Aliens: Colonial Marines (Update on my Adventure)

Day 1:  I pop the disc in and a large update is immediately required.  I have heard that this update touched up the graphics a bit, fixed a slew of bugs, and made the AI more aggressive.  I begin playing on Ultimate Badass difficulty.  My first impression is that the graphics are akin to a first generation title (meaning it looks like it’s about 6 years old), but that they aren’t terrible.  The first chunk of the game is actually very compelling, giving a good atmosphere that caught me with a couple of well-timed jump scares.

Then the game switched gears from fighting aliens to fighting other humans.  While not as compelling as the aliens the human enemies were alright, even though they have been done better in countless other games.  I got to a section that was near impossible until I realized I could change my equipped weapons (something the game didn’t explain and I had to google).

I turn the game off for the day.

Day 2:  It felt like the graphics got better despite there being no update.  I am chalking this up to different sections of the game being more complete than others.  I spend the next 4 hours of the game really, really enjoying it.  It was moody, a bit scary, and it captured some of the great elements from the movies.  Mission 5 started and I was in heaven.  It was terrifying (at least with headphones on).  It was a quasi stealth-horror section where one wrong move would cause you to die mixed in with a super monster that would show up to scare your pants off every so often.  I loved it.

And thennnnnnn…. I got to the boss known as The Raven.  It is a broken fight.  I tried everything and spent hours looking through videos and forums.  You get into a power loader and fight the large alien while your AI companions fight off the small aliens.  Sounds interesting?  Well the power loader moves like a drunk three-year old (which makes since I guess as it isn’t meant as a weapon), the targeting reticule glitched (permanently) and refused to show up, and the recent patch that upped the aliens aggression causes them to ignore your companions and solely focus on you, turning the boss fight into a 7 second zergling rush (followed by 20 seconds of loading).

I gave up for the day.

Screw this fight

Day 3: I try again.  The reticule is still glitched and the fight is still not possible with the overly aggressive aliens.  I return the game.