Without a doubt, many gamers would consider Aliens: Colonial Marines to be among the worst games of the sci-fi franchise, with fans and critics alike having reviled the title due its poor graphics, terrible story, and frustrating gameplay. Speaking of the lattermost feature, one modder has now at least managed to improve the gameplay a tad by fixing the shoddy enemy AI after noticing and changing a single typographical error in the game's code.

As it so happens, the Australian modder named James Dickinson actually discovered the bug last year while he had been working on his Aliens: Colonial Marines overhaul. The error was found while delving into the ACM configuration file, and Dickinson came across a line of code containing the misspelled word "teather" instead of "tether". This, of course, causedthe string of code to not function properly with it actually doing nothing in the game.

Interestingly enough, repairing the problem didn't prove to be too difficult for Dickinson, as the line of code was rectified after simply removing the extra "a" that appeared in that specific string, thus improving Xenomorphs' overall AI. According to the modder, this minor adjustment to the original code "AttachXenoToTeather" properly fixes and "controls tactical position adjustment, patrolling and target zoning."

Taking all of this into consideration, Dickinson's discovery of the bunk enemy AI code in Aliens: Colonial Marines offers up a great example of how the modders can not only serve players by re-configuring games to fit a vision different from the developers', but also how often they improve games post-launch. For instance, most PC players of other titles like The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim typically use a slew of graphics mods that fix certain bugs while also beefing up the visuals. That said, though, it's safe to say it would take a lot more work by Dickinson and the modding community at large to mend all that's wrong with Aliens: Colonial Marines.

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

Source: Mod DB