Based on what I’ve seen so far, they got it right. They got it very, very right. Sadly, only Gearbox employees were allowed to play as the Aliens at the Colonial Marines set-up, but I did get a chance to play as a marine alongside five other E3 attendees. First let me say that the atmosphere of the level we were playing was Aliens to the core. The atmosphere, the tech, the structures, it all fit perfectly into the Aliens universe.
There were four loadout options (severely limited for demo purposes), two assault-rifle based and two shotgun-based, and every weapon felt exactly as it should. There were a few different Alien types swarming over us and the Xenomorphs could climb up walls and along ceilings like in previous games. The smallest Xenos felt like the perfect mix of easy to kill but impossible to hit; lose track of one of these guys there’s no telling where they’ll be in half a second. The mediums were a little slower and a little tougher. The heavies were sporting big, armored skulls and took a lot of punishment before going down. A lone marine will always get wrecked, but if the marines can manage to stick together and work as a squad they have a solid fighting chance. When your teammates turn and start firing directly behind you, it is a legitimately scary experience. You spin around, knowing what you’re going to find, hoping, praying that you’ll have time to get a shotgun round off—but you don’t. And the Xenos tear you to pieces.
The final product, on top of the excellent multiplayer mode we got a chance to play, will also feature a full campaign with drop-in / drop-out co-op up to four players. Your friends can jump in whenever they happen to be around, a great move by Gearbox. I think the makers of Borderlands know a little something about getting co-op right, so you can count on a quality experience there. Aliens: Colonial Marines is set to release Feb 12, 2013 on PC, PS3, X360, and WiiU.
[Connor Cleary is an author, video game columnist and critic, and a freelance web-slash-graphic designer. He is a reviewer at GameShark and an occasional opinion and analysis columnist at Gamasutra. His freelance design business is Four Stair Multimedia and Design. You can follow Connor @The_Blue_Key, or at fb/TheBlueKey, or check out his writing archive on tumblr, The Blue Key.]