4gb Patch For Aliens: Colonial Marines Improves AI, Graphics

Gearbox has released a massive patch for the PC version of its critically panned shooter that aims to fix some of the game’s most glaring faults.

Aliens: Colonial Marines is right up there with the likes of Duke Nukem Forever and Daikatana as one of the biggest gaming disappointments of all time. The story of its failure is probably more entertaining than the game itself. Nonetheless, Gearbox is committed to at least attempting to fix the most glaring of the game’s faults, and has released a huge 4gb patch for its PC version. The patch offers various improvements to the game’s AI and visuals, as well as numerous bug fixes.

The AI in Aliens: Colonial Marines was one of its most criticized features, with many reviewers claiming they were buggy, useless, and annoying. “Tweaked enemy and friendly AI to be more aggressive and responsive,” and “Modified campaign difficulty to account for improved AI responsiveness,” are two points in the new patch notes that aim to alleviate these problems.

Similarly, the game’s final product graphics were criticized for looking no-where near as good as that infamous pre-release walkthrough. The new patch states that it has improved texture resolution, and added various visual improvements, including a film grain filter which you can see in the above screenshot. The full patch notes are as follows:

General

• Improved texture resolution.
• Various visual improvements.
• Added mouse smoothing to options menu.
• Fixed crashes tied to launch and motion tracker.
• Added additional safeguards to better protect save data.
• Resolved an issue where a player’s level could sometimes appear incorrect when backing out of a party.
• Addressed several scenarios under which players could spawn without a weapon.
• Changes to better prevent audio from sometimes cutting out during end of mission cinematics.
• Fixed issue where Xeno death animation was not properly calculating momentum of the killing blow.
• Smart Gun animation now properly tracks targets.
• Addressed some instances where Xenos would display erratic animations.
• Increased light radius for player’s shoulder lamp.
• Adjusted aim assist to better reflect player input.
• Addressed an issue that could sometimes cause co-op player revival to not work under certain circumstances.
• Addressed issues with players not spawning into a level properly.
• Fixed a marine player invincibility exploit.
• Resolved several instances where players could walk or fall outside of maps.
• Addressed an issue where Ripley’s Flamethrower (bonus content) would sometimes fire continuously without player input.
• Fixed an issue that could cause localized text to sometimes display incorrectly.
• Addressed an issue where weapon ammunition was not always highlighted properly.
• General user interface improvements.
• Miscellaneous bug fixes.

Campaign

• Tweaked enemy and friendly AI to be more aggressive and responsive.
• Modified campaign difficulty to account for improved AI responsiveness.
• Improved enemy collision detection regarding doors and Power Loader.
• Addressed some issues that could cause improper warping for co-op players.
• Various tweaks to address instances where NPC characters would not always properly navigate to objectives.
• Players will no longer bleed out immediately when downed in a Power Loader.

Versus

• Fixed issues that could cause clients to report inaccurate results and statistics.
• Addressed instances where a map would appear to “pop in” when loading into a new match.
• New Xeno appearance customization added.
• Multiplayer teams should now correctly auto-balance between rounds.
• Increased duration of Lurker Pounce Challenge “Cat-Like Reflexes” from 10 to 20 seconds.
• Fixed issue where certain multiplayer challenges would not unlock properly for all characters.
• Crusher pick-ups now correctly appear as highlighted for clients.

Source: Gearbox

Image: Imgur