Short review; If you want a generic run n' gun game that just happens to be set in the aliens universe, then this is the game for you. If you however want a suspensful scary gloomy game that will bring you back to Aliens (the first movie) fear levels Then this is not the game for you. PC graphics, while not stellar, is survivable. Gearbox has paid attention to detail when it comes to recreating Hadleys Hope as it was in the movie, but everything else is lackluster, 5/10 from me.… Expand

My collectors edition arrived today when i opened box i was happy. Collectors edition looks very nice but when i installed the game... I started playng with friend and from the begining i had problem is black screen (bug) i sorted out using forum. When we was playng for few hours i decided this game looks boring for me all the time waves of aliens incoming you just shoots them, balistic looks like in COD very close to it and i didnt like it. I used max setting on video but graphic looks like 4 years old comepletly horrible comparing to new games. I didnt try multiplayer atm but what i can say i expected much more from gearbox. Borderlands series is awsome but making aliens and stoping project then continue again.... in my opinion this project isnt finished yet. They also should add more staff or items better costumization. This game will become borring very soon!!!… Expand

What's worse? A bad game or a disappointment? How about both? How about both and using the Aliens franchise? Gearbox does it again-this game elicits the same feelings I had when I played Duke Nukem Forever. Do yourself a favor and stay away from Gearbox software. Far away.

A fun game I enjoyed my time with it and the coop is solid however the inescapable fact is that the campaign was only 3-4 hours long which is just unacceptable from a full price game. I do not pay £40 for a well dressed up teaser trailer for DLC it's a despicable trend and is utterly pathetic.

I would give the game a 4.75 but im rounding up, The game is disappointing, has some decent moments but is muddled down by terrible AI, stiff animations, and odd texture pop ins and lack of detail. not to mention the shooting is not really the best, and there is a lack of tension. This is just a shooting gallery with xenos.

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. It is unbelievable that people are rating this game a 9 or 10 it blows my mind don't listen to them im sure the majority of them pre-ordered, unfortunate they are making it worse for us all letting the industry get away with this crap, so shame on them. This is just not a very good game.

The story is just bad and i refuse to acknowledge it as cannon. For one it fails to explain major plot holes, and don't even get me started on the ending. A marine from the first movie survives??? what were these guys smoking when they came up with that. Any true alien fan would be disappointing with this game and I believe we expect a certain amount of quality to be involved when it comes to this beloved franchise. Yes expectations where high and rightfully so. The sound is great, love the sound effects like the pulse rifle and others such as aliens dying. The AI is bad and ruined the immersion for me on more than one occasion. For instance aliens standing in front of my AI squad mate for seconds attempting to kill him or navigating around him to get to me or like on most occasions my squad mate just firing his smart gun for long periods of time doing absolutely nothing. The graphics are bad which is something that caught me off guard. textures are terrible and character animation is amateur. the lighting ,one of the most important features in anything alien is mediocre which is extremely disappointing. i could go on but you get the idea just not much of a game here multilayer is better but doesn't make up for the terrible campaign.… Expand

I really like the Alien films but it did not make me more fond of the game. When I play deathmatch in multiplayers it was great fun so 37 hours before uninstalling when you meet original kamapnjen after 8 hours so you can say it was worth the money.

Is Sega’s attempt at staying “true” to the Aliens Franchise really worth it? Reviewing Aliens: Colonial Marines

The is Back!! The Aliens franchise has been through numerous sequels and mash ups and with the most recent origin story, Prometheus, the series has only become more forgettable. With Colonial Marines, it is now Sega’s turn to take up the banner of this once glorious franchiseranchise. Read on to know more about their attempts to make the audience sit back and take notice.

Read More: http://gamingimho.wordpress.com/2013/03/11/is-segas-attempt-at-staying-true-to-the-aliens-franchise-really-worth-it-reviewing-aliens-colonial-marines/… Expand

First off, I'd like to say that I miss the absence of ironsights in games. Just leveling your crosshair over a monster and pressing the fire button was satisfying, and made you feel like a badass. Nowadays, firing from the hip is a sure way to never hit your target if you use anything other than a shotgun.

That being said, I'd like to add another preface. I LOVE the Alien and Predator franchises, and my first true 3D shooter (I don't count Doom as true 3D. It used 2D sprites) was Aliens versus Predator 2. I treasured that game. I played it over and over. When AvP 2010 came out, I almost messed my pants. I loved that one too, but not as much as AvP 2. The one thing those two had in common was the LACK OF IRON SIGHTS. Sci-Fi games that take place in the future shouldn't have iron sights. That mechanic is there to add a sense of realism to the game.

ANYTHING INVOLVING THE ALIENS FRANCHISE IS ANYTHING BUT REALISTIC. So why have ironsights in Colonial Marines? I didn't see anybody using a scope or sights in the movie. They all fired from the hip. So why inject a military shooter mechanic into a sci-fi/horror game? I'll tell you: To cater to the CoD jocks and Battlefield frat boys. I just need to say that this needs to stop. Some of us don't want realism or a cover system in our RPGs (Mass Effect 2 and 3) or iron sights in our sci-fi and horror games (Aliens: CM, Fallout: New Vegas)!

Anyways, that is my main complaint with this game. If there weren't any iron sights, this game would have earned an 8.5 in my books. A lot of people complained about the A.I, and when it comes to squad members, I totally agree. They are dumb as rocks. The Alien A.I wasn't as spotty as some professional game reviewers made them out to be. The lore states that the individual xeno is about as intelligent as an insect. Their tactics and cunning is derived from the Queen, and the further they are from her, the dumber they get. People were expecting that the xeno A.I would try to outsmart them, but the fact of the matter is, Gearbox got their behavior patterns spot on. I went into this game fully expecting the xenos to run blindly into my bullets one after another, in a primitive attempt to make me exhaust all of my ammo so I would be defenseless when the next wave attacked. Guess what? They did. I couldn't be happier.

The human enemies behaved typically enough. Run to cover, lean out, squeeze off a few shots, take cover, throw grenade if I'm in cover, move up closer, flanking, melee when I try to brain them with my rifle. Run of the mill stuff. Like I said: Typical. No different from any other FPS I've played.

Pre-Rendered cutscenes in Alies:CM suffered the same way the ones in Deus Ex: Human Revolution did. They were uglier than the in-game cutscenes and the developers could have made them better by using the game engine instead of the crap rendering they chose to use.

Now for the story and voice acting: The story had more holes than swiss cheese, and the only decent voice actor was Lance Henriksen, the original actor who portrayed Bishop and Bishop Weyland in the Alien and AvP movies. The rest of them sounded like they just got their certificate of completion from the acting class at the learning annex.

Finally, the gameplay. Action packed, sometimes suspenseful, moody as all hell, atmosphere was spot-on. Animations could have used a little more polish, but graphics were very pretty, even on low settings. Glitches weren't very frequent. A few clipping issues here, some A.I pathing problems there, spazzy ragdolls were present (always funny), but nothing game breaking. I didn't experience any crashes, even on launch day (yes, I pre-ordered) before the first patch release.

Weapons felt real, visceral, and powerful. Although there were a plethora of options to choose from, I found myself only using the Pulse Rifle and the Shotgun, only switching out when I ran out of ammo. That brings up a nice feature. Aliens:CM doesn't force you to choose only 2 or 3 weapons. You can switch out to ANY weapon you have unlocked at any time through the use of a quick-access wheel overlay without disrupting the action. I loved this feature the most, because it reminded me of AvP 2, where you could carry all of your weapons at once. Upgrading your weapons is a nice feature, but sadly, you can never upgrade your Pulse Rifle to carry 99 bullets per clip like in the movies and previous games in the Aliens franchise.

I never played multiplayer, but I heard its the only saving grace for this game.

My conclusion: Aliens: Colonial Marines could have been a great game. If there were no iron sights, it would have been a game worthy of Gearbox Software's legendary reputation. Instead, the game soiled it. Gearbox dropped the ball on this one simply because they felt the need to cater to the CoD and Battlefield fanboys. This title is worthy of a $25 dollar pricetag. NOT $60. I would only recommend paying full price if you are a die-hard Aliens fan.… Expand

The game was better than I expected (Thought it was gonna be as bad as DNF since the game was also stuck in hell for several years). Liked the collectibles and the fact I could carry all the weapons. Enemies were kinda stupid and the companion AI not that good (luckily he didn't get stuck anywhere). Locations where nice. I just wish they put more effort in the game. I gave it a 5 because I'm a fan of the movies and previous AvP games and as I said it could of been worse (like throwing on walls and slapping wall seriously)… Expand

I think i should rate it at 4,a good point is how this game was released after being cancelled thats first one...Co-Op mode was fun,and the sound effects are really nostalgic,especially the Pulse Rifle and the ALIENS ,Multiplayer are amazing and last thing is the Environment of the game was cool.Ok,the bad point...the AI is stupidly bad,either Enemy or Ally...i don`t know but its broken in every possible way.If you try to play Soldier Level alone,Don`t.The graphics are low-detailed even on MAXED detail.The story,well its uninspiring and dissapointing at the end of the story.There are Aliens vs Predator 2010,and even better than this.This is 2013 game,its like game from 2007. If you tend to buy this game,just stay avoid this game.… Expand

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.

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

Immense yourself in the world of Marines vs Aliens. Living in the Alien film genre this is most likely the only thing going for the game. A typical linear first person shooter with not much to offer other than a survival story line. The game features poor AI on both allies and enemies alike, weapons feel mediocre and not much use changing from the pulse rifle. Graphic detail of the game is pretty sub-par for its retail price. Easily finished from start to end in one sit through. For fans of the Alien films, its worth the play-through just to learn more of the lore and see some familiar faces but not for the retail price, wait for this title to hit the bargain bin which i can imagine it will soon be heading to.… Expand

If your an Aliens fan like me then AVOID THIS AT ALL COSTS!!! The story is so pathetically put together that it doesn't even have an explanation that links this game to the movies. It's like no research went into making it in the first place! The characters are so uninteresting and their AI is incredibly DUMB. The aliens AI is so stupid that it basically runs at you straight past the dumb NPC who is closer! Aliens even get stuck doing what they 're good at, clinging to walls! The level design is appalling! It's like a CoD game where you keep pushig forward. The graphics are so, soo, sooo dated! Even the collisions aren't working, with aliens running right through NPCs and bullets impacting on, well nothing! Coop is a joke! Other players somehow mysteriously teleport in from nowhere and have no idea what they should be doing, except shooting. Multiplayer is probably the only thing that is good about this game, but even that is flawed. No dedicated servers, imbalanced matchmaking system and in the right hands an alien can be OP because they can see through walls! From Borderlands 2 to this? Gearbox, You need to shift up to 6th because this is unacceptable!!… Expand

"100% gameplay" demo shown in E3 expo was a lie. Look at this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z2qVebxlUo
Other than that Poor AI, Jarring atmosphere and cliche story gives it a 4

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

Broken AI. It doesnt have the good atmosphere or the suspense.... Really what a let down!! and like the other reviewers said the Graphics are outdated, 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.

This game is not recommended, its a bad PC port for starters, the singelplayer story is neither good nor bad, The AI is broken and not at all challenging, They introduced a expensive DLC pass with content cut from the game, that they expect us to pay for. The multiplayer has some potential, but its not worth it, considering you pay a full price for a game that you finish the singerplayer in less than 10 hours, and a multiplayer thats hardly worth it as a alone light in the darkness.… 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.

It is important to remember when placing a numerical score on a game that, naturally, it must sit below better offerings in the entertainment spectrum. But it should be rated better then the crud this product out shines. In that regar, remember the movie Last Action Hero?
That movie Sucked! This game is way better then that movie. It isn't good, but it's better then that crap.

I watched trailers and gameplay videos and they looked amazing. What happened to this game? Did demo and final version switch places and final version is in a landfill?

I am a huge aliens fan, especially with the demo being shown which looked amazing, that alone made me want to get this but sadly you don't get anything that the demo shown sadly. The quality of the textures especially in some places like the truck in the 3rd level was dumbass designing 101. For gearbox to present themselves with this product is so bad and with the devs blaming each other doesn't help the franchise and IP. The AI is terrible and sadly the only time personally, I find a good AI is in ultimate badass which is the highest level. If you do play at a lower difficulty, prepare for bad AI and the characters stories and how they act are the worse and don't even expect good facial or quality character models.

Although this is negatives, there are some positives Drop in, Drop out works, Some of the levels were enjoyable especially the 5th one in but the main positive is the Modding community actually modding so fast to allow it to look better than what it is. Sadly the devs have been so unresponsive, the modders came in and actually made it look better which is a positive which is why i feel bad for console who can't get these mods....

The story which i won't go into strongly is badly written, badly executed and not good especially within many of the levels.... however there are the occasional good point throughout but its not at all AAA.

However it isn't the best, it is enjoyable to a point and playing a lot of games its not the worst... sadly that still goes to Orion: Dino Crisis and WarZ but sadly this game doesn't show the IP and Gearbox in a good way at all... and i feel bad for sega for allowing gearbox to design this Crap.

Shame on you gearbox!
Shame on you Randy Pitchford!… Expand

First cancelled in 2001, then in development since 2006 and cancelled twice again and then released in 2013, just 3 years after AVP remake and what did we get? Graphics lamer than AVP 2010, enemies with worst AI since Rogue Warrior, more game bugs than "bugs" in the game, unimpressive plot, dumb dialogs and voice acting, the biggest failure of 2013 an a game that will end up in Top 10 Worst Games/Disappointing Games of the decade 2010-2019. The only things that saved this game from getting a 2/10 from me is the commiseration of guns and aliens in Multiplayer and the search for legendary stuff from the original Aliens movie. Over all if you wanna waste time and if you like to shoot and find out secrets like in Doom and to have a good laugh from the glitches and AI then play Colonial Marines.… 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.

If you compare the final game to the gameplay they showed at E3 im almost convinced that this is just plain robbery ."Some called Duke Nukem Forever the worst FPS ever. That angered me and I wanted to prove them wrong." Gearbox CEO on why they made Aliens

A game that is not that good in overall. I have played at my friend's PS3 and the graphics were even worse that on PC. My deal is, why on earth is the DEMO look even nicer than the original game? Who would pay 49.99 USD for a game that looks like a 2003 one?
As for the gameplay, it just sucks due to the amount of details not added in the original game from the demo. Weird storyline in overall. All thanks to their ridiculous management by handing the game to a infamous company.… Expand

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.

When I first heard of the bad reviews in Aliens: Colonial Marines, that's when I actually started watching Aliens the movies. I wasn't even born at the time the movies got released and I never had much interest in that, but since I've been a gamer since I was a kid, I wanted to like Colonial Marines. I watched the movies, to get up to date with the story, and I loved it. The atmosphere, the sound, the special effect (by the times standards) were amazing. And that is exactly everything what Colonial Marines missed. There is no atmosphere as the Xenomorphs just come running towards you in stead of lurking in the shadows, the sounddesign is sooo poorly done it barely makes me care about anything that is happening, and the graphics are mediocre at its very best. I decided to give it a 4/10 because this game actually made me watch the movies and made me love them. It could have been an okay 6/10 title if they would have released it as an indie game.… Expand

This game is below average, no question about it. One has to wonder how to mess up a aliens game, but somehow it happened in this case. The action is boring and repetitive, the aliens are not threatening or scary, the story makes no sense and the characters are uninspired. Not mention bugs and lack polish. The game feels rushed. It manages to surprise at parts with good lighting and interesting locations from the movie. I would give this game a 3 but as a fan of the aliens franchise I bumped it up to 4. Huge disappointment.… Expand

Długie powstawanie gier często(nie zawsze!) nie wpływa pozytywnie na ich jakość. Taki przykładem jest właśnie Aliens: Colonial Marines który zapowiadał się ciekawie a po wyjściu na światło dzienne został zniszczony przez recenzentów że musiał szybko wracać pod ziemię. Fatalna grafika, kiepska grywalność, bugi, niedopracowanie gry, głupie AI, nudne pomysły, nie wykorzystany potencjał to jedzystany potencjał to jedynie połowa z wad które można wstawić temu wybrykowi. Twórcom udało się chodź odrobinę uratować sytuację robiąc chociaż po części nawet(tylko nawet!) ciekawy klimat, który i tak został strasznie nie wykorzystany. Nawet jak dla fana kosmicznej serii o Obcych to tytuł który powinno się omijać z daleka. Moja ocena 4/10… Expand

This is a waste of money and (Alien) license: the game fails to recreate the athmosphere of the series.
Even if the overall gameplay is not too bad, AI of the game seems not good and the graphics disappointing.

Aliens: Colonial Marines is not a great game under any criteria.

The game is set in the same universe and location like the original movies, LV-426, a planet which actually isn't a planet, it's a moon, bigger than average ones.

The story is set after the events from the original 1986 movie Aliens. In the game you revisit the iconic locations from the original 2 movies, but in a different way. The plot is a very simple one, which relatively lacks of originality. You assume the role of a a Colonial Marine called Christopher Winter, and your mission is to check an SOS left by Dwayne Hicks, one of the main characters in the Aliens movie. From here it's obvious what's next, you find that the place is infested and you must later fight to survive. Very simplistic. However, even so, the game's chaotic development leaves his mark. The best citation can be ,,The game sounds like Aliens, looks like Aliens, but unfortunately, it doesn't play like Aliens., IGN. This citation captures exactly how the game is, the level design isn't really horrible, but is not ground-breaking like other games from today's standards. The graphics are as simple as possible, with simple shadows, banal lightning effects and banal textures. Beyond the graphic design, the story also draws criticism, it lacks of consistency and it takes only @5-6 or 9(on harder/hardest difficulty) to be completed, so is quite short. Also the story is very chaotic at some parts, like progressing with no sense during the levels, basically just ,,Shoot the bad guys in this room, then continue playing,, . And also many people(including I at some points) is like a sort of Call of Duty: Weyland Yutani, and I partially agree here, for me is a sort of a Sci-Fi Counter-Strike. Is centered more on shooting humans than aliens, and more on combat than the story itself. Again, the story doesn't make much sense at many parts, especially when you find that Bishop and Hicks have survived, but rather than make light, it makes you even more confusing. It's reveal that Hicks was captured and interrogated but nothing more abut how he's been captured. Same with Bishop, where is nothing revealed about how it survived. In game play and value terms the game is mediocre, is based on one of the best sci-fi horror-thriller movies ever made, but the game is a shame. It captures the alien in banal encounters many times, and the tension suffers. Is also insufficient in value term, we we're promised a far better game in both story and design in the trailers and E3 demos, but the final product is lower in quality and a lot different, and doesn't stand up at the price as well, seriously, it isn't worth 50$, I'd say 15-20$, but not more. I also greatly dislike the patches, because they fix things that we're not supposed to be there. Improved the AI to be more aggressive and responsive, added many effects and some graphically redesigned places? Fixed some circumstances in where the aliens could've used erratic animations? This all are bugs and glitches which must have never been in a game, doesn't matter this or other and improvements that must have never be cut. It wasn't able to run on consoles? Then where we've seen the game running in some game plays? This is just a lie, haven't we all seen Crysis? It has ridiculous requirements, but somehow it looks and runs well on consoles, and also has a good replay value and design. Also the iconic weapons are only used a ridiculous amount of time, only max. 10min. to use the Smart Gun and no more ammo to be found for it? Really? The characters aren't really well developed as well, you can't describe many marine's personality. The development was very chaotic, and why put others work on your dream? TimeGate Studios for single player and Nerve Software for multilayer? Why? You said it was your dream and you love the franchise. The coop as well isn't really awesome included, you can play in the campaign with up to 3 more friends, which I find really cool, despite it doesn't feature additional objectives and locations. In visuals and performance, the console versions were terribly optimized, by having many visual glitches , and unbelievable low resolution textures, cut shaders and several bad effects. This were the bad parts, but there somehow are some good ones. The weapons sound, look and behave exactly like in the movies, the game has a very well made sewer level where you have no guns and you must escape from the explosive aliens. That's aliens! Very exciting and tensioned. The first DLC and the multiplayer are well made, despite the multiplayer doesn't feature a lot of maps, but they offer lot of fun and are having a great value. Excluding the coop flaws, is Drop-In Drop-Out so you don't have to restart a level of some annoying things. So in the end, A:CM has some good stuff inside, but too many problems, however there are 3 more DLCs so who knows, maybe Gearbox is preparing a surprise for us.… Expand

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.

Horrible game from start to finish. From gfx to animation to sound to AI(artificial idiots) to pacing...everything is below average or broken. Gearbox has balls to ask full retail price and then more for "DLC's". Seriously only buy this game if you're an idiot like me who throws money anything that has Aliens in it....or steam has it for $10 or less sometime in the future. AvP 2010 is way better game than this junk. I will officially ignore all games that has "gearbox" written on it...thanks for screwing up DNF...and now Aliens.… Expand

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.

Such a disappointment coming from Gearbox Software, the creators of the Borderlands franchise. To keep the long story short; Aliens: Colonial Marines is everything I didn't want it to be.

This game is absolutely terrible. It's a generic stereotype space marines action shooter. The single player is mindless and boring, the AI is terrible, the sound effects are also terrible. The game is not scary and the voice actors just sound depressed. The online mode is not fun, you'll get bored in minutes because there is no depth to the gameplay.
One of the redeeming factors of the game however is that it has decent music, but that's it. If you're having trouble sleeping, I definitely recommend this game because there is no way you'll still be awake after 30 minutes. Gearbox over-hyped this game and just ended up deceiving Aliens fans. I highly recommend you look at game footage before you commit to buy this game.… Expand

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

Visuals are weak, getting better on LV-426, but still bad. It's not about the graphics, it's the atmosphere. And it doesn't feel like an Aliens related game at all. Aliens are weak and they seem to be missing ragdoll physics whatsoever. They get stuck inside walls and they melt like if they were vampires. Stormtroopers attack was a surprise, silencers on pulse rifles were unnecessary.
Overall it's not a total disaster, the intro sequence was good, Henriksen and Biehn presence was also a good sign, but it all ended before it started. P.S. A good game for 10-15$.… Expand

I played for five minutes which would normally not count as enough, though this might be the exception. i would have given this a 6-isch if it was 2006 now, but its 2013 and its been in developement since 2006, when i first saw this game i thought finally someone would make a kickass game, but it runs like and my comp is great. i wouldnt recommend anyone to buy this, MP might be fun but its so worthlessly done it doesnt deserve your time and money!… 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

Aliens: Colonial Marines for PC is such a fraud. This is is clearly not worth 50 euros for many reasons. The most important reason is that it is a boring game. Yes, the sets are cool in some way, but not for a 2013 game, where it should be much more creative and engaging. The single player campaign is so boring and so boring that I stopped playing after 1 hour, more or less. Obviously I did not buy the game. The internet must serve for something in that regard. Whenever I like a game, I sure buy it, but this time I am not going to. Even if this game cost 20 euros, I would not buy it. I would give 10 euros for it, and that is a lot of money for this game. I feel revolted to see that this game has a price of 49.99 euros when it is obviously worth no more than 10 euros. I know the company in charge of production took years to build it, but that is not how the game should get its worth from. First the producers must have real players test it and give their sentence about price and other things, and I am sure they did that, so why they are charging so much more? I tell you why, because when clients see a game for a good and high price, they are more likely to buy it and not research about it, so the company makes a lot of money in the first week, and in the next ones, when the heat is off, when all criticizers publish their critics, clients start realizing the game is BS.… Expand

Very late, I know.. But let me tell you.

I pre-ordered this game on Steam. All the videos and reviews I heard of this game were pointing to one direction. That this game was going to be great! And with a fairly decent company developing it, Gearbox, I had little to worry about. Boy, was I wrong.

The Aliens in this game are dumb, static and predictable. They always charged for you, nobody else and it was always in the same direction. I know there is only so much you can do with A.Is.. But the A.Is from Aliens vs Predator in 2010 where WAY better!

I was very frustrated with this first encounter with enemy soldiers.. It felt like I was playing a poorly constructed, wannabe CoD game. It just didn't feel right running into them so soon.

I'm extremely disappointed with the graphics and the removal of the first scene where you should have ran into the Alien Queen like they showed in their Reveal demo!

The first Boss battle was really dumb too.. Getting into a power loader and smacking at this weird, Brute like Alien.. I died many times on Normal. It wasn't Challenging.. it was buggy and frustrating.

NEVER! EVER! Outsource any part of your game to another company. That is down right stupid and only comes to bite you back in the ass! The blame is on Gearbox and Sega for rushing the game and trying to place the blame on smaller, more innocent developer companies that are less experienced. Trying to kill competition huh?… Expand

"No. No. No. No. Gearbox, what are you doing?" Sums this game up nicely.
Aliens: Colonial Marines (read Aliens: Colonial Morons) is the perfect example of why I don't /ever/ pre-order games. The Good:
+ I've been told... Badgered by others insisting that the multilayer is passable, It's playable and competitive. So despite my personal feelings that the Multilayer portion of a game that has a singleplayer campaign should ever be a centre-point of a review, I'll let this one slide.
The Bad:
- Dreadful attempt at atmosphere. I can tell this game tries so hard to be something it isn't... As an Aliens game, expectation dictates that the atmosphere has to be on par with an expertly directed horror film. With an enemy that surpasses our little human character in almost every attribute- I want to feel hunted and isolated in an almost hopeless situation, fighting for my very survival. Any attempt at the before-mentioned feeling is destroyed the moment one of your companions opens their mouth... and then further trashed when you move through the campaign mowing down hundreds of the Aliens as if they were made from toilet tissue. The AI, frankly, sucks. My Graduate games programming project had better Artificial intelligence than this. You constantly see the human characters getting stuck, taking insane path finding routes. This may just be me however as I have developed an eye for such things.
- The visuals I am not one to criticise a game based on it's graphical quality. However, I expect a AAA, multi-million Dollar budgeted game to provide a certain degree of graphical quality especially if the marketing material boasts scenes that show off lighting and rendering techniques used by the latest DX11 technologies. But this is a small point... ugly textures and ugly lighting doesn't kill a game but it does not help it ether.
- The Feel of the gameplay is off. I can't accurately articulate it because it's not really something tangible, but when I play a shooter, I expect the game to provide feedback in a certain way, Aliens: CM, does not provide this feeling.
To summarize I am disappointed that 7 years of development couldn't produce something better. But, I have a feeling that this suffered from the same problems as Duke Nukem: Forever in that it has been outsourced to so many companies and been messed about with so much over the past 7 years The end result maintains no real identity It's a game that consists of poorly mashed together bits from all kinds of different places and it is a real shame... A perfect example of brilliant marketing on Sega's part to sell a bad game so well though.… Expand

Game over, man! The Aliens franchise is as dead in gaming as it is on the big screen. Secure that sh-t, Hudson, and let's go play another game. Even the lackluster Aliens Vs. Predator circa 2010 makes Colonial Marines look like horse meat in place of beef. In fact, if you are dying to play an Aliens game, play that one instead you can probably get it relatively cheap.

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

Duke Nukem Forever all over Again!!! After Being in Development for over 5 years the final product of Aliens Colonial Marines is finally here, and its no where as good as the demos shown to public way back in 2011 and once again in 2012, its insulting that the final product, look way different in the bad way than previously shown. Aliens Colonial Marines feels like a generic and an outdated FPS, the visuals are horrible, the lighting effect are terrible and the level design is only good thanks to the already existing Aliens Universe, the developer's didn't created anything new, they just recreated some of the locations from the movies, and even that was not top notch. The Story is extremely Boring and the dialogue is laughable, at times you get hooked to the story but that last for very short time. Aliens fans will see this as a wasted potential for a great story, Non-Aliens fans will be confused for 99% of the time! Perhaps the only good aspect of the game is the Audio, for most parts the Voice Acting is strong, although at times the dialogue is incredible dumb, making even a good voice actor sound silly, the iconic sound effects like the pulse rifle and the motion tracker present in the game and perhaps the only thing that makes you feel like you're actually playing an Aliens game! The Gameplay is generic, in the worst way possible, and that's thanks to the inclusion of human enemies in an ALIENS!!! game. There are 2 Types of Human Enemies and 3 Types of Alien Enemies [Not Including additional 2 bosses], So prepare to kill only 5 types of enemies in the ENTIRE game that lasts about 5 hours, throughout 11 missions. There are some good if not generic collectibles like the traditional Audio Logs and the lost marines Dog Tags, perhaps the best feature of the game is the fact that there are legendary weapons to be found that features weapons that were used from the characters from the movies. The Multiplayer is decent, Playing as Aliens is fun but very clunky and at times broken, there are only small amounts of maps and modes so the MP will grow on you very quickly which is a shame because this could have been the feature that could have save this game from becoming a complete disaster! Instead we get a Short and Boring SinglePlayer Campaign, Clunky MultiPlayer and a Bad Story. Im Done with this... Here is your score a 3/10… Expand

Heres the deal kiddies, im 25 years old. ive been playing pc games fps since doom, quake, descent, wolfenstein etc etc came out. i can assure you do not waste your time and money on this game, lucky for me i picked it up for $50 instead of steam high price of $80. The game AI is terrible, they run around with bad ai decision sometimes even running past your team mates in single player games just to shoot you. the gun sound effects are awful and movement in general feels so unatural and stiff. if you like the feeling of cod s movements, aliens is completely opposite you feel like a robot. MULTIPLAYER IS you cant choose your sides, the matches are about 2 minutes each so once you get the hang of things your automatically playing an alien role and have no clue what your doing... multiplayer can only hold 10 so 5 vs 5 and because the matches are literally like 2 min each round you cant make technical or team work decision its really just a run and shoot whatever moves in your sight. SAVE YOUR MONEY AND BUY A TRUSTED GAME LIKE BLACKOPS NOT THIS GAME TRUST ME.… Expand

This game really hurts because I always had the opinion of gearbox as superb developer. Well, time, a long developing process and some minor dev-studios might be the reason for this but it's still not acceptable. Big fans von the Alien-Franchise and Gearbox himself were disappointed in a big way: Aliens: Colonial Marines manages to create atmosphere and has a great soundtrack, but after all there are just to many bugs, ugly visuals and a very short campaign. Only fans of the movie might get some of the references being made but every „normal“ shooter fan should not buy this game at all.

Gearbox, you can do it better and you know that!… Expand

They messed it up. I have never been more disapointed in a video game in my life! Several developers worked on this game, for 6 years! How do you mess up so hard? The developers had the fans trust, and they let them down! Dumb AI, useless companions, and most of the game you're fighting Weyland-Yutani. But, there are good sides. The developers nailed the authenticity part, and the multiplayer is fun enough to keep you occupied. Overall, I'd rather play AVP 3 than this.… Expand

I was so disappointed with the games graphics, I was looking forward to this coming out after seeing a preview clip on line, but theirs nothing ,lacks atmosphere and badly designed story line, played for 2 hours that was enough try turning the brightness down- gives it a little atmosphere, better still turn it off completely

First of all: I cannot play it without Gold membership. Second: The gameplay is pure crap Third: it copies Left 4 Dead Fourth: It feels like a mentally retarted cat is controlling the AI Fifth: the story has been eatened, swallowed, thrown up, Eaten again, and got dumped in the toilet. Sixth: I was just lucky I got it for a free rental on GameFly.com. I wouldm't bear spending a single dollar on this.
and Seventh:… Expand

This game is more like Call of Duty: Colonial Warfare. By the second level, they drop all horror and intensity and instead you are fighting HUMANS WITH GUNS. This is ALIENS: Colonial Marines. The AI are horribly programmed, they are suicidal, they charge at your position even on the highest difficulty setting. The graphics are just awful, even when you set it to the highest possible max settings, I still feel like I'm playing a game from 2004. The story is a joke, basically you return to LV-426 to investigate a distress signal sent by Hicks and that's it. That's your story. And then, suddenly, oh my god, Hicks is alive! As if that's going to make up for the crap story. The AI are constantly getting in your way and at the worst moments possible. Then, after beating this linear Call of Duty shooting gallery, you are greeted with a crap ending to a crap story. Most of the focus is in this game is on human combat. If I want to battle humans with guns I can just pop in Black Ops 2 into my Xbox I don't need to pay 49.99 for this. Disappointing, I expected more out of an Aliens game. Aliens VS Predator 2010 isn't even Marine focused yet does a better job proving a fresh Aliens experience. Do not buy this game if you're not a fan already, and if you are a hardcore fan of the Aliens franchise, buy it when the price drops to about 10.… Expand

Thats the first and last time I preorder a game. I was never so disapointed like for this game. 49 EUR for a game, that is unfinished and comes with a really lousy graphic.

Worst game ever created by Gearbox (TimeGate). Gearbox, you lost 50% of my trust in you. At least Borderlands shows that you have talent. Use your good men and women on only one project and concentrate, don´t hire other idiots to do the job like Timegate. You fools! Terrible AI, ugly graphics, low atmosphere, bad animations, boring and uninteresting story and the boss fight is a slap in thhe face for all fans. At least Mutliplayer is good, balanced and makes fun. Even the Co-Op is a joke if you compare it to Killing Floor or Left 4 Dead, Payday The Heist. We expected more tension in Co-Op, but what to expect by such ugly graphics which can´t produce enough atmosphere to let the aliens look terrifying. They feel like no danger and they die to easily. The developers threw them against you like they had nothing else to offer as danger in this game, than hordes of aliens and HUMANS! Who wants to shoot humans in such a boring game? It´s getting even more boring. A total fail. There´s one dense scene though, were you have to sneak, but thats no reason to buy it. Take it from the shelf and spit on it.… Expand

Campaign: Not worth to mention: Broken AI. Story is illogical garbge. It's running in circles and shoot aliens. Let's move to the Multiplayer: Matchmaking: No dedicated Servers. "Host leaved the game" every few minutes. Not much more to say Feeling: (Alien) Switching to the third person view may be a good descision for making gameplay more smooth, but the lack of proper animations and the fact that the alien moves like your put a stick up his and now pulling some strings absolutly ruins it. Feeling: (Marine)
It's ok. I'm missing some kind of distant radio. I had a guy with his micro not muted and i could hear the dampened gunfire while catching up with the group. It was actually pretty cool. Otherwise the game lacks a proper envoirement sound set. If you spawn after death somewhere you can't hear nothing. It's so peaceful, you may settle down and have a picnic with a nearby spitter. Also the guns feel somehow cheap, like made out of lego bricks. To be honest all the models feel like i bought a 14,99 Indie game.

Maps:
The maps i played so far are uther rubbish. Sorry envoirement artist and level designers, but did you play your maps once? There's no tatic. It's just "find the best spot to sit on" and stay there and shooting the aliens coming from two directions. Forget vents, they're placed almost randomly without strategic purpose.

Season Pass:
You expect me to pay 30 bucks for you to maybe fix this, really?

There are some things cool about this game but it doesnt compensate the games overall cheap feeling and bad, bad, bad, BAD map design. Just my personal opinion on this.… 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.

I'm giving this a 2 because I actually got enjoyment out of it. But as far as games go I feel like I wasted my 50$. This game will likely be 5$ on a steam sale in a year for sure. I got sucked in as a die hard aliens fan. Before this game even got released I had a feeling it was going to be bad. Not because of something we were shown, but because of what we WEREN'T shown. A day before release and I'm sitting there paying for the preorder through steam, thinking to myself "isn't it odd that there isn't a single actual gameplay video for this game? No teaser no nothing that is relevant to the release candidate?". Well I learned my lesson we can say that. I am not going to sum up everything I thought was wrong about this game, but I think I was one of the few that actually didn't mind the graphics. The worst part was the gameplay itself. It's an aliens game that is actually more difficult during the parts where you fight humans. Which happens roughly 50-60% of the game, or at least feels like it because it's harder. There are WAY too WY soldiers to fight in this game. The aliens in this game are laughably bad at what they do, so much so that it's not even scary to fight the aliens, not even difficult to say the least. They either run straight at you, or are a "spitter" alien (dreamt up by someone who theorized it would make a good game element in multiplayer probably) with a glowing head that you can see from a mile away. The multiplayer while it is somewhat fun, is basically just a back and forth with aliens and marines in a small call of duty arena style battle. Good luck getting into any other game modes beyond team deathmatch because everyone has already moved on from the game. If this game ended up going the multiplayer route of natural selection 2, this game could have actually been awesome. Even if all the other gaping flaws still existed, the natural selection 2 multiplayer model with an aliens theme would have been so so sick.

The worst part about this game is without a doubt the alien melee "pistol" finishers. I have never seen such a waste of animation in my entire goddamn life. Let me put it this way. In an aliens game, if you put your entire hand and pistol in an aliens mouth (and alien with molecular acid blood) and pull the trigger, you better be either pulling a half melted pistol out of it's mouth or be screaming while the bones fall off your hand for me to even START believing the character just did that. But no, your character will jam his pistol and hand into the aliens mouth, pull the trigger, and pull it out completely unscathed. I'm SHOCKED I haven't seen more complains about this, because this is the stupidest thing I have ever seen. The lack of realistic consequences in this game absolutely kills any potential of fear.… Expand

I bought the game before the massive 'upgrade' patch if you want to call it that. The graphics were okay, but the AI was very dumb. Aliens would hit you once then run away around a corner and stare at a wall it was that bad. However.......changing the AI so that every single alien on the screen runs straight at you AND only you regardless of how many other marines are standing around is even dumber. Plus those said marines still have dumb AI that don't actually help you at all. Then you get up to the first human rivals and they have an uncanny ability to throw grenades directly at you and frequently, all the while ignoring the rest of your marine teams which still stand around scratching their balls. The game is a poor failure.… Expand

Can't believe the quality of this game. I played it for a few hours and I couldn't believe the bugs (no pun intended) littered everywhere. After realising how bad it is I found out that the Alpha gameplay demo is in fact a far superior version to the actual game. It actually looks like a different game. I have been scammed out of my money along with many many other supporters of this game. I loved Borderlands 1 2 and I had absolute faith that Gearbox could deliver. But this just isn't the case. If there is a game to avoid this year, then Aliens: Colonial Marines is the top contender. I wouldn't even get this out of the bargain bin, and if you are a big ALIENS fan. Then I would stay a nuclear bomb radius away from this game.… 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!

The game is crap. - Kicking in steel doors, diving through the of a marine dropship that an Alien Queen cant even get through - Aliens that either rush right at you or stand motionless - Aliens that rush up to you, strike once, then idle - Weyland Yutani mercenaries by the boatload. Seriously, forget the Aliens. This game is about killing people. - Acid Blood doesn't hurt - Unless it's specifically chosen as a weapon, in which case it mystically hurts
- Remember the first sign Alien 4: Resurrection would suck? The alien in a glass cage that lets you see every orifice? This game does it too! WITH EVERY VARIANT, including the ones not yet seen.
- Xeno variants that couldn't have possibly been bred. What? Why are they spitting acid? How did a facehugger impregnate a rhinoceros?!
- Graphics suck, unlike the graphics they sold preorders on.
- Duke Nukem Forever made an Aliens game worse. I mean are you for ****ing real?
- Fire extinguishers react to your fire. By disappearing.
- a chestburster farm in a lab... with 0 containment for the chestbursters. What do you do with xeno infested humans? Mercy kill. Nope, not these ones. They're made of iron.
- Every single ongoing Weyland experiment fails catastrophically as soon as you look at it.
- Oh a captive queen. How quaint. Oh look, she suddenly figured out how to break free. She's smashing the glass to get at me! Uh oh, she broke through the glass! Phew, she gave up.
- Aliens for the most part cannot transition surfaces while climbing. No clue why. If you want to get onto the ceiling, you need an app for that. Oh sorry, I meant a 'perk'.
- controls randomly invert when climbing as an alien. Yes, ALL of them. Because wall movement wasn't hard enough.
- Xeno pounces have a wonderful 5% chance of failing, leaving your lurker pinning down a marine until either the match ends or another player comes along and either kills you or steals your kill.
- Claymore mines can be dropped instantly, and while in the midst of another animation. Lurker just pinned you and about to chew off your face? No problem. RETROACTIVE CLAYMORE!
- You can also sit on your claymores, because strangely they just don't hurt humies.
- Challenge order. Bizarre. Three challenge types, one of each on offer at any given time. Usually the hardest ones straight at the beginning.
- There's a mission where PMC's and Weyland techs run from your team despite superior numbers. They escape through doors in the side of the ship. Looking out a window you notice they are doors directly to space.
- Super weapon backpack. You have access to something like 16 weapons and 4 tacticals and thousands of rounds plus secondary rounds on you at all times. D&D did it first!
- There are 9 multiplayer maps split between 4 game modes. On many of the maps, you could smell an opponents fart on the opposite end.
- Mapping orbs! "Look, we can Prometheus, too!" exclaims Randy Prichford with a piggish squeal. "ugh" exclaims you, whose quite sick of the half-assed 'nods' without any obvious love for the material.
- PRE RENDERED cut scenes! WOW! Why did developers stop doing this? I mean, the gamer was never immersed in the first place so you don't have to worry about that jarring transition, the 12 frames per second of the video is TOTALLY unnoticeable if you pack in enough ACTION!!!, and frankly, We miss running a server-farm for weeks to render this junk.

Ok. I'm out of obvious things. You guys take it from here.… Expand

I was waiting for this game since last year. I was hoping that this game will be good because there are lots of alien games to be release this year (crysis 3, dead space). I was really disappointed and was hoping a lot more from this franchise.

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.

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

Not wanting to discuss plot for spoiler reasons, I'll stick to mentioning awful AI, poor level design, baffling plot choices (single player), horrific balance (multiplayer, spitters ftw) and some of the worst scripting and voice acting I've heard, ever.
The game isn't worth your time, Gearbox should be ashamed.

what is this aliens:colonial marines or human:colonial marines.i loved the first level and i thought why people hate this game so much,now i understand.aliens colonial mariens is a terrible game in the first level the graphics are good after the first level has became one of the worst game i have ever played the desing is horrible the fact that this game called aliens:colonial mariens and you are fighting humans more than half of the game or that the game ending is just horrible and easy or that the game is 7 hours on ultimate bad ass the only thing that lets me give this game a 2/10 instead a zero is the multiplayer its quite fun but its doesnt help this game to be good.aliens colonial marines=one of the top 10 worst game on angry joe list and also my list… Expand

I am very disappointed. The demo looked so good with all the effects and graphics and the final game looks like a bad joke. The KI is horrible, the game is very linear and the Aliens are not scary they are just canon fodder. The game has 11 level. From this 11 level there are 3 or 4 level which repeat, so you play them and later you have to play them again, just in another mission. Last there is the horrible end. This game is a huge disappointment and you shouldn't even think to buy it.… Expand

I was one of the fools who pre-ordered this. When I saw the reviews on its release day, I wasn’t expecting a great game but it was worse than I imagined. Graphics from 5 years ago and gameplay from 10 years. It’s not scary, it lacks atmosphere, the weapons feel weak, the AI is atrocious, the NPCs constantly glitch and the animations of the aliens are so laughably bad at times it breaks any any possible immersion into the game’s world. And why am I spending more of the game shooting men than HR Geiger’s monsters? I didn’t buy a game set in the Aliens universe to shoot at other marines. The multiplayer isn’t much better. I was hoping that it would be like a cross between Valve’s Alien Swarm and Tripwire’s Killing Floor, both tactical co-op shooters that employ strategy, different player classes, a varied range of weapons and equipment, and which require planning and strong co-operation and co-ordination between players (at least on the harder difficult settings). Instead it’s a poor imitation of the versus mode from the far superior Left 4 Dead. The maps are badly designed, the game mechanics are poor, the controls are clumsy, and there are no player classes and a very limited range of weapons. If you want to play a co-operative game set in an Aliens-like universe then I strongly recommend Alien Swarm, which is a 100% free game available on Steam.

The game feels unfinished and from what I’ve read about its disastrous six-year development it sounds like it was a rush job done in nine months in order to get rid of the project and appease publisher Sega. It’s hard to believe this is the same developer (ie Gearbox) that brought us the excellent Borderland games.… Expand

A major motion-picture-based shooter-on-rails? What could possibly go horribly, disappointingly, you-lied-to-me-wrong? Everything! I guess it makes sense why Randy Pitchford's voiceover in the teaser trailers (showing things that are nowhere near the final game) sounds like one of those pseudo-rapist characters from the websites where girls show up for a calendar shoot and are tricked into doing porn.… 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.

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

Coming from an Alien/Predator fan, this game is a complete disappointment. I waited 5 years for a game that makes DNF look like a masterpiece. I had to REALLY force myself to finish the campaign. What makes this game so bad, you ask?

1- The AI. That damn AI...the worst I have EVER seen. Enemies can't do anything but run straight at you, your comrades will shoot walls in an (obviously futile) attempt to hit an enemy: they can't "see" the obstacle! Of course they will shoot through you as well. Sometimes enemies stand still in the middle of a room. Even at the highest difficulty the bad guys are just too stupid and that results in the game being extremely easy.
2- The plot makes no sense, the character's reactions are completely off and you're left wondering whether the authors behind this were 5 years old fans. It's that stupid. Oh, the ending makes you want to punch in the face whoever wrote this garbage.
3- No atmosphere. I remember the old AVP1/AVP2. Those games were terrifying when playing the Marine campaign. In Colonial Marines you feel nothing...well sometimes you get angry over how stupid everything is. It's that boring.

These are just the three main issues with the game, but there's a lot more, for example the bad animations and the mediocre (at best) graphics but that's not really something I look at when judging a videogame. There are a few good things, though, like the guns (they sound really nice), one of the levels (although it doesn't last long) and the MP, which isn't horrible.

Overall, this game is extremely bad, and may very well be the worst game I have ever played. If you're thinking "I'll try it anyway because I'm a fan of the Alien Saga" then listen to me and DON'T do it. You'll be even more disappointed.… Expand

One of the weakest shooters in recent memory. I have a hard time thinking of anything good to say about this game. In spite of how archaic the visuals are (easily below offerings that are nearly a decade old, such as Doom 3, Far Cry and Half-Life 2 to name a few), graphics are far from the biggest problem with this game. Anemic, popgun-like shooting, bland levels, lack of challenge and a plethora of bugs are far more pressing concerns. I would not recommend this title, not even to hardcore fans of the Aliens franchise. There's nothing to see here, even as pure fanservice it falls flat. It's not worth enduring Colonial Marines' below average gameplay to experience this "canon" continuation of the series, as you'll probably also end up disappointed by the retcons and sophomoric writing.

Strong candidate for worst game of 2013 and we're only in February.… Collapse

After years of anticipated waiting I was totally let down and should have burned my 50 dollars that would have provided me more enjoyment and entertainment for my dollar.
This game is chock full of bugs, clipping issues, and stuck enemies. Voice cues will trigger after you’ve already cleared a room. It’s so bad that I was instructed to “cover the right flank” when there was nothing but a g but a wall to my right. In larger arena-style areas, it isn’t uncommon to wonder why nothing else is happening, only to find a bad guy inanimately stuck next to a box just waiting to be killed.
At least your sonar-style motion tracker will be useful in finding those stuck guys because it’s pointless otherwise. You’ll use it before opening a door, not see anything of concern, then enter and get attacked anyway. But it doesn’t really matter because the xenomorphs are fragile idiots. Their AI is on par with the standard Infected from Left 4 Dead, but now they get to climb on walls. Xenomorphs conveniently ignore any squadmates nearby and come right at you. Sometimes they’ll crawl on the ground, but most of the time I was shooting at awkward geriatric people that should be in nursing homes with walkers.… Expand

This has to be one of the worst games ever released for PC. The most honest and true review I found for this game can be found here at http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/02/12/wot-i-think-aliens-colonial-marines-single-player/ Please do not waste your money, time or effort with this game. The AI is so terrible that the enemies/aliens will run away from you or will stand still and let you shoot them. You take more damage from enemy humans with guns than you do aliens. The level design is horrible, all you are allowed to do is open doors and hit checkpoints. You can literally play this game on the hardest settings and run from checkpoint to checkpoint barely killing anything. This does not feel anything like ALIENS.

The graphics are circa 2005 and use Direct X 9, that's right... the game is very bright, and does not convey any sense of visual moodiness to it, at no point is there anything to shock or awe over as far as eye candy goes.

Factor in that there are terrible bugs found throughout the game, no dedicated servers for a bare bones multiplayer mode and you can easily tell hands down that this is probably going to win WORST GAME OF THE YEAR 2013. But hey dont take my word for it, Youtube a few videos for yourself and see the vast majority of other critics reviews. A lot of good people got fleeced when they bought this game, dont be one of them.… Expand

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME. It's the worst game in terms of gameplay that I've played in the last several years. If you're going to buy this game, wait a few months for it to plummet in price. I'm sure Valve will be selling it for pennies on the dollar soon enough. I've waited for this game for years, preordered based on the demos, and was really looking forward to it. What was released was a subpar shooter, with below average graphics and terrible netcode. The horror aspect? It really struck me as I realized my friends and I had spend $150 on this game.

I am so irritated about the 3 hours of gameplay in this game and the awful multiplayer that I'm not going to be buying either Gearbox or Sony for a while.… Expand

Everything has already been said, but i wanted to add my vote onto the negative pile. For me the problem here is context. My group of friends buy and play a lot of games online as a way of keeping in touch. We often buy games we think arent 'great' e.g. Payday, i bought 4 passes for £12. We played it for a bit then moved on with the overall feeling "We had got great value for a fairly soliid game". But, if you put a game into production for 6 years and leak demo's that are misleading. Then try and sell the half baked outcome for top coin when the game graphics/gameplay/AI and mechanics are no better than budget titles like Payday. It makes me mad. I doubt i will ever pre-order another game again. The only silver lining is that this game fails so greatly that there is still a gap in the market for a proper Aliens game.… Expand

Gearbox blew it here. This game is terrible. I won't spend a lot of time wasted here describing the problems this piece of garbage has but suffice to say Operation Raccoon City is WAY better, Save your money.

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. I made a account just to write the review, This is by far one of the biggest letdowns i have ever experianced, even bigger than the time you find out santa wasnt real. For those that think this is a worthy sequel to the movies are dead wrong, the story is so garbage, and even when you find out about a main character from the Aliens movie about how they got there he says and i quote "Well thats another story" a HUGE slap in the face for fans of the movie. The aliens dont feel like aliens, they run on the walls, jump off and jump right in front of your rifle making easy kills and turning them into cannon fodder, infact i found them to be so stupid i found fighting the mercs more harder, until you reach the spitters, In fact you keep fighting the mercs more than the aliens, WHICH IS NOT WHAT I WANT TO FIGHT IN A ALIENS GAME! There are some positives in the game, One particular mission called The Raven i found to be fun and scary. In this mission you have your guns taken away and must escape a Large xeno which you cannot kill in any means until you reach the end, during this you are chased deeper into the sewer where you find what became of hudson and just after that you find tons of husks of zenomorphs only to find out that some are still alive and very dangerous, you must move silently and quietly through the sewer as these zenos are blind but will explode if they find you. The new guns they have added fit right in the game as if they were always there, the sounds are all genuine and locations are movie accurate...however that does not spare it from the horrible AI from both the enemy and your Ally team mates, not to mention the horrible story which should have never left the planning room, i hate to say this but this feels like a bait and switch if you saw the 2011 demo link here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7xFSYsy0rk 7:50 minutes in is the best example, when you do get to what could be that point in the game it is nowhere near as epic as shown in the demo.

The only real fun you can have is with the multiplayer, lots of customisation for both marines and xenos, not to mention grusome executions when playing as zeno. However even this is not worth the ammount of money they are asking. My only wish is that they will somehow be able to drag this out of the toliet and give this the love and attention that was shown in the 2011 demo....… Expand

My opinion Very poor. The graphics (which do not make a game good) are dire here with textures that seem to hark back to 2006 if not earlier. The campaign is nonsensical with terrible AI on both sides of the player and a plot line that seems to just make things up as it goes along and fail (although promises) to provide explanation. The NPCs, you just end up hating them, especially O'Niel who is meant to be "your guy". He either does nothing and just watches you battling moronic aliens or when he does shoot he seems to have forgotten his real smart gun and brought along his nerf version utterly pointless. As for the voice acting, lets just say it's bad. I need to go back to the AI again here because it's so poor, so bad, you have no feel at all of suspense or terror. The aliens are dumb (not that you'll end up fighting them much in this game). Instead of the creepy, could come from anywhere alien, they leap into the center of the room and then barrel roll at you allowing you plenty of time to blow them away. If they actually manage to get close enough to you to hit you, they hit you once and then leap away, allowing you to blow them away what's the point?

The multiplayer as long as you're a marine you'll end up ok as the controls are easy and pretty much what you'd expect. As the alien you're completely screwed, the controls don't seem to work and nothing is fluid about it. When I try and wall climb my alien has a fit and I end up being shot for trying to play as an alien!!!

Good points They've got the sound and music right, but was that really difficult?
- It works. It has yet to crash on me to be fair and everything seems to work the way it was meant too.
That's it.

There was so much opportunity with this game to offer up something great, the breath new life in to the Aliens franchise, but it was squandered. What could have potentially been Gearbox's best game turned out to be something they don't even seem to want to comment on except blame other developers and Sega. I think I can speak for fans when I say I would have preferred another 6 year delay and a good game rather than this copy and paste COD shooter that contains all the horror and suspense of a jar of pickled eggs.… Expand

This is NOT a game! Because games are funny and pretty but this game is terrible. Please anyone not buy this game. Sorry Gearbox, not well, so terrible.I think "hah is this a game?"

The marriage of a first-person shooter and the Alien franchise should be a perfect fit, especially from Gearbox, a team rooted in the genre. And yet, the pairing eludes a happy ending once again. Aliens: Colonial Marines isn't disappointing because it couldn't live up to lofty expectations, it's disappointing because it turned out to be such an unfettered disaster.

save yourself the frustration and money and buy something else,having pre ordered this i was expecting a reasonable quality game,considering all the hype and pre release videos,needless to say,i was conned.
utter garbage from a top shelf company.
the best thing about this game was the sound of the pulse rifle.
even with the patch,its hardly worth playing. Tombraider shows what a quality release should be,and this is just second rate at best.

A:CM to be avoided like the plague… Expand

Waste of money. DO NOT BUY. Has the story of a fan-fiction, repetitive boring gameplay, annoying bugs, worst A.I ever, and the multiplayer is pretty bad. Entertained me a bit, but not before that experience being ruined by a crappy bug or just getting bored.

Was this one big joke to Gearbox? It certainly comes across that way to me and to think that I have followed this game for more than 6 years; this release feels like a massive kick in the teeth...

Well, I guess we all saw those Randy Pitchford videos where he was creaming in his pants talking rubbish about how he is a massive fan of the Aliens movie that James Cameron directed. Well Pitchford, you should be ashamed of yourself as this game is awful! If you loved the franchise that much, why is this game so S**T? Why did you not endeavour to make this the best Alien game available? All these questions will never get answered and really, we all should have known better because he talked up Duke Nukem Forever as if that was going to be some kind of genre defining game which also turned out to be S**T!

Anyways, what we have here is a first person shooter set after the events of Aliens. The game follows a team sent to find out what has happened to the Sulaco and of course, what happened on the planet LV-426 (although that is not the same location the game goes too, it's LV-244). The game looks like Aliens if you ignore the poor graphics, awful animations and clippings, and the vast amount of bugs. It's funny but the E3 demo that Pitchford again was showing off with such Glee looks nothing like the product I have purchased??? False advertising most definitely as the released version looks 6 years out of date whereas the E3 demo was full of lovely shadows and lighting and had a much crisper visual and colour palette set (looked like advanced current gen).

Gameplay wise, the story is a complete mess. It's hopelessly derived and should have been handled with much more care... where's the love Pitchford??? The guns sound great but feel underpowered. Locations feel samey with textures that are low resolution and adding to this is the minimal physics used on objects within these rubbish environments, the actual feeling of interaction is ZERO. It's just not that great to look at and my god it’s even worse to play.

Enemy A.I consists of over erratic cover seeking morons that pop up and downs three times whilst shooting, then move to a different location, repeat the same process; and then move back to the previous location until you put their idiotic path finding body fodder down. Aliens sometimes move authentically but this immersion is broken once they glitch into a wall or turn 90 or 180 degrees in one motion... Its school boy error stuff and the question of this game getting through quality control is a bitter pill to swallow.

It is hard to pick out redeeming moments from this game to be honest. It is not worth the time or money and unless you are a person that isn’t overly critical when it comes to games, you will have a tough time playing through to the end. With A.I that has the simplest of path finding code, aliens that act like drunks rather than predators seeking out their prey and a story line that is so redundant, you don’t really care; it’s hard to actually want to keep playing this game. The hardest part of the whole process of playing then reviewing a game based on my favourite movie of all time was the fact that I didn’t really have high expectations for it. I didn’t want a 10/10 game… I just wanted to feel like a bad ass playing in the boots of a Marine. Feel the feedback of the Pulse rifle when I offloaded a clip into a dangerous xenomorph. I wanted to seal doors with my hand held welder (you do this but it’s irrelevant and has no impact on the games mechanics) and lock down an area as if it’s a ‘last stand moment’… Using the motion tracker is pointless and is not even needed in game, yet they have included it… WHY? SO IT LOOKS LIKE AN ALIENS GAME!!! Pitchford you’re a fool and so is your team! This franchise has so much quality material you couldn’t go wrong yet you have churned out this disaster! If the game was not very good, why lead everyone down the garden path with the hype videos and e3 demo showing the quality that would never feature in the final product shipped? They should have just cancelled it or gone back to the drawing board…

This game is not recommended 2/10… 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

I was so looking forward to this title telling my friends finally there's gonna be an Aliens game sequel showing the footage from E3..Seeing there's co-op on the mission we couldn't wait to be in the boots on the ground finding what happened to the Sulaco marines..I bought the game and the DLC thinking expensive but this so gonna be worth it...Then finally its a piece of crap so let down man the graphics on AVP 2010 were more better than this pile of stinking crap..Lets see Randy Pitchford carter burke and gearbox weyland yutani now i know how ripley and the crew of sulaco felt when the got back stabbed by burke and weyland and left to die...… Expand

I'm only going to talk about the singleplayer/co-op campaign.

What it does right: The game level design, sound and music are all true to the license. It has some really nice references to the movie hidden throughout. The graphics are not ground breaking but are good enough. In other words, they set the scene for an awesome aliens game really well.

What it does wrong: It completely removes the atmosphere the aliens franchise is known for. There are no moments when your fighting for you life. There are no jump scares. And the aliens do not behave like a dangerous opponent, in fact they spend most of their time walking at a reasonably slow pace with very little climbing on walls and roofs, and are just simple head straight towards target AIs like Serious Sam and just walk mindlessly towards you. Unlike Serious Sam you don't fight hordes of enemies or need keyboard agility to avoid them. In fact you can kinda half be asleep while in heavy combat in this game. The other thing which brings the game down is the fact you can carry all weapons and ammo at once, this basically turns you into a tank with unlimited ammo and in the aliens franchise ammo conservation is an important part of the fear factor.
Summary: If you looking for an alien fix and don't mind the other species your best bet is still Aliens Vs Predator (The original one not the new one) and its sequel and play through the marine campaign.… Expand

What a genuinely awful game in a series of awful games. An iconic franchise that is so simply transplanted to FPS meets mostly awful development time and time again. Expectations were pretty low coming in. I would have been happy if this long incubated title was 'Mediocre'. It's offensively bad, and that is not hyperbole. It is offensive on every level. Rebellion must be rolling with laughter right now after their middling AvP got raked across the coals. As far as finger pointing goes, the consistent iron in the fire is Fox Interactive. Flushing their franchise down the toilet in every medium possible..… Expand

Hmm, poor gameplay, an intensive marketing campaign, a useless fat bastard as a CEO. yep, we have all been utterly scammed. People should post his home address on youtube. I seriously hope this scamming scumbag and his front company get everything he so richly deserves. I could go on to describe what this game has done to encourage piracy or damage the gaming industry etc etc. I will simply put it this way. To the development and publishing community. If you want to develop a revenue stream based upon sustainable growth. This is an example of how not to do it. Make sure this idiot and his company are relegated to the unemployment poverty stricken hell they so richly deserve.… Expand

This Game is a Disaster and a well made Scam. Nothing in this Game looks like the Gameplaydemo´s. Its horrible, but not in the way we want it. Horrible Grafiks, stupid Story and the AI is dumber as a stone.
I wonder if this is even legal, what Gearbox done.
Only the Weaponsounds are good. Anything else is just bad bad bad. Dont buy this piece of Trash. EGM give a 90?..Lmao..

Well I have to admit I started playing this game with a biased negative view on it after all the initial videos and reviews of it. But I have played it with as an objective perspective as possible.

My initial impression was actually quite mixed. For a bit, even though I knew how cut down the atmosphere and graphics were from the marketing demo we saw: I actually liked the atmosphere and lighting even though it didn't feel really new and awesome. It was dark, intense blinking lights, etc. It really gave me a nice sense of fear and creepyness.
What was bad however was the presentation of the plot and the really wooden and cliché characters. Even by game standards it was just not even close to par with games that have decent dramatisation and dialogue.

From here on it goes downhill fast and stays there. The gunplay couple with the enemy and buddy AI is just complete rubbish: as bad as Brink. Just as in Brink your buddies are useless and their gun-fire is more visual effect than effective. The AI is just spawn spawn spawn and jump jump jump around: compounded by all the guns being weak pea-shooters with small mags and clumsy handling. Like I said: exactly what made Brink so bad.
The Xenos are just really not good in terms of modeling, behaviour and danger. We have this image of the Xenos from the movies as unbelievably good ambush masters that need to be killed from atleast 10 yards away or longer if you don't wanna die. In this you just constantly shoot at them while they're in front of you in a stale "a blooga blooga boo!" stance. It reminds me of old 90s arcade games where you just had a big sprite in front of you and it didn't really animate in any way.
So yeah instead of amazing sneaky and lightning fast xenos we really don't get anything more complex than doom3d enemies coming at you going "rawr". That's the one move they have: they spawn and climb stuff to get to about 10 yards away from you. Then they kind of crouch and wiggle their hiney followed by a silly pounce in front of you. It's like you're playing against cats in xeno costumes.
The way they behaved in the AvP games was actually kind of good: to go way way way down in quality after all these years is just pathetic.

I'd go on but I'm already tired of pointing out all these inadequacies. It's a bad game with gameplay that in parts is as simple and archaic as doom3d and some parts at best live up to 2004 gaming standards. If I had developed this I would be ashamed of myself.… Expand

Just a terrible game, story is a joke, AI is a joke, graphics is a joke, over all gameplay is just terrible. Its sad that Gearbox screwed over game about Aliens, could have been great game if they cared, but unfortunately it looked like they just didn't care at all and put this garbage together few months before the deadline.

This is the most disappointing game I've played in a very long time. From big to small it fails on almost every level. The immersion promised in the pre-release video was stripped leaving behind the husk of a generic shooter. The dialog is awful with its forced, rehashed lines from Aliens. The corny try-hard attempt to recreate the attitude of the characters from the movie. A boring (DLC READY! :D) story with a... well... I would've called it a cliffhanger ending but truth be told I simply don't care. The game play offers virtually nothing to offset any of the above. It's functional, usually, but that's where the praise ends. The alien AI feels like it was written by some poor intern that doesn't even like FPS games. It's pretty standard copy/paste game play beyond that. With the gratuitous weapon unlocks and totally linear map design.

The worst offenders by far are the lifeless boring levels. The fact they took the source material of aliens and turned it into this is upsetting, if not flat out depressing. The animations are laughable (power loader anyone?) and the textures would make Ray Charles weep. The lighting? Mods to "help fix" the lightning were out in less than 24 hours. At least Duke Nukem Forever won't be lonely at the bottom of the barrel.… Expand

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

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