Aliens: Colonial Marines Back in the Picture

News
By Kevin Parrish
published

The Colonial Marines are still alive and set to kick some serious Alien ass sometime this year.

In a recent chat with MCV, Gearbox Software CEO and president Randy Pitchford said that he's spent most of his career borrowing ideas from the Aliens franchise.

But with Aliens: Colonial Marines, there's no "stealing" or "borrowing" of ideas. He's full-on with the franchise, a dream come true perhaps, and he's quite possibly the happiest he's been in a long while. Why? Because he's once again knee deep in alien and human fodder.

"We have an Aliens game with Sega and 20th Century Fox which we're really excited about," he told MCV. "It’s the thing I've been stealing from all my career. Now I'm really working on it, but we've been quiet about that so far."

Although Aliens: Colonial Marines was slated for 2009, the game fell off the radar. Pitchford fell silent. Even the supposed Aliens-based RPG disappeared from sight. It seemed that Sega was waiting on the success of Rebellion's Aliens vs. Predator, putting all projects on hold until the numbers defined consumer interest. Now that the game has taken off, proving that the Aliens franchise still has some gamer ass to kick, Pitchford is coming forward with a hint that the Colonial Marines aren't dead.

So why the hush? "Borderlands took over Gearbox,” he added. “We had so much fun working on that and when we finished we wanted to carry on. And the DLC – we've launched two so far and there’s a third to come which take us to a new level in every way.”

Aliens: Colonial Marines is scheduled to hit the PC, PS3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo DS sometime in 2010... for now.

Kevin Parrish
18 Comments Comment from the forums
  • rippleyhakd
    LETS ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!
    Reply
  • Gigahertz20
    I've been playing the new AVP game that just came out a few weeks ago, it's fun but it could have been alot better. One huge negative is the game crashes on alot of peoples computers, especially if you don't run it from Steam in DX9 mode only. The first time I launched it from Steam, I chose the regular launch option and within 15 mins of playing my computer blue screened for the first time since I've installed Windows 7 several months ago. That is unacceptable for a final release game, no wonder people stick to the console for games, you don't have to configure anything to get the game to run.

    Negatives I've seen so far:

    -The single player campaigns are pretty short
    -There is no Predator net like the 2nd Predator movie had
    -The marine flame thrower is useless in multiplayer
    -The Alien is useless against the Predator 1 on 1, Predator can just throw the disc constantly and run away
    -Predator disc might be a little overpowered
    -Voice communication in game is echoey and stutters
    -No dedicated servers yet, if the person hosting the game leaves it kicks everybody
    -You can't spit acid as the Alien in multiplayer
    -You can't mute voice spammers in multiplayer, so if somebody wants to be an ass they can and you can't mute them


    Positives:

    The game is still fun to play
    Reply
  • rippleyhakd
    Game Over man..
    Reply
  • mlopinto2k1
    Really, really.. awesome!
    Reply
  • JohnnyLucky
    "Aliens: Colonial Marines is scheduled to hit the PC, PS3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo DS sometime in 2010... for now."

    I bet it will not be released this year!
    Reply
  • Maxor127
    I'd rather play the Aliens RPG from Obsidian. The best Aliens game ever is still Aliens by Activision for Commodore 64.
    Reply
  • thank you amd for selling me your wonderful 5870 to kill aliens with. what's a measly 400 spent when compared to spending trillions on a space ship capable of light speed travel. that's a no brainer!
    Reply
  • liquidsnake718
    I liked the aliens game that came out for ps one about 14-15 years ago. I was still in the 8th grade but that PS game was a blast as it was fully 3d and the queen alien at that time was huge and fun to run away from in 3d.... also the super nes version of alien 3 was great in 2d....
    Reply
  • tacoslave
    hollowtekthank you amd for selling me your wonderful 5870 to kill aliens with. what's a measly 400 spent when compared to spending trillions on a space ship capable of light speed travel. that's a no brainer!
    i have to wait until fermi comes out so i can get some sweet price-drops on a 5870.
    Reply
  • heraisu
    Gigahertz20The first time I launched it from Steam, I chose the regular launch option and within 15 mins of playing my computer blue screened for the first time since I've installed Windows 7 several months ago.
    A game cannot cause your system to bluescreen. You are either unstable (be it from bad hardware, bad/weak PSU, overheating, etc) or your drivers are really, really bad. What was the BSOD error, exactly? Just curious.

    I believe since XP, software could not cause BSODs anymore because of the way the kernel runs in its own memory space... you are left with hardware error, or hardware interface error (drivers).

    If a "lot" of people are experiencing this problem with this DX11 game, I'm sorry, but I have to point at ATI's drivers (for DX11 at least) as the first culprit, and their hardware as the second most likely.
    Reply