'' in the game, however, is a scene where scientists are trying to calm the angry Queen, [[ForegoneConclusion which inevitably goes downhill once the power fails]]. She ends up massacring the scientists trapped in the room with her (leaving blood spots in their wake), and tries to break out of the room to attack Winter and O'Neal.
23	** "The Raven" is the closest the game gets to being classic SurvivalHorror. Even with the silly Boiler animation, the concept that you could be vaporized at any second can put players on their toes.
24	*** Heck, the Raven itself! It kills you instantly if it catches up to you, and at the beginning of the stealth level, you're treated to a close-up of its face. [[NightmareFace Its not pretty.]]
25	** The Lurkers manage to create tension when they appear, as they quickly sneak around in shadows and behind cover and try to pounce you. This is one of the few occasions when the motion detector is actually useful.
26	** The "Stasis Interrupted" [=DLC=] begins with the player character waking from cryosleep with a dead Facehugger on her face. She is then forced to watch one of the mercenaries who hijacked her colony ship and infected its whole crew with chestbursters while in cryosleep burn a fellow colonist to death with a flamethrower, while the poor woman--totally unaware of what's been done to her--screams that she doesn't understand what's happening.
27	* NightmareRetardant: Due to ArtificialStupidity, the xenomorphs aren't nearly as threatening as they were in the films. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J8SzBhjqaQ Case in point]]
28	* ObviousBeta: This was one of the reasons why this game was panned by critics and gamers alike. Aside from this causing a [[http://i.imgur.com/ZwUzYbj.gif copious]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8J8SzBhjqaQ amounts]] of {{Narm}}, it also results in being able to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Y5WwV9YoW_U literally sprint your way through every stage that doesn't require a target to kill.]]
29	* OlderThanTheyThink: While the fact that you fight human enemies was a major complaint about the game, human enemies have been part of almost every major ''Aliens'' fps game, including ''VideoGame/AlienTrilogy'', the Playstation ''VideoGame/AlienResurrection'', and ''VideoGame/AliensVsPredator''. That said, ''Colonial Marines'' is likely the most extreme example, with about 40% of the combat in the game being against human opponents.
30	* OvershadowedByControversy: The game's TroubledProduction, two lawsuits for false advertising for using a highly-polished gameplay demo that was not representative of the final product and accusations of negligence during the eight years-long development of the game heavily damaged Creator/GearboxSoftware's rising reputation in the gaming community, enough that their following game; ''VideoGame/{{Battleborn}}'', ended up bombing in sales (this and releasing close to the highly-anticipated ''VideoGame/{{Overwatch}}'').
31	* TheProblemWithLicensedGames: It was originally presumed that this would be {{Averted\|Trope}}, as with other games in the ''Alien'' series, but sadly, [[http://kotaku.com/5984068/how-aliens-colonial-marines-fell-apart it became an example]].
32	* {{Sequelitis}}: ''Colonial Marines'' received generally lower scores on average than the acclaimed ''Franchise/AlienVsPredator'' series of games (including the 2010 installment, which while considered SoOkayItsAverage, was playable and nowhere near ''Colonial Marines''' bugginess).
33	* SerialNumbersFiledOff: Website/YouTube reviewer [[WebVideo/{{DX}} DXFan619]] [[https://youtu.be/aBHkricvocs?t=19m25s convincingly argues]] that the game is basically a fresh coat of paint on ''[[VideoGame/FirstEncounterAssaultRecon F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin]]'', which had the same lead designer.
34	* SurprisinglyImprovedSequel: The ''Stasis Interrupted'' DLC has generally been regarded as an improvement over the main campaign. Not only does it benefit from the recent general patches to the A.I. and engine, but the level design has also been improved to increase the tension and create more challenging fights, such as by having you have to fight alone for a large portion of the game instead of always having multiple [=NPCs=] to draw agro from xenos and mercs, as well as having more open areas where xenos can attack you from all directions.
35	* TearJerker:
36	** The ApocalypticLog in ''No Hope in Hadley's'' features commentary by a woman concerning her husband's attack by some thing... And then it turns out that it's Newt's mother, leading her family to the cafeteria. Given what happened in the comic tie-in ''Newt's Tale'', [[ForegoneConclusion there was only one way it was going to end]].
37	** [[spoiler:Bella's death, already upsetting as it is, was made worse by the fact of all the measures that Winter and O'Neil employed to avoid it]].
38	** [[spoiler:Lisbeth discovering her parents' corpses]] in the "Stasis Interrupted" DLC. Even if she's only a character for a short time in the story, it's difficult watching her discover [[spoiler:her father draped over her mother's facehugged/bullet-ridden body, and her subsequent breakdown]].
39	* ThatOneBoss: The Raven. Its most criminal sin is making using a power loader a living nightmare. The boss battle starts as it means to go on, and it starts with an in-game cutscene of your character taking ten seconds to climb into the driver's seat ''without invincibility frames'', so if you started the battle with full armor it's pretty much guaranteed to be depleted before you can even drive the thing. Once you're onboard, you ''sloooowly'' turn around while respawning helper aliens nimbly dart around you, attack you from behind, and force your power loader to veer off-course while you're trying to guard against the actual boss. You have no idea what the difference is between your two attacks, as you haven't used a power loader before. You have no idea what the effective range of your attacks is, and most of them sail right over the tubed heads of the minion xenomorphs. You have no idea where they are, since the motion tracker attached to the loader jumps around all over the place and half the arena is under a shadowy overhang. The game gives no feedback on what you're supposed to do and whether it's working. And when you repeatedly bash the boss like you're supposed to, it ''constantly'' clips out of the arena. And you can tell Gearbox discovered that through playtesting, because it then immediately teleports right back inside the area.
40	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: A common criticism of the game is that the titular aliens are only the main enemies for a small portion of the game. It's not as bad as detractors make it out to be, though--for instance, the entirety of Hadley's Hope is nothing but aliens, and they're often engaged in an EnemyCivilWar with Wey-Yu mercs later in the game. Overall, about 1/4th of the game is dedicated to solely fighting human enemies, with the remaining 3/4s evenly divided between fighting solely aliens and fighting aliens and humans at the same time.
41	* UglyCute: The Boiler's waddling is strangely adorable, if only because [[NarmCharm it's sort of foolish looking]].
42	* UnintentionalUncannyValley: A number of the characters like Winters and Cruz, are noticeably bulky in bodily and facial proportions, almost in a slightly stylised way. Thus, when Bishop and [[spoiler:Hicks]], modelled after the actors who portrayed them, and thus with realistic proportions, show up and interact with them in the same scenes, something about it just looks ''off''.
43	* WinBackTheCrowd: After the backlash for the main game, Gearbox tried to win players back through the subsequent DLC's. Whether they succeeded or failed is still up for debate, though while some would argue they redeemed the game, others say that it was too late to save it. Regardless, the patches and DLC did fix some problems with the base game.
44	** The 4-gigabyte 1.03 patch. In addition to improving many of the graphics in the game, along with adding a film grain filter to make gameplay smoother, the patch reintroduces elements seen in the E3 demo (such as the cracking glass when the Marine hits the Sulaco umbilical in "Distress") and greatly increases the AI of the xenomorphs on all difficulty levels (to the point that the new Recruit difficulty is more difficult than the vanilla game's Ultimate Badass Mode).
45	** The ''Bug Hunt'' DLC received a very favorable reception, with the players who were still in multiplayer stating that it was even better than the base game, thanks to its frantic gameplay, new maps and increased difficulty. The Movie Map Pack DLC also got a good response, thanks to being chockful of {{Continuity Nod}}s and {{Easter Egg}}s.
46	** The ''Stasis Interrupted'' DLC received a lot of praise for not only clearing up a lot of lingering plot issues with the main game, but also ratcheting up the tension and making the gameplay much tougher. It even had people who were deadset against the game from the beginning praising it for being a step in the right direction.

Context YMMV / AliensColonialMarines