Aliens Colonial Marines – PAXEast Preview

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An Original Post by: The DunkFodder

Greetings to all my followers! I have been to the promise land and laid eyes upon its riches!

This year I attended PAXEast in Boston, MA over the Easter weekend. I had never attended a convention of this magnitude before and went in a little bit blindfolded. What I found was a weekend full of amazing people, great music and yes a few video games!

For those who do not know what PAXEast is, go to http://east.paxsite.com/

Now there were tons and tons of game previews taking place over the weekend in the main convention hall as well a crapload of table top game play.

ONE booth drew me in like no other and that is because I am a DIE HARD Alien fan. By Alien I mean ALIENS. Gearbox Dev’s have been working on a great little gem called Aliens Colonial Marines. The story for this game takes place immediately after James Cameron’s epic ALIENS and follows the story through the colonial marines.

While at PAX I waited patiently in line for about 2.5hrs to get just a taste of what they have come up with. The time in line passed quickly since many of the devs were coming by and chatting it up with us. Huge KUDO’s to them for that, it was an awesome experience.

Once my time in line had expired myself and about 10 other people were lured into a dark room with two massive flatscreen tvs. We were treated with a slight intro by some of the dev team and then a play through of the first mission in the game. The game was still in pre-alpha mode but it looked beautiful and the computer AI was creepy! The mission takes place aboard the abandoned colonial marine ship. Ripley & Co had been evacuated by the fire prior to the arrival of the marines. What they find on the ship is pretty messed, there’s a ton of XENO’s but before we even get there we’re treated with a ton of easter eggs. There’s names on the lockers for Hicks, and Hudson. There’s Bishops legs on the ground in the docking bay and all the grates are moved open as per where the Queen Alien was chasing newt. There’s even a display on the computer screens near the sleeping chambers talking about the crew status (straight from intro of Alien 3).

The first mission showed a few close quarters combat, the use of the “TORCH” to seal, or unlock doors, and even to cut people down from alien cocoons. There was some good action in the docking bay where they had use of a smart gun to fight off a massive wave of aliens while they got the doors open for escape. I will not spoil the end of the first mission but it had a nice twist to it.

After the demo was over we were led out to another line. From here only six at a time got to enter the chamber. Once inside the six people got to sit and chat with the gearbox devs who were playing as Xeno’s in a six vs six multiplayer match. We got to watch how they would use the different features and some of the different “classes” of aliens.

Then we were led over to the other side and provided an Xbox Controller connected to a PC. it was our turn to be the marines against the devs on the other side. The level was hadley’s hope corridors and vehicle bay. The enemy consisted of 5 warrior aliens and 1 BULL like alien. We had pistols, machine guns, shot guns and the smart gun at our disposal. The Bull alien was pretty cool and had a HUGE headpiece much like the queens that protected most of its body. After a good 10minutes of carnage the game was over. Our group had litterally almost beaten the dev group. Each of the dev’s came over to congratulate us on a close match which came within 1 point of the “Newbs” not “Newts” winning!

We were escorted out of the presentation booth and provided with two bandanna’s, one of the alien warrior and the other of the alien facehugger.

Overall the game looks amazing, the multiplayer felt really smooth, and all the other game targets seem to be getting hit right on the nose. This game is going to rock the storyline single player and coop, as well the multiplayer shootem up! Call of Duty better look out, we’re no longer just grinding metal here!

For game trailers and screenshots:

http://www.sega.com/alienscolonialmarines/ – Official Website of the Game

http://www.facebook.com/aliensgames – Facebook Site for the Game

Here’s some pics of the staff members in cosplay at the booth!