Aliens fangirl has thoughts on the game
People who follow me on Facebook, Twitter or the other SocMed sites will probably know what a MASSIVE Aliens franchise fan I am. I own multiple Alien movie sets (multiple DVD and Bluray sets), including all the special editions, Alien and Aliens are my favorite movies of the series. My favorite weapon of the series is of course the M41A Pulse Rifle, living in Australia however means I can’t own one. In Aliens: Colonial Marines they’ve added to the weapons arsenal and one of the guns is a cut-down Pulse Rifle. I totally love this idea and I am working on a build of the in-game gun, but in the meantime I thought I’d do a Pulse pistol mod, a homage to the idea that the M41A might have a baby brother weapon.
I chose a Nerf Nite Finder as the base because the Nite Finder is an excellent blaster to shell and the only other Nerf pistol I had handy is already on its way to being something else. I used the top part of an old toy shotgun and styrene for the main mod. I still haven’t found a flat Army green that’s not extortionate in price, so I had to go with what I had as opposed to what I hoped. Boom Nerf Nite Finder Aliens Colonial Marines Weyland Yutani mercenaries sidearm done! Needless to say it does still fire and no the ammo counter doesn’t work, can you imagine how fast you’d need to load this thing for that to even matter?! lol.
Speaking of Weyland Yutani mercs and things that don’t work….
Aliens Colonial Marines video game thoughts
When you’ve waited almost 7 years for a video game to actually hit shelves there is excitement in the air. I shelled out ridiculous money for the limited Power Loader version, that was probably my first mistake. I had assumed you see that the game would be great, it’s Aliens after all, and Gearbox – Duke Nukem aside – how could this go wrong?
What’s wrong with Aliens Colonial Marines? (This will have SPOILERS so keep that in mind)
The story messes with the… err.. story!!
Remember that blast bigger than the size of Nebraska? The one that happened when sh-t went down on LV-426 and the atmosphere processors went nuclear as Bishop barely scraped away (after giving Ripley a heart attack!). Apparently Gearbox forgot that piece of vital Aliens history, because everything is still there, even the fluorescent light on the “Bar” is on. Upside, they add in the trike we see in the Directors cut.
Now it REALLY messes with canon, Hicks is alive… Say What?! And the explanation, rubbish. The upside of this is Michael Biehn does the voice.
Next up there’s the huge fully working research facility that’s been built, stocked with Aliens, Facehuggers, unsuspecting hosts, test subjects and loads and loads of Wayland Yutani mercs. They’ve been working here for some time too, odd given there’s only what… maybe a couple of months since the end of Aliens? Riiiiiiiiight.
Drake and Apone? I watched the credits role after I completed the game and it said Mark Rolsten and Al Matthews were both voice actors. I assume this is multi-player or I was asleep when they made their entrance. I guess they survived too then.. acid burns and hosting evil aliens and all.
Don’t get me started on the Sulaco and Fiorina Fury 161… 19.5 light years from Earth and why it took Sephora all the time it did to respond to Hick’s distress signal.
I could go on, but you get the picture.
Having said all that I played the entire thing through. I realize this game will go down in history as an embarrassment and one of the worst games ever made, but my Alien loving self enjoyed it. I said on Twitter it’s the junk food of video games, you know it’s bad but part of you enjoys it…. that pretty much sums it up. Some of the orchestration was good… she said trying to finish on a positive.
Till next time Aliens fans… Nerfenstein out!
Till next time people… what do we say?! ….
DO GOOD THINGS!
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Originally written for GirlyGamer.com.au home blog of Nerfenstein / GirlyGamer / BoardGameGran. Catch up with me on my Facebook page, or if you Tweet… there’s always Twitter and guess what, I actually reply!
For me the most glaring omission was no Wierzbowski…
http://blindphineas.deviantart.com/art/Nerf-mod-Bug-Hunt-Wierzbowski-s-tags-354924285
Hi, do you know the exact name of the shot gun toy you used and also what is the cannon made of?
Thanks.
Hi Oliver,
I have no idea what the name was, I think it was something fairly inane like “Military Toy”, cheap Chinese thing. For the shroud you don’t need that exact model, just use whatever you have 🙂
The cannon? As in the barrel end? That is a ladies hair-roller (see more about that on my FB page).
Hope that helps.
don’t forget that Dark Horse did comics/ graphic novels and novels with Hicks, Newt and Bishop for years before Fox screwed them over. So the games not so bad if you prefer that course as I do.
I really should get around to finding those and reading them, being the huge Aliens fangirl that I am.
I wanted some kind of ammo counter like the pulse rifles had. I built a nice little 2 digit ammo counter using a microcontroller (PIC). It starts at 99 shots and counts down with each trigger pull to 0. If you old the trigger for more than a second, it goes into autofire mode and counts down 10 shots per second. Removing the power and restiring it, resets it to 99. To have it start at something other than 99 shots requires changing a number in the code before writing it into the chip so means I can have a 15 shot one if I want. I made it count up as well in case I ever needed such a thing. I really should make a proper PCB for them though.
Hi Peter,
wow that sounds AWESOME. I’ve seen a few Nerf videos where people have done similar and it always looks fantastic. Sadly I have neither the skill nor funds to be quite so flashy. The one actual ‘ammo counter’ I made now sits in a baggy in a junk drawer in my workshop and it just lit up with a set number.