Jamesdickinson963 of ModDB, who has been working on overhauling and improving 2013's Aliens: Colonial Marines, has discovered a typo in one line of Colonial Marine's game config file, or .INI, that may be to blame, at least in part, for its lackluster AI.

Loading

Loading

The error, which was one extra letter, looks like this:ClassRemapping=PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachXenoToTether -> PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_As you can see in the bold text, the last word says Teather, when it should in actuality say Tether. This command should have controlled "tactical position adjustment, patrolling and target zoning." Due to this typo, it seemingly did nothing. Kotaku tested out the actual results of this coding change, demonstrating a clear difference in enemy behavior once the code had been fixed. While the code alteration resulted in a clear difference, in their estimation, it "does not fundamentally" correct many of the issues critics and players had when the game launched. In IGN's review of Aliens: Colonial Marines, in which we gave a score of 5/10, we stated that "the problem lies with the aliens themselves; they’re not smart enough to hunt in packs or take you by surprise, they just willfully hurl themselves in front of your short, controlled bursts." JigglesBunny on ResetERA spotted this post and tested it for himself and noted, "the improvement is immediately recognizable in your first encounters with the Xenos. While they still charge you perched on their hind legs, they now crawl far more often, flank you using vents and holes in the environment and are generally far more engaged and aggressive."According to Steam, Aliens: Colonial Marines has not been updated on PC since July of 2013, and still contains this error.Jamesdickinson963 found this mistake last year while was working on his TemplarGFX's Aliens: Colonial Marines Overhaul, a mod that aims to allow players to "experience Aliens: Colonial Marines how it should have been when it first released."

Adam Bankhurst is a freelance writer for IGN who would love to go to space, and no Xenomorph can convince him otherwise. You can follow him on Twitter.