Aliens: Colonial Marines

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.