This game is by far one of the worst of the year, and i can say that in all confidence even though it's only February. No atmosphere, the WORST textures I've ever seen, a majority of vents and small crawl spaces that aliens sometimes crawl out of and such are actually just black squares, not real vents. Such a poorly designed game it's almost impressive. No effort has been put into this game at all. Do not buy it, especially not for the ridiculously high price on steam. this game would be somewhat reasonable at 10 dollars, but even then, do not buy it. Aliens are too cumbersome to control, the tactical sights on weapons are strangely mis-aligned, the weapon firing sounds are laughable at best. avoid at all costs… Expand

After 7 hours of playing I will have to write now or never. Some may complain that I haven't given the game a chance. You know what? It's not going to get any more than these 7 hours out of me and in retrospect that's probably 2 or 3 hours more than this game deserves. A dull traipse through badly designed levels with "rent and idiot" characters and so little in the way of gameplay above "it moves shoot it" that it might as well be Quake with better graphics. The difference being of course, that every game must be taken in context, and of it's time Quake was innovative and excellent but that time was 17 years ago. I was temped to give this a zero just becasue I'm so cheesed off as a massive Aliens fan. Why buy the rights to an iconic franchise and do this? Why Gearbox WHY? I got nervous when they said they were removing the single player squad system to make the game "more accessible" (i.e at best "dumbed down" at worst "we couldn't be bothered or don't have the skill to implement a system like this") But this game is just so DULL. It doesn't crash, the graphics are ok the sound, though taken from 26 year old samples it seems, is very good but that's the best I can say about the game. The old samples used for gunfire polish up well considering how old they are. That really is the best I can say about this game. The gameplay is as generic as "Jenny Generic and her Generic Geriatrics" cut and paste gameplay that is soooooooo old. How could this game have taken more than 6 months to cobble together from exising gameplay mechnics with a new lick of GFX on top? Anyway I'll give it 1 out of 10 which is 2 (yes 2... I considered minus one but I couldn't push the slider back that far) more than I wanted to give it 10 minutes ago.… Expand

The people who saw the first 2 movies should NOT play this game. A total disgrace to the amazing movies! I returned DS3 for this, but omg does this suck on PC. Apart from the sad fact that this is as always just a simple conosoleport, it really looks poor. The world is so damn empty..... I mean "tension" and ""suspense"? Where the hell is it? Very low textures, ugly game, way to easy and full of minor bugs as in they rushed this game out. Keep you money in your pocket, because this game is plain and stupid!… Expand

Quite frankly not good enough.

This feels more like a mod or total conversion than a game of it's own. Graphics are dated, animation and blood/acid effects are very poor, sounds effects are very nice but what we have here strikes me as overall unfinished, unpolished, rushed, underdone. You would have to love James Cameron's film A LOT for this title to be salvageable, and I do, and it isn't.

Falsely Advertised with fake "Actual in-game footage"

-Terrible AI
-Terrible Story
-Very buggy Single Player and Multi-player
-No Dedicated servers so hosts constantly leaving
- Terrible Alien pathfinding when crawling around in MP getting stuck etc.

Pathetic attempt, even replaying the recent Aliens versus Predator by Rebellion which has better Graphics, Story and AI.

1/10 at most

Single player wise, yeah, Colonial Marines is pretty bad. There's a lack of suspenseful atmosphere (except for one level), the AI is atrocious, acting is bad, and the storyline is worse. Hadley's Hope? Un-nuked, I guess. Whatever. Multiplayer is a better experience than single player, but suffers from some major issues. Marines level up from the campaign and multiplayer, while aliens can only level up from multiplayer. This means that pretty much right out of the chute marine teams have a gigantic advantage over the alien team. 6 hours after launch I was running into marines between level 10 and 23 with fully upgraded weapons, and today all my matches have consisted of max level marines vs. level 1 to 7 aliens. Customization options are far more in depth for marines, with aliens being limited to 3 heads and some slightly differently colored skins. Finally, there are no dedicated servers, and if the host leaves before the match is over, you are kicked and lose all your progress. So, bottom line, multiplayer is the only way this game can redeem itself, but even that has a long way to go.… Expand

It's sad but I think the sounds were the only thing i enjoyed about the whole game. The Aliens were difficult to track if you lost them especially the face huggers. 80's iconic symbols always seem to get ruined when created now, so sad so much more potential tech wise and I feel like I wasted $67 dollars

This is a subpar game. A disservice of the Aliens licence. WTF gearbox? Brain-dead AI, poor textures, boring corridor shooter. This game is candidate to Worst Game of the Year 2013.

What the hell happened? The AI was one of the worst AI I've ever seen. Many Aliens won't even come after you. Sometimes they look at you and walk around you. WALK.

The first thing that you will notice after paying 60 bucks and booting this thing up is that it is possibly one of the ugliest modern shooters I have seen in a very long time. If you are a graphics enthusiest then this will make your eyeballs bleed. I have a fairly stout computer and was hoping for some meat on this thing, there is none. The first thing that came to mind (an after reading these reviews, many others as well) is Doom 3. and not the BFG edition. Some may argue that it is uglier. Its pretty bad. It is kind of fun though, but that is comming from a guy who is not a serious FPS player. I do enjoy cod series but if thats what you look for in all shooters, dont even come near this. But if you like shooters to a degree and are tired of the hardcore ones, and reminse about the days of return to wolfenstein and the like then this may be something to try. Not for 60 bucks though. 20 at the most. If you buy it now you will feel ripped. Being an aliens fan dosent hurt either but not being one will destroy any enjoyment you hope to have. The only reason it gets a 3 is cause of the alien thing. its not a bad shooter, just not a serious one, and a very very very very very ugly one. Its so ugly you will be floored. My jaw hit the ground.… Expand

This game is triumphant only in it's massive failure to deliver any kind of satisfaction, or enjoyable experience. It's is glaringly obvious within just a few moments of starting, A:CM is a steaming pile of crap, cobbled together from various farmyard animals. It's almost a parody of what it is supposed to be, the bugs are so amusing, you spend more time frowning or laughing than flinching in terror, in what is supposed to be the supreme horror suspense franchise, from which all others stem. Just look at the critic reviews, who are often accused of being paid to give high scores, completely denounce this product as utter rubbish. The lies spewed forth by the aggressive marketing campaign only adds salt to the wound, a developer desperate to claw back some of the money they spent over the SIX YEARS OF DEVELOPMENT that this game had. Aliens: Colonial Marines has left me feeling disappointed, ripped off and angry. SHAME ON GEARBOX! SHAME ON YOU!!… Expand

Crap game. Bought the hype that Gearbox would actually make a good game out of a much beloved franchise. AI is you can actually run through the whole game without fighting or taking on an alien. Check on youtube for the video for proof. This is a joke game. Not worth $60.00..save your money.

1) Atrocious AI; especially the aliens. They just make a beeline for you.
2) Dated graphics; unlike what was seen in the demos.
3) First level was great with a great atmosphere and build up. It stops there, at the first level.
4) "EPIC" boss battle.
5) This is related to the second point; there's absolutely no sense of dread or "feel". Flip switch, run and gun, flip switch, run and gun.

Unless they redo all the AI and Fix the terrible story-line, i cant see this as being worth 40 dollars. I strongly urge you to wait and see if the price goes down to at least 20-30$, and even then not go out of your way to buy it.A huge disappointment to all of the aliens fans.

There is not much to recommend about this game and zero reason to play it. Everything you've likely heard is true. The plot is bland and illogical, the aliens are neither scary or believable, the level design is so linear that they might as well have sat you in a theme park ride. The animations are so sub-par as to be beyond belief. This game would be embarrassing to a value software developer. For it to be developed by Gearbox (a supposedly triple A studio) based on a can't-lose sci-fi franchise.... This will surely ruin Gearbox's reputation, at very least.… Expand

You know what the best parts of Alien Aliens were? The tension, the terror and the characters. None of which are present in this game. The poorly textured repetitive environments are a bore, where you'll always find the same poorly programmed Xenomorphs glitching around on the walls trying to feebly slash at you, or even atrocious gunfights against humans. It's a totally rinse and repeat formula after an hour or two, there's barely any variation whatsoever. However, there is actually one good stealthy level where you have no weapons and are completely vulnerable to wart-covered, husks of Xenos. There's also a relatively good level of authenticity for the spaceships and planets, even linking directly back to the films. I really don't know why, but even on the hardest difficulty the Xenos are just not terrifying enough. There's never a moment where you have to hurry and prepare and wait for them to come knocking at the door, it's just a random sprawl of enemies jumping on top of each other and slashing at friendly AI. I do think this is meant to be a horror game, not a military shooter, and this game leans more on the latter. You can carry EVERY gun you've unlocked at once, completely knocking out the immersion factor straight away. The story is all over the place with utterly dislikeable characters who you couldn't care less about. The low resolution PS2 cutscenes don't do them any justice either. Moments of intrigue and horror are blown out with moronic dialogue like imitating the Xenos, 'They were like, oh yeah, we're gonna blow up now! What the A lot of potential, wasted.… Expand

Oh god...7 years for NOTHING, this game has got some good features but besides it's a boring experience with bad AI, dumb Xenomorphs and Invisible campaign, the multiplayer feels like Call of Duty changing players for fool attack dogs (Xenomorphs) and an extremely boring gameplay. This is definitely one of the worst games of the year or the biggest dissapointment of the year.

Lazy game which rides the title to monetary gain rather than putting forward anything worth playing. So many times while playing this I could see broken textures on hallways, those bright blue lines you are seeing on the floor are not lights, people, they are the edges of the textures. The in lifts you can see through the world into the sky-box (and see the planets below), it is a lazy lazy game. Not only that, it is boring, dreadfully so, even the co-op has my friends and I laughing at how awful the AI is, even on the hardest difficultly, it is a lazy game with lazy writing, coding, and development. I'm not sure if Gearbox actually made this, or outsourced it to somewhere, it really makes me question and further purchases of their production.… Expand

Seriously Gearbox? After the excellent Borderlands 2 I thought, it can't be wrong to pre-order another game produced by Gearbox. I was proven wrong. One thing I have learned for sure after this game release disaster: I will NEVER NEVER NEVER ever pre-order a game anymore!

Well they ruined another aliens games. After AVP2010 I thought I had surely seen the worst. NOPE. They somehow managed to spend 6 years making a terrible game on par with bargain bin trash from 6 years ago. With an IP this great I don't understand how it's so consistently hard for these morons to make a decent or great game. Hell, they could update AVP1999 with a modern engine and it'd be 100 times better than A:CM or AVP2010. Somehow they've regressed in 14 years. The AVP1999 had environmentally deformed explosions. What does this have? Hit markers, non-location based damage, and clunky, BORING gameplay. Good job gearbox, you've managed to make a surprisingly bad game.

As far as all those people rating it 10, or higher than 3 or 4 at the most, they're just self-deluding individuals suffering from a bad case of buyer's remorse. Denial is part of their coping mechanism. Over time they too will progress to anger at how crappy this game turned out.… Expand

This game is actually worse than Duke Nukem Forever, which has set a new standard for LOW.
Where to begin?
There is no atmosphere. If you enter a room with an AI team-mate, that team-mate sticks close to you until one or more aliens appear (scripted). Once there are no more aliens that need to be confronted, the AI runs all the way to a waypoint (near a door or something), thus, the thrill of not knowing if an alien will attack is gone.
Shooting through your team-mates as if they weren't there.
The aliens pretty much ignoring any of your team-mates, to the point of going past them, or THROUGH them, in order to get to you.
Aliens literally going through platforms, as if they weren't there.
No interaction, for example early in the game, in the passageway between two ships or whatever, the passageway breaks and you have to climb your way up to one of your team-mates who extends his arm for you to grab and pull up. All fine and dandy, except that this whole scene is a movie. I would have liked to press forward or SOMETHING, to interact, to feel like I'm struggling, like I'm pulling myself up, like I'm saving my ass, not sit in my chair like a cow and watch a stupid movie. (Yeah, cows don't sit in chairs, but with this game so forked-up, I can't even begin to describe the frustration it sets out).
The in-game cinematics are a joke, such visual low quality. The voice acting could also do better, but I'm willing to say they're relatively ok.
The animations have clearly not been finished. All the humans move like robots. There is no feeling in this game anywhere, starting from the aliens and finishing with your team-mates.
There is also a sequence where you have to hand over to one of your team-mates a clipboard or something. If you don't stay in front of him and watch him from an angle, you will see that he extends his arm into mid air, a clipboard will magically appear in his arm and he will put it in his pocket. WTF?!??! Seriously!?!?
This game is in pre-alpha stage, just a concept demo. NOTHING is finished, everything is bugged, it lacks any feeling of anything, except frustration that it could have been a LOT better, in every perspective.
I'm sure I've missed a LOT of other shi(tt)y things, but I'm already tired and this game doesn't deserve the pushing of the keyboard buttons, even to say how ridiculously lousy it is.
Avoid at any cost. If you've already paid for it, see if you can get your money back.
Now I'm seriously considering ever buying a game from this publisher ever again.
Apart from making money because it has the "Alien" word in it, and for the pre-orders, this game is the worst, nobody in its right mind would buy it after seeing the reviews.
Even if the publishers hurried publishing it because of the deadline (though the smarter thing they should have done was to postpone it), thinking they would come out with patches, fixing what is wrong or missing from the game, the game is so far off from being finished, I would think they need another 5 more years just to polish it here and there. Forshame publishers, forshame!… Collapse

I am a big fan of alien movies. And even tough game has alien in its title i think they could use something else instead of aliens. aliens dont die with 1 shot of shotgun and thats at hardened diffuculty) and they dont act like they are high on drugs, they dont wander around you meaninglessy while u have the time to watch them and wonder what are those bugs doing around running above your head at ceiling. I waited intentionally for them to kill me but they just attack once and than go back wondering around. The enemy ai is terrible, but whats even worse is friendly ai, friendly ai can just watch you die and do nothing at all, also u can easily understand if u are going to get in trouble or not, thanks to obvious scripting. If you see your teammates staying behind or running forward very fast and away from you make sure you get ready because you are about to get attacked.

Another thing is the scan sound of motion tracker, whenever an enemy spawns you hear it bleeping, even tough u arent holding the tracker so all you have to do is to look around when you hear the sound. So overall Ai and scripting the scan sound is terrible.

Now those are big issues but it is not enough to give game a big 0 especially when it carries alien title. In real life you can see aroun 120-130 degrees around you. This means you can see your right 45 and left 45 with ease. In this game you cant see it, you have to turn right or left to see your 45. You have around 60 degree of view. So you have to turn right left crazy to see where the aliens are coming. This creates a very bad gameplay feeling, not because it makes the game harder but because it makes game play uncomfortable.

The graphics are ugly and i play the game with my high end pc at 1600-1200 with everything on at max using a 40 inch samsung led tv. The atmosphere the darkness of screen is well adjusted but light effects, animations just dont give you the alien feeling.

Overall i wasnt waiting much from this game, but i wasnt aware of the gameplay videos at e 2011 and e2012 either. In those demos graphic are actually great and aliens die with at least 5 6 shots of shotgun which is the way it should be. Anyhow the game promised and the game delivered are so different and this creates another negative impression. I could give a 3 maybe 4 to this game but fooling around with e 2011 and 2012 videos arent cool there goes your ZERO.… Expand

Terrible 2005 era graphics, underwhelming audio, bad dialogue, bugged, uninspiring, unpolished and barely any atmosphere. A review embargo until release day got me wondering what was wrong, and now I know. This is the first game in years where I have true buyers remorse. I want my pre-order money back.

A disgrace to the Alien movies and an unfinished turd of a game. Screw you, Gearbox! This POS is barely worth $10, let alone $50. You've got some nerve trying to get garbage like this past us and I won't even GLANCE at a product with your name on it again.

When I first tried this game, I was appalled by how bad it was. All the hype and promises lead up to this pile of useless garbage? How can this even happen with a 50$ game, it's mind-boggling. It is so bad, unpolished, buggy, cliche... just thinking about it makes me nervous. The graphics are very dated, it's like the developers didn't even care. The textures look like they've been taken from a 2007 game on medium settings. Animations made me want to gouge my eyes out, the way a limping man just glides over the terrain? Aliens who just die into a stiff ragdoll? The way their wounds are just yellow blood textures on the models? Concerning the gameplay, it is nothing but another lame, generic FPS that is exciting for about the first two encounters. It is the same old s**t, clear a room, move on. Hold the button to weld a door. Rapidly press the button to punch an alien and stun it(ridiculous). Multiplayer? Oh look, suicide bomber aliens. How original. The story, you won't even care for. All the shock value of aliens, chestbursters etc. is gone for any fan of the franchise. It is slightly unsettling for the first 5 minutes before your first alien encounter, when you go back to seeing them as cannon fodder that walks up to you and slashes the air, cause that's how they attack, if they don't pounce on you and initiate the same quicktime event for the millionth time. I had that exact quicktime event 3 times during my first encounter with an alien. AvP 3 Marine campaign has better atmosphere than this worthless trash, which says enough. With all things taken into account, this insult to the franchise deserves nothing but a 0.… Expand

This game is not fundamentally broken (with the possible exception of the AI) but it doesn't feel like it's a finished product either. It doesn't capture the feel of the Aliens movie, it looks dated and it's short and not very interesting. In no way does it live up to the marketing and hype around it.

Second review... campaign is complete crap.. multiplayer is fun at first but there isn't enough variety.. found out there were things not in the game that were suppose to be...

As a whole it's still not worth $50, more like $15

The absolute worst game of 2013 so far. The single player is 5 HOURS, FIVE MO******CKING HOURS AND IT IS BORING, REPETITIVE AND PREDICTABLE. The characters are forgettable. The story is forgettable. The AI is they stop and wait for you and forgets that there is Xenomorphs around. And my biggest complain is that you fight Weyland-Yutani soldiers INSTEAD OF XENOMORPHS WHY THE HELL WOULD THEY DO THAT!? THIS IS AN ALIENS GAME! Ok so the story is you are a guy named Winter and you are on a spaceship when it gets attacked by xenomorphs then you find out that guess who is behind it? That is right Weyland-Yutani then the spaceship crashes on the planet then find Hadley's Hope after that the story is BULL****!… Expand