Roundtable: Games That Should Have Received a Sequel

Allan Muir – Site Admin/EiC/Living Sequel

Aliens: Colonial Marines

I’ll be honest, I really enjoyed Aliens: Colonial Marines despite it being universally panned by critics and consumers. Back in 2006 when this game and what would become Aliens: Crucible were announced, I was extremely excited. I was getting into the Alien series of films. I have pretty vivid memories of being on the official Alien forums and just getting hyped for something that was half a decade away and a sequel to one of the greatest films of all time.

After the game was delayed I was worried. Not just because I had to play Aliens vs Predator 3. (Check out my review of AvP3 from over a decade ago!) This was back in the time period when game delays made people angry instead of relieved. Then there was the infamous E3 2011 “Presentation” of the game. I am using quotations because the game being shown off isn’t Aliens: Colonial Marines but something along the lines of the Halo 2 Campaign demo from E3 2003.

This demonstration of the game had me juiced as anyone could possibly be about a video game. At the same time, I was very confused about where things could go based on the ending of the gameplay demo. There were also little things that I was interested in from the demo. The first was the 341-B synthetic voiced by Lance Henriksen was going to be named “Rook” which is a concept I really like and can totally see in the Aliens world. The second was the idea of mutated Xenomorph’s which would have resulted from the destruction of the Atmosphere Processor. The other thing that stymied me when it came to this game was the fact that the explosion caused by the Atmosphere Processor should have turned LV-426 into a barren wasteland nightmare of a planet similar to that of Mad Max.

*SPOILERS FOR Aliens: Colonial Marines‘*

The revelation of Karl Weyland being a synthetic after the said character is shot and killed by Hicks was very poorly written as the shock ending to AvP3 revealed that the “Karl Weyland” who was killed by the protagonist in the games final level was an android. It has to be the most anti-climactic ending for a Gearbox game since the entirety of Duke Nukem Forever.