The longevity of a bad game or movie is rather similar to that of road congestion: It is often said though as a logistical-fallacy that most traffic-jams are caused not by the accident up the road, but the people slowing down to take a good long look at the vehicular-carnage. Bad films and games often find their way into the popular culture of society as a bad joke, example, or warning. Really what it is, is an intrinsic human need to figure out what went wrong. Like the example of a car-crash, we want to understand as a passerby what caused the accident more than anything. Gearbox Software are dangerously close to the razors-edge due to the Duke Nukem: Forever disaster, and now facing possible legal action along with Sony for the car-wreck of a game; Aliens: Colonial Marines. Now they are definitely not the worst games of all time, though possible contenders for many lists of the nature, but throw a rock and Google with the words Aliens: Colonial Marines written on it and hope that it some how works then you’ll get many results linking you to several analytical breakdowns of what lead on to this three car pile up.
My encounter with this game that so well works with the alliterative term ‘congestion’ was on the UK release date; February 12th, 2013. I was in my shared accommodation for university when a busted dryer exhausted caused water to seep through my wall and pool into the rooms center, I had to empty everything I could and elevate all my electronics in a hurry, but I thought ‘”Hey, at least I get to play Aliens: Colonial Marines tonight!” Oh was I sorely disappointed and wished I was in a car-wreck.
*\**SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT**/*
Anyone, ANYONE, who played this game knows exactly what I’m going to say next, what the hell was Hicks doing in this game, it started off OK, he could have been present in audio recordings like the games introduction cutscene, but no. No Fox decided that this piece of terrible fan-fiction was the best continuation on from James Cameron’s Sci-Fi action epic Aliens (1986), whatever they were smoking they need to cut the dose, or at-least share it with yours truly. But that wasn’t what caused the accident, no, the skid-marks go way further up the road, showing signs of possible driver intoxication. The game was buggy, aged, poorly optimized, and just dumb.
But there are enough retrospective coroners reports on this game out there, and some evidence is still coming out. But I’m here to pose a simple little hypothetical: What if Hicks was replaced by Hudson?
It really is hard to hate Bill Paxton, and his character of Hudson in Aliens (1986) is one of the most quoted in all cinema, let alone sci-fi. His fate was left rather ambiguous in the Cameron flick, but Aliens: Colonial Marines decided to wrap that little detail up in their own way.
Is that really the best this character deserved? Don’t get me wrong, it was cool that the designers acknowledged this loose-end, but I feel it is a bit of a waste to use Hudson as a little wink to the fans. In the film, Hudson was the loud-mouth, over confident private that looses his nerves when coming face to face with the now iconic Xenomorphs. Before his ‘end’ Hudson uses his rage and adrenaline to blast away many Xenos before being attacked from beneath and taken away.
Now allow me to present an alternate continuation. What if Hudson got dragged so far, and then manged to shoot himself free, continuing his rampage and battling on. He somehow survive the atmospheric processor exploding (come on, the fact that the colony is still there is a miracle, and nobody said anything bad about that before the game was released), and then later is captured by Weyland-Yutani and found by the Marines in Aliens: Colonial Marines. Why? Because Hudson could have that character arc, he was the one who challenged Ripley on the logistics of surviving seventeen-days on LV-426, Ripley replied that Newt or Rebecca Jordan as she is actually called survived longer than that.
“Hudson! This little girl survived longer than that with no weapons and no training.” – Ellen Ripley to Hudson
Hudson should have become the new newt, Hudson should have been the captured marine that is rescued in the game, and Hudson should have gotten the character arc we never knew we all wanted.
So what if? What if we swapped Hicks for Hudson in Aliens: Colonial Marines? I’d like to go on record and say that I’m a big fan of the Alien 3 (1991) Assembly cut, it was the conclusion of the Ripley story that worked for me. But what are your thoughts, on things post Aliens (1986), and what are your thoughts on my hypothetical?
