Aliens: Colonial Marines - Season Pass

I want to be straight with you: the Aliens: Colonial Marines Season Pass is carrying a lot of dead weight, and the context around it matters more than the discount. The base game released in 2013 to near-universal disappointment - broken AI, rough visuals, a campaign that failed to honour the source material. The Season Pass bundles four DLC packs on top of that foundation, so the ceiling here is low before you even open the first pack. The four packs are Bug Hunt, Reconnaissance, the Movie Map Pack, and Stasis Interrupted. Bug Hunt is the standout by a wide margin. It drops up to four players into an objective-based horde mode across three maps - Broadside, Mercenary, and Tribute - all pulled from locations in the Aliens film. Waves escalate across 30 rounds, mixing Xenomorphs with Weyland-Yutani PMC soldiers, including brute variants armed with smart guns. You earn in-match currency to unlock new areas and restock weapons, which gives the mode just enough structure to keep a coordinated squad engaged. Community consensus from the time was consistent: Bug Hunt felt like it was built by a different team than the one that made the campaign, and not in a bad way. Everything else is shakier. The Reconnaissance Pack adds four Team Deathmatch and Extermination maps - Grief, Shipwreck, and Autopsy among them - but they were criticised for being small and samey. The Movie Map Pack (June 2013) brings locations across the wider franchise: the Nostromo in Survivor mode, the Sulaco in an Escape map called Exodus, Fury 161 from Alien 3, and the Atmosphere Processing Plant hive from Aliens. On paper that is fan service done right. In practice, finding other players who own the same DLC maps has been nearly impossible for years, and that problem only compounds in 2025. Stasis Interrupted, the fourth pack, is a short single-player campaign following Corporal Hicks through the 17-week gap between Aliens and Alien 3. The lore angle is interesting. The execution was rated poorly at launch and has not aged into something worth seeking out on its own. The hard reality for anyone reading this now is the multiplayer component. Bug Hunt needs other players. The Reconnaissance and Movie Map packs need other players. The base game's online community was already thin within a year of release, and the pool of people specifically owning these DLC maps is smaller still. If you can guarantee a group of friends willing to coordinate, Bug Hunt specifically is a decent few evenings of co-op horde fun with an Aliens skin on it. Solo, only Stasis Interrupted has any value, and that value is modest. This Season Pass made more sense as a day-one purchase in 2013. As a retrospective grab for a franchise-complete collection, approach with clear expectations. Alex, Scout Team