It is difficult to believe that James Cameron’s Aliens was released into cinemas 40 years ago. The seminal space shooter took the original Alien – a tense slasher film with a tiny cast and one monster – and transformed it into an intergalactic war movie crammed with wry one-liners, massive guns and an actual boss battle finale. As a 14-year-old, I stood in line at the Tatton Gatley cinema, unsure if I’d be allowed in – I came out three hours later a changed person, my head filled with esoteric military slang and a deep fear of beeping motion detectors. For days afterwards, I slept with my duvet covering my mouth so that no facehuggers could get me. (I was a highly impressionable teenager.)
It’s little wonder that the film has had such a profound effect on video game design. Take the colonial marines, for example. Although the concept of the space soldier had been around in sci-fi novels since the 1930s, most notably in the works of EE “Doc” Smith and Robert Heinlein (the Starship Troopers), Hicks, Hudson, Vasquez and co, were the perfect 80s rendition, combining the witty banter of contemporary buddy cop flicks with awesome weaponry and hi-tech gadgets. Their influence is easy to spot in Doom, where the nameless marine fights ceaseless waves of hellish monsters using a mix of futuristic rifles and good old shotguns. It’s there too in the Halo series, the Spartan soldiers sporting the same armour and mega weapons, cruising about in very similar highly militarised starships and fighting recognisable hive-mind space beasts. Gears of War, Killzone and Marathon all borrow from the same set of costumes and deadly accessories.
