I mentioned Gearbox’s woebegotten Aliens: Colonial Marines in snarky passing earlier, and so was surprised to see the disappointing Xeno-shooter crop up in the news for Actual Reals. Turns out there’s a mod intended the make the lousy not quite so lousy. My main question at this point is why?



On the one hand, I admire the dedication to a thankless task. On the other, big red and pulsating hand, what a thing to dedicate your time to. Sure, much of the negative response to ACM was wildly exaggerated – it was underwhelming, particularly visually, rather than an outright disaster – but I struggle to believe that are many people out there who truly love the thing. Let alone love it enough to spend weeks, months, who knows how much of their time doing unpaid work on it. But someone has.

The new release is version 2.0 of TemplarGFX’s ACM Overhaul, made by one jamesdickinson963, and it tackles graphics, weapon-feel and Alien AI. The game is purportedly harder and prettier as a result.

I didn’t play enough of the original (I preferred to experience it vicariously through videos) to give you a cast-iron opinion on how effective Overhaul is, but the response seems divided between folk who are impressed and folk who think ACM is now too difficult. The modder claims that an impending V3 will correct that, and seems to be releasing interim updates in the meantime.

From the screenshots it looks over-dark to me, but I guess that’s one route to restore spooksomeness.

Grab the 100MB mod from here if you’re interested. Here are the headline features too:

New AI, Gun Play, Materials/Lighting, Bug Fixes and More! Xenomorph’s have seen the most work fixing their behavior and mechanics to make them truly terrifying foes to face, dramatically shifting the tone of the entire campaign. This State of the Bad-A** Art modification for ACM reworks, reprograms and rebalances Xeno AI, Human AI, Weapon Mechanics, Ballistics, Animations, Shaders, Particles, Decals, Lighting, and engine features to get the best out of the game possible.

The installation instructions in the download apparently contain a crucial error, so use the ones here if you’re going to check this out. BUT WHY WOULD YOU.