4GB Aliens: Colonial Marines patch available for PC

Oh man, remember this game? It wasn’t very good!

Gearbox continues to demonstrate that, contrary to popular idioms, you can actually polish a turd. Aliens: Colonial Marines is being made shinier — but no less stinkier — in a 4GB PC patch that improves textures, A.I. behavior, and a huge number of other things. 

The massive update should be available for download right now. Unfortunately, the patch doesn’t fix its woeful story, nor does it include an apology or an explanation as to why the game continues to be sold with misleading information. Baby steps, I suppose. 

I’ll give the devil its due — some sort of halfhearted nod is owed to Gearbox for at least attempting to make this blasphemy worth the asking price for those duped into purchasing it. Such recognition should be shallow at best, though, considering the sheer lack of excuse for such effort being required in the first place. 

Even at 4GB, this patch is a case of too little, and far too late for me. Time has had no discernible effect on my mood over this loathsome, greasy little shit, and I’ve no time to spare for its offerings so long after launch.

But hey, at least they fixed an issue where you could spawn without your first-person shooter avatar holding a gun. Well done them!

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.