Aliens Colonial Marines was a real let down of a game. What was supposed to be an action horror title in the same vein as the original Aliens movie, evoking classic games like Aliens vs Predator 2, was a horrible mess of bad dialogue, clunky graphics, and most importantly, terrible -- far from terrifying -- Xenomorphs. They walked into walls, they jumped around and let you kill them with ease and even allowed you to escape if you simply ran away.
There's no getting around some of the bad design choices and execution of Colonial Marines, but fans have discovered that much of the issues with the Xenomorph AI may have been to do with a problematic entry in one of the game's .ini files. Specifically the one that controls AI behavior.
What if all those problems were caused by a simple typo in the game's settings file?
One entry was supposed to read "PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachPawnToTether," but a misplaced "A" in "tether" made it "teather" instead, so an entire AI subroutine couldn't run because of that one oversight. It's hard to imagine how a flaw like that snuck through the QA process, but do so it did and the difference when modders re-enabled that function is stark.
As PCGamer points out, fixing that typo gives the Xenomorphs far greater variety of attacks. They strafe and leap more, they use cover and seem to have a better understanding of where the player is. They follow you closely and stay on your tail if you try and escape. They even seem more aggressive.
It's not a fix-all for the game which still has its problems, but it seems likely that Colonial Marines would have been far better received if it hadn't had this problem in the first place.
