Aliens: Colonial Marines (EA) (2002)

Information

Platform: Playstation 2
Release Date: Cancelled
Genre: First Person Shooter
Publisher: Fox Interactive, Electronic Arts
Developer: Check Six

Description

Electronic Arts first announced Aliens: Colonial Marines back in May 2001 and it was going to be released in Autumn of that year. The game itself was a first-person squad-based shooter and you could play as one person from a group of colonial marines sent to investigate the disappearance of the squad that accompanied Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley character to the planet LV426 in the second Alien film. Aliens: Colonial Marines is broken into levels and is mission-based. There are three main acts in the game, and each one is composed of about seven levels. The first act takes place on board the Sulaco and according to Electronic Arts’ press materials for the game, they hint that the final act will take place on the aliens’ home planet. The game’s weapons should be familiar to anyone who’s watched one of the Alien films. There are flamethrowers, pulse rifles with grenade-launcher attachments, and the shoulder-mounted smart gun. As for the aliens themselves, the creators promise that, besides the now-standard creatures (face-hugger, chestburster, soldier alien, and the queen and her praetorian guard), we’ll see “more than two new types.

Why It Was Cancelled

In April 2002, EA confirmed the game was coming out in November 2002 but a month or so later, EA said that the game was on hold and was no longer being developed. Electronic Arts officially cancelled the game in October 2002 and said “there were no plans to pick up its development in the future”. The official reason as to why it was cancelled is still not known but according to another source, the game “failed to attain a satisfactory gameplay experience.” Make of that what you will but I think it’s because the PS2 wasn’t powerful enough to run it. As stated in an IGN article, the game had a slow frame-rate at E3 and I’m guessing the developers couldn’t solve that problem which is why it was cancelled.

Screenshots

Links

Preview – From Gamespot
First Impressions – From IGN
Video Clip – From Gamespot