Aliens: Colonial Marines

I dared to hope, but was given a game so dull and average, that is an actual achievement itself. [March 2013]

Hard core fans like me… will of course soldier along with the game and hope for the best and hope that tweaks to the game will make it better. It has some playing value, though you really have to push yourself to those points of the game. I like the game…it’s just a hard sell really, a love hate kind of thing of a big fan of the franchise….Nagging in the back of my brain is the thought that in this game, no one can hear you scream, and there will be no rescue ship sent.

With its annoying bugs, dated graphics and atmosphere of the film recreated only in certain situations, Alien Colonial Marines misses the target, disregarding the very high expectations of fans. Nevertheless, the narrative directly integrated with the movie franchise, the presence of twists, easter eggs and a multiplayer alternative to the usual FPS make it an interesting product for those who love the saga and the scary creature designed by Geiger. If you like Xenomorphs and you can go over on an atmosphere unable to strike fear (Dead Space is on another planet) and to the technical sector, you can give it a chance.

It's a very generic shooter, which seems to be one of the games we saw at the beginning at the generation or the end of the previous one. Certainly disappointing, there's a game here with several technical issues that still manages to be moderately fun.

Judging by the result, Gearbox could not handle the tremendous success of Borderlands 2. On the other hand, there’s this erroneous notion that franchises can exploit their name and are justified to produce mediocre titles for ever. Those two facts were enough to condemn Aliens: Colonial Marines. While it’s true that the console version is even worse, the competition in the PC shooter genre, is relentless. [April 2013]

Not as bad as the wost Aliens games, yet it's also not in the same league as the very best, leaving ACM to meandering in the space system of mediocrity. [Apr 2013, p.69]

A fair shooter that's been lifted among the above-average titles by its impressive background and several action scenes. This is an outstanding tour for the Aliens (even Alien) fans; for the other gamers it's slightly problematic, still quite a tasty canapé.

Colonial Marines comes off as too much fan service with few (if any) ideas of its own. It provides a tired narrative with an unsatisfactory conclusion that opens more questions than it attempts to answer.

A decent game that could have been much better with just a few vital improvements. Gearbox has wasted much of the enormous potential of the franchise, and as a result the game is enjoyable almost exclusively in the multiplayer modes and not more than a single play-through of the Campaign.

Despite the game’s best intentions to immerse you in the Aliens universe, the result is a bloody massacre. Relying on dated storytelling techniques and technology, and stretching way too far to provide a plausible link between the second and third films, Aliens: Colonial Marines isn’t able to connect its action to any real sense of drama or terror, completely missing the aspect of psychological horror that gave the film its edge.

Such small inconsistencies fade before an embarrassing overall picture that Colonial Marines delivers: an ugly, poorly voiced and narrated lousy 0815-shooter.

If only Aliens: Colonial Marines had decent visuals, the score would also have been able to pass mark. Instead, due to the mediocre technical sector, the too-short single-player Campaign, questionable A.I. and the uninspired and bland narrative, the long=awaited return of Xenomorphs became, in the hands of Gearbox Software, something very close to a complete failure.

A lot of potential with disappointing execution. [March 2013, p.86]

Aliens in Colonial Marines fail to scare you. Instead they make you laugh at their awkwardness and grotesque animations. The whole game is riddled with bugs and I honestly can’t remember any title with dumber AI controlled squad members. Sadly it seems that Gearbox is unable to make an ordinary first person shooters any more. [CD-Action 03/2013, p.54]

The saddest thing is there’s still a lot of fun to be found in Colonial Marines. As much as I loathed it at times, this was mostly due to the fact that when the game gets it right, it really gets it right. Last-gen graphics, poor quality control and sloppy writing further taint an enjoyable co-op experience that otherwise goes a long way to making the player fe

Aliens: Colonial Marines looks like Aliens, and sounds like Aliens, but unfortunately it just doesn’t feel like Aliens. Instead, it feels indistinguishable from almost every shooter you’ve played in the past twenty years.

Veteran FPS players won’t waste more than an hour on it. Everyone else should scream in contempt at the developers; rightfully so. Ideas such as the ‘Escape’ mode are cool, although whether you choose solo or multiplayer, be warned that the novelty soon wears off as Aliens Colonial Marines shows its true colors, unveiling an excruciatingly dull first-person shooter with all the entertainment value of tap-dancing hermit crab.

It seems to have the right set up for a decent Aliens game with the presentation and look, but due to the boring story and clunky enemy AI, there is no tension or exciting action.

Deeply underwhelming. Neither staged carefully enough to be scary nor dynamic enough to be exciting, it succeeds only where other players are capable of breathing life into it. There are better linear shooters, better asymmetrical multiplayer games, and better Aliens sequels, and your love of the motion tracker and pulse rifle would need to be profound to surmount those obstacles.

Instead of an intense horror-experience with amazing action-scenes, Aliens: Colonial Marines manages to feel like an interactive extra on a bonus-dvd that came with the movie. The game is a horrible disappointment thanks to the Xeno’s lack of ferocity, the absence of an exciting story and many bad design decisions.

I would have thought that this game can't be bad. A well-known and liked franchise, one of the most recognizable and respected monsters in movie history, and a good background story. Unfortunately - it was not enough. When Aliens: Colonial Marines was first revealed it looked more interesting and much prettier. Gearbox's boss apparently decided to hire mediocre workers instead of talented programmers - the payroll consists of many studios: Timegate, Nerve Software, Demiurge. Has Gearbox done anything except supervision? A game that looks like this shouldn't be allowed to appear on the market. I'm sorry, but AvP 2010 gave me more pleasure than Colonial Marines.

The Alien franchise deserves better than this. Aliens: Colonial Marines is a disappointing exercise in bland corridor shooting, dragged down by laughable dialogue and cooperative play that makes the game worse than when you adventure on your own. Colonial Marines is unremarkable in every conceivable way: it's far too easy, generally devoid of tension, and lacking in the variety it so desperately needed.

The characters, for instance, are equal parts annoying and forgettable, and the writing is genuinely laughable.

What’s most shocking is that it’s also a complete failure when it comes to basic game design. The gunplay is unconvincing, weightless, and repetitive. AI allies are literally bulletproof; AI enemies engage in a litany of truly bizarre behavior. Thanks to a long development cycle, the game arrives feeling and looking dated, offering ugly animations, textures, and cutscenes, cover-shooting with no cover, and lifeless, obsolete character models.

Half-cooked, bereft of ideas and technically despicable, this would-be triple-A production is an overblown movie tie-in to a flick you wouldn't want to see. Randy Pitchford once said 'if you've seen the film it's fan service, and if you haven't seen them it's content'. Content it is, but I doubt any fan will deem this a service to their liking. Quite the contrary: When it comes to video games, H.R. Giger's movie-monsters are done for until further notice.

Aliens: Colonial Marines certainly offers a wealth of reverence of the movie it's aping, but the efforts by TimeGate and Gearbox Software seem misguided and tone-deaf - and that's not even considering the wooden gunplay, often-broken cutscenes and terrible AI.

Unfortunately, the result of the long wait is something that feels like an abandoned mod.

Aliens: Colonial Marines didn't leave me catatonic, but it did leave me scratching my head and wondering how a game that's been in development for roughly seven years at the same studio that gave us Borderlands 2 could be released in such an uninspired, unpolished state. Strangely, and perhaps fittingly, it's all wrapped up on a frustrating note that sets up some sort of Aliens tell-all continuation of the story without giving any actual answers.

Frankly, the amount of failure that Aliens: Colonial Marines achieves in nearly every category is staggering. If you are an "Aliens" fan, the game's handling of the canon may send you into a rage. If you are just looking for a shooter, you'll find an uninspired mess that is mechanically beaten by games 10 years older. The game has no redeeming qualities, as it is a broken mess that must be the lowest possible point of the franchise.

Sometimes a Hollywood studio tries to make a blockbuster, but the end result is so dumb and pathetic that you can’t stop chuckling while watching it. Aliens: Colonial Marines is a game equivalent of that kind of failure. So do yourself a favor – wait until it hits $4,99 on Steam (oh, it will!), buy it, gather your friends, and get ready to laugh for four hours straight.

Following Duke Nuken: Forever, Gearbox needed a hit to show that they could do more than Borderlands well. If their next game doesn't deliver, Aliens: Colonial Marines may well be remembered as the game that began their downfall.

What is most frustrating is the constant self-sabotage: every time the game does something right, it immediately then ruins it. A section of the game takes place in the derelict ship from the first film. There's a wonderful sense of intimidating scale here – think Kane lowering himself into the same ship. And then, as you contemplate the space jockey, a group of brainless PMCs run in and start shooting.

The infuriating amount of confidence on display as Aliens: Colonial Marines systematically misses the point again and again is what really poisons the experience. The end result feels craven and exploitative of its source material and the fans that will hopefully know better.

Aliens: Colonial Marines is more than a disappointment. It's downright depressing. I can't say if it's the result of a lacking budget, rushed development, or sheer carelessness, but having the nerve to present this as a full retail game is inexcusable. It's simply not finished, and it certainly isn't worthy of being considered a legitimate followup to Aliens.

As clear a warning as there has ever been about the risks inherent to pre-ordering games.

It’s tempting to support a game that’s been through struggles and survived out the other side, especially when it carries a popular name, but Aliens: Colonial Marines should have remained vaporware.

Both functionally broken and creatively bankrupt, Aliens: Colonial Marines is an extinction-level disaster.

Utterly flubs the fine art of shooting cool guns at freaky things in space dungeons. And it has a terrible weapon progression system and cut-rate production values, to boot. Plus, there are no predators, which is apparently what it takes to make an aliens game that isn’t awful.