Reception on other less... invested websites seems to be much, much worse than here. Bad, but not unforeseen.
I can safely say that I'm not surprised. All you need to do is watch all the footage they released. It makes you think they missed the whole point of
Aliens and watched
Starship Troopers instead. Ineffectual acid blood, only one xeno type actually behaves like an Alien, rare usage of ceilings and walls... yikes. Finding a way to make the Aliens generic space zombies must have been rather difficult to do on accident. They downplayed the very things that made our Aliens unique to shoot at and would have helped the game stand out.
Even the Kick Ass trailer seemed completely oblivious to the film's theme; tough macho spess mahrenes getting raped by random space gecko/termites. Instead, we play marines Master Chief would be jealous of.
The unfortunate implications of such boring adversaries is that it opens the door for the worst sin in any shooter - making the act of shooting things boring.
Dead Space is another action title that features (mostly) dumb zombies, but it makes the act of shooting them interesting and how you shoot them drastically changes how the enemies interact with the player. Some of the guns behave completely differently and you have jedi gloves and stuff to have fun with, versus this title's large armory of guns that spit bullets slightly differently. These Aliens are just moving targets, barring the Lurkers during the times where they don't bug out. In fact, I would argue the game would be much more fun to play if every Xeno type behaved like the Lurker, even if they had different abilities.
Rebellion's own poor Xenos, whom could be kited eternally with liberal application of the sprint button, would try and dodge your shots. They would occasionally jump up on a wall or a ceiling, promptly getting lost with crap pathing, but at least they tried. There was more to melee than a single godlike elbow. Their acid could kill you. What happened here?
Compare and contrast the most common enemy, the Cameralien, with Halo's useless Grunt. Grunts can charge up their pistols to remove the hero's armor instantly. They can lob grenades that kill the hero instantly. Cameraliens can... absorb your ammo?
Killing the poor things in and of itself lacks... oomph. They fall over like cardboard, when they explode, all that happens is that their model vanishes in the blink of an eye and is replaced with a small sprite of green goo, not a single F given. Just like in AvP2. How long ago was that? Acid? What's that? They don't crawl towards you when you blow off their legs. They don't come at you with one arm. The WY guys are more dangerous and take more bullets to down (how come they don't explode into red sprites when shot by the same guns?). What the hell doesn't even begin to cover it.
As I read in another website:
"Right, right. Somebody said "colonial marines" Gearbox thought they said "Space Marines" and signed up!"
The campaign itself is of questionable design, though it adheres to the modern day "cinematic experience" nonsense. Cutscenes and loading and waiting for your stupid and immortal NPCs to open the door for you... All to move forward in a straight line for a few meters and whack a few moles before another long cutscene/dialogue begins and my guys have to open another door for me. Not only does this minimize player interaction but it means that the story has to hold up since it's such a focus. It... it doesn't. They don't even really address all the Super Aliens that are running around.
I'm also rather amazed the game has some long stretches where all you do is shoot guys with baseball caps that for some reason drop marine helmets (?). Does not bode well for a game with
Aliens in the title. I also like how your marine can duct tape 5 different marine helmets together and wear them as full armor, that's ingenuity!
The multiplayer and customization basically seem like the game's one shot to do something right, though I'm not very convinced. Much of the cool stuff about playing an Alien has been removed. You no longer
are the Alien. You remote control one whose arse blocks your view. You are constantly reminded of the sub par animations for the Xenos. If there's one thing I cannot critique about Rebellion's effort is that at least the Xenos animated well. The crawling animation is light years better than hopping like a bunny in menace and creepy factor. Insects and lizards crawl. They are disgusting and creepy. Ponies and bunnies? They are cute. I love them. Do you want me to cuddle the Xenos, Gearbox? Should I love them and feed them biscuits?
Although a rather personal observation of mine, I find that the multi doesn't really look very enticing to me. I prefer a title that makes me feel like I'm improving at the game whenever I play it again. I can aim better, I can move and dodge better, etc. But in this game, everything's so slow, the Aliens die so easily, and you don't even have to learn how to navigate as an Alien anymore so it's that there's just no room to really improve anything.
"Remember to climb on the ceiling and camp corners". Alien mastery.
"Elbow smash, stick with the herd and instagib slow xenos with your guns". Marine mastery.
Just doesn't call out to me, is all. It can't really compare to all the cool stuff you can pull off as a skulk in NS, for example. That kept me going back. Not grinding to remove artificial gameplay limitations. What difference does it make to me if I instagib a Xeno with a grenade or with a shotgun?
All that said, eating people from behind always gives some jollies, so if the multi looks to be up your alley, I would suggest waiting for a Steam sale and picking up the game for 15 Ameribucks when you can. Perhaps with time people will find there's some good to it.
The game does have its solid points: the music is really good and the Cowadooty perks look like they could keep you trying different builds. There is, indeed, ONE nice segment in the game that's well made. You know which one it is.
Spoiler
Boilers in sewers. Though the solution to the problem is far too simple and being just told what to do removes most of the tension.
But... that's about it.
To be quite frank, this game is best watched on the tube, to curb your curiosity, and then left forgotten.
If you ask me, and this is completely unscientific and little more than fan wank, the biggest problem with the game is that it's just marine pr0n. "Guys, look at these guns! They're from Aliens!" Ok? So... how does that make the game good? "THE MARINES WERE AWESOME THOSE ONE LINERS!!" Really, why do I care about Hick's shotgun? Do I seriously care if I ever see Hudson again? I want to have fun shooting some Aliens. Make the Aliens fun to shoot. Get these WY guys out of here, I want to shoot Xenos, not shoot the same guys I shoot in every other game. I don't care about all the guns in the technical manual, bro, I just want to shoot the Aliens from the movie, with the guns from the movie and for it to keep me engaged and entertained for awhile. Focus on the interactions between the marines and the Aliens. What would make shooting the Aliens more fun than shooting the same zombies we've shot in a billion other games? What makes them unique? How does their presence affect the shooting mechanics? Embrace these elements, don't just make them zerglings. A shooter based on
Aliens is a game where you shoot Aliens. Think about that statement. It's an incredibly obvious thing to say, isn't it? So why does it feel like shooting the Aliens, not just aliens,
the Aliens, took a back seat? Was
Aliens really about cool marines with ridiculous sounding guns making one liners? Is a generic termite shooter
really authentic to the movie?
The game is really about the evils of
heresy space corporations versus the heroic noble badass space marines that are so manly even the women run balls to the wind. Also there are some Aliens running around and stuff while the people shoot each other.
If you want multiplayer just play Natural Selection. Still the best Aliens game ever. Call of Aliens: In Space! is just not that good.
Edit: Oh my. I think I'll take back what what I said about multiplayer. No dedicated servers coupled with no effective host migration is a death sentence. The same mistakes AvP3 made. You don't even get XP when the host dcs it seems. So it's like AvP only worse, since XP actually matters in this game.
