Outline of the upcoming Aliens game for the Playstation2.
-CANCELED-
[ Discuss in Forums ]
It’s been years since the disaster on LV426. Though no word was ever heard from the USCM squad, who along with Ellen Ripley and Carter Burke, was sent to investigate the disappearance of the Hadley’s Hope colonists, their vessel, the USS Sulaco, has been located. The order has been given to deploy another USCM squad to the seemingly abandoned ship in hopes of solving the mystery of what happened on LV426. Upon approaching the Sulaco another vessel, presumably a salvage team, can be seen docked to it. When attempts to hail them prove unsuccessful the decision is made to move in…
Prepare to return to science fiction’s most terrifying universe when Fox Interactive, Check Six Studios and Electronic Arts unleash a horde of biomechanical nasties onto your Playstation2 in what stands to be the sleeper hit of the year,
“ Absolute Badasses! ”
Well, the Colonial Marines originally sent to LV426 may not have proved themselves to be so bad ass but perhaps you and your squad, that’s right squad, will fare better. Described as a tactical team based first person shooter, A:CM will depart from the usual frag-fest found in many FPS’s in several ways. Drawing from the success of the films, tension will often be created by what’s NOT happening, waiting for that perfect moment when you lazily drop your guard to shock you. What this means is the pace has been slowed down to a more befitting survival-horror speed and considering your enemy can and will attack from anywhere and has a natural ability to hide itself, it only makes sense to slow things down and “…check those corners.” What will also set A:CM apart from other first person shooters is also the juiciest element. For the first time, you will have command over your very own squad of United States Colonial Marines! From an initial pool of twelve marines, your will select, arm, equip and set the formation of up to four marines, making for a squad of five including yourself. In the tradition of their big screen brethren each marine will have their own morale and skills levels and their own personalities. This will allow you to assign certain marines as ‘specialists’ of sorts within your team so as to maximize their and your effectiveness. What this also means is while veterans can be counted on to stand their ground, rookies might just panic and flee in the middle of a nasty encounter. To keep your troops in line you will have the ability to give them verbal commands or words of encouragement to boost their morale and hopefully keep them in the fight. As you successfully complete mission objectives the skill and morale levels of your team will increase and your since casualties are possibility that must be considered you will be able to add to your pool of available marines by rescuing cocooned victims. Of course, they may not be such valuable additions to the team depending on whether or not you rescued them in time. The variety in team make-up offered by A:CM will make for huge amounts of replay value.
“ What are we supposed to use man, harsh language? ”
Now you wouldn’t be expected to enter an abandoned military space vessel unprepared so you and your team will have access to all the armaments one would expect from the USCM; M56 Smart Gun, M240-A1 Flame-thrower, Rocket Launcher, PN Grenade Launcher, the M41A Pulse Rifle w/grenade launcher, and grenades of the flash, fragmentation and incendiary variety. The motion tracker is a given but there’s been no word of the mini-torch. Items and weapons can be shared within the squad further allowing you to optimize them even further, i.e. using a marine with a higher medical proficiency/skill for healing others. How’s a squad of four marines each armed with a Smart Gun sound?
“ Is this going to be a straight up fight or another bug hunt? ”
While details about the story are scarce I think we can assume that you and your team know little more about what you will face than those sent before you did. The game will start with your squad boarding the USS Sulaco, possibly via the salvage vessel, and eventually running into the salvage team and what are perhaps their synthetic aides. Whether or not the synthetics are working with the salvage team and more importantly, will they and the salvage team be hostile or friendly to the arrival of the rightful owners of the Sulaco is anybody’s guess. It is also not known if rescued synthetics or salvage team members can be made a part of your squad, or for that matter if you will be even be trying to rescue them. After all, they’re not all you have to worry about. As you progress you begin to see the bulkheads covered in some kind of resin, people coccooned to the walls with their chests gruesomely burst open, and you know there’s something else, something horrible, on board.
“ It’s a bug hunt… ”
Now we all know what’s behind the grisly deaths and Hollywood’s scariest creature will appear in all the familiar forms of its lifecycle, facehuggers, chestbursters, drones or warriors, and the Queen. There have also been reports of new, never before seen Xenocs but further details have not yet been made available. Developers have said that an enormous amount of time has gone into the AI for the Xenocs to make them just like their film cousins; hiding and perhaps blending in with their surroundings, attacking from all angles, leaping over you to strike from behind, maybe even retreating to regroup and try a different assault.
The game will challenge you with over twenty missions across five expansive environments; the rogue salvage freighter, a Weyland-Yutani mining facility, the USS Sulaco, Weyland–Yutani research station, and a planet completely infested by Xenocs. Knowing that game play will take you from orbiting facilities to the surface of planets you can bet the Dropship and the APC will be included. While you won’t be able to drive the APC you will be able to control its gun turret in some circumstances. The Dropship will make appearances at various points in your mission(s) however the level of interaction you will have with it remains to be seen. One can speculate it being used to drop off fresh troops, pick up the injured and or rescued, maybe even evacuate the entire squad.
The screenshots available are to say the least, very impressive. Game environments will make maximum use of the Playstation2’s advanced particle and lighting effects. Mist swirls around you and metallic objects and structures reflect light cast on them by your shoulder lamps. The Colonial Marines are highly detailed, with unique facial expressions and gestures that can be seen through their visors or face-shields. The Xenocs, in my opinion are the first to really look like their movie counterparts. The Xenocs in the Aliens versus Predator series always looked a little cartoonish with the result being they were less frightening. The Xenocs in A:CM look more like the Alien in the first film; the head is smooth not crested and their skin/exoskeleton is dark with a metallic sheen. Basically, these are the best looking Aliens I’ve seen in a game!
Aliens: Colonial Marines will not only pump some much needed life into the first-person shooter genre on the Playstation2, whose current FPS library is primarily ports of PC games, it will be the first to introduce squad-based game play in a first person shooter to that system. On another note, A:CM will also be a new chapter in the Aliens Legacy, filling the gap between Aliens and Alien3. Unfortunately, there’s no confirmed release date with rumors ranging from early summer to mid fall. Until an official date is announced, we’ll have to be content with presuming the longer it’s in development, the better the end result will be.
Screenshots are here…
[ Discuss in Forums ]
All copyrights and trademarks belong to their respective owners. This site is for the promotion of selected material, no infringements are intended. All reasonable efforts have been taken to credit the respective owners and/or authors.
