Achievement Hunter: Aliens Colonial Marines (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3)

It’s been six years in the works, but last week, Sega’s long-delayed Aliens: Colonial Marines arrived for Xbox 360, PC and PlayStation 3, and even though it’s not the critical darling many expected it to be (mainly due to the fact that Gearbox didn’t entirely handle development behind it), it still has its fair share of fans, plowing through both the single player campaign and multiplayer between Marines and Xenomorphs.

For our latest Achievement Hunter, we’re breaking down how to get all the Achievements and Trophies for the game, and let you know about a certain few you might’ve missed.  Gear up, because this is an express elevator to Hell.  And it’s going down.

As always, minor spoilers ahead…

The Basics

You’ll earn five general Achievements over the course of the campaign, at 20 points a pop, by completing Distress (Another Day In the Corps!), Sulaco Falls (Bad Feeling About This Drop), The Raven (Quoth the Raven), Rampart (Still Got a Job To Do) and Home (Dragged Queen).  If you’ve got the incentive, however, you can earn three Achievements based on finishing the game.  One is awarded for any difficulty (Game Over, Man!- 30 points); one comes with Hardened difficulty (Not Bad For a Human- 40 points) and, finally, Ultimate Badass difficulty (State of the Badass Art- 50 points).

Certain Goals

You’ll also unlock certain Achievements by doing particular events in the game, such as finding the Easter Egg (Easter Egg- 5 points) or Newt’s doll (Mostly Come At Night…- 20 points).  Other objectives come with meeting certain conditions, including defeating all Xenomorphs in the Sulaco hangar bay without them crossing your barricade (Short, Controlled Bursts- 20 points), arming the emergency release and escaping in under 2:30 on Sulaco Falls (Fire Drill- 20 points), completing Hope in Hadley’s (Just a Grunt- 20 points), completing One Bullet without setting off the alarm (No Need For Alarm- 20 points) and defeating the Raven in just under 1:10 on Soldier difficulty or higher (Heavy Lifting, 20 points).

Then there are the more attainable Achievements by completing smaller tasks.  For instance, gibbing two enemies at once (Adios, Muchachos- 20 points), collecting a single dog tag (Oorah to Ashes- 10 points), finding all 35 dog tags (Remember the Fallen- 30 points), collecting one Legendary Weapon (Personal Friend of Mine- 10 points) or finding all six (I Like To Keep These Handy- 30 points), finding a Challenge and finishing it (Another Bug Hunt- 5 points), running through an entire Challenge category (Stay Frosty- 20 points) or finishing them all (Distinguished Service Medal- 30 points), collecting all the Audio Logs (I Heard THAT- 25 points) and ranking up as a Marine three times- at rank 2 (Field Promotion- 10 points), Rank 20 (Lean and Mean- 20 points) and Rank 60 (I Love the Corps!- 40 points).

You can also do some damage to aliens and earn a few Achievements, such as killing a Xenomorph with a shotgun at close range (Eat This!- 10 points), taking one of the suckers out while they’re on the walls or ceiling (Coming Outta the Walls!- 10 points), melee striking a Lurker just when it’s pouncing on you (No Offense- 20 points) and taking out five Spitters without taking actual damage from their acid (Secreted from What?- 20 points).  Oh, and if you survive an encounter with a Facehugger, you’ll get a bonus there as well (Love at First Sight- 10 points).

Multiplayer

A huge portion of Aliens Colonial Marines’ Achievements come from multiplayer, so it helps to have a few friends along for the ride.  Just having one join your party gives you some points (I Feel Safer Already- 10 points).  But there’s more where that came from, including the following

Don’t Count Me Out (5 points)- simply revive a teammate

Ready To Fry Half a City (5 points)- edit a Marine loadout

Structural Perfection (5 points)- edit a Xenomorph loadout

Perfect Killing Machine (20 points)- upgrade every Loadout slot for a Xenomorph class

Field Modified, Kill Certified (20 points)- upgrade every slot for a weapon

You Look Just Like I Feel (30 points)- upgrade every Appearance slot for your Marine

Adaptive Morphology (30 points)- upgrade every Appearance slot once for a Xenomorph class

I Can Handle Myself (40 points)- purchase all upgrades for a weapon

Majority Shareholder (25 points)- spend 30 Commendations

Entry Prohibited (20 points)- kill 10 Xenomorphs that are using vents

Let’s Rock! (20 points)- kill 10 Xenomorphs in a game with the M56A2 Smart Gun

Need a Deck of Cards? (5 points)- set up a UA 571-C Remote Sentry

Micro Changes In Air Density (10 points)- track 100 hostile targets with the Motion Tracker

It’s a Dry Heat (20 points)- kill three enemies with a single U4 Firebomb

Abritrarily Exterminated (30 points)- kill 2,179 Xenomorphs (you’ll need some time for this one)

Anytime, Anywhere (20 points)- kill a huge Crusher without taking any damage from it

…But No Cigar (20 points)- rescue a teammate from a Close Encounter.

Some of these will take a real amount of skill – and some patience – to unlock, but if you’re a fan of the series or like a good old fashioned bug hunt, you should have no problem with that.

Aliens Colonial Marines is available now for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.