James shows a primary need to add, touch up and improve. “It didn’t change anything about the gameplay, but it made the game look better than what people were playing.”Ĭolonial Marines is broken, but they have some xenomorphs that are pretty cool … when they’re not acting like idiots. “I had already modified the ini file of the game before starting to play it,” he explains.

The Australian modder was happy to do what he loved the most – tweak, fix and improve – and, five years later, he’s still doing it with Gearbox’s failed FPS. James was about to start fiddling with the secrets of Aliens: Colonial Marines while others, like a servant, were busy venting their frustration. As he explains to me several times during our conversation, he does not play video games, but modifies them. For James, playing is second only to modding. You bought it, downloaded it, and installed it, but you weren’t playing it. Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet, Australian modder James ‘TemplarGFX’ Dickinson was not playing Aliens: Colonial Marines. The AI was broken, the firefights were malfunctioning, and the “perfect organism”, the Alien, couldn’t even run properly towards the player. But in February 2013 Aliens: Colonial Marines hit stores and the horror became reality: Gearbox’s first-person shooter was an outrage. After seeing a fantastic and atmospheric demo in 2011, fans were licking their lips at the idea of being in front of the authentic sequel to the mythical 1986 film. The story of the modder who has been trying to fix Aliens Colonial Marines for yearsĪliens: Colonial Marines, released in 2013, is one of the biggest disappointments we’ve suffered in the world of video games.

Aliens colonial marines graphics mod