Aliens: Colonial Marines

Here's my original review, written a few years ago, when the game had several game-breaking bugs. The worst of those being, the game was literally impossible to save, or even to exit from without the three finger salute and rebooting the computer:

"Truly awful controls, plus the absolute worst save-game system ever devised...and by that I mean, it doesn't. Save that is. Everything's copascetic when you start playing fdor a while, until you go to quit game and find out, you can't. No, you can't quit the game, because it won't let you. I'm not kidding. It's impossible to do a normal save and quit, or even to just quit, you have to restart your computer to stop playing. If you can find a work-around for that, you might have fun playing this game - I searched seemingly everywhere, couldn't find any mod or code that would allow me to quit and just gave up..."

I finally tried playing this game again, and was amazed to find it actually worked how it was supposed to. Saving the game and exiting were now working as they should have been from the get-go and you could actually play the game. Unfortunately, for me at least, it's too little too late - the graphics are archaic and have not aged well (as they have for other classic games I often replay, like Tomb Raider 3/Last Revelation/Chronicles, Half-life, or Max Payne) and the game play is just average. But if you want to give this obsolete game a try it's ok to do that now.

Beneath this games bad story and AI, mediocre gameplay and graphics plus the worst final boss ever is a neat little game.

The setting and tone of this game is often near perfect, yes it's horror underdelivers aside from the first mission but you truly feel like you are in there fighting aliens, it has amazing collectibles, great multiplayer (not anymore cause uhm no-one plays this game), weirdly enough extra DLC and fantastic customization plus fun new Aliens.

If for whatever reason you find yourself interested in this game or are just a massive fan of the Aliens franchise check it out and you might get surprised.

Once upon a time the awesome Alien franchise was born... When i switched on my Xbox 360 earlier this week and played this game i quickly realised that the franchise, specifically in respect of video gaming, is dead and buried. The graphics are too sharp yet ill detailed and not at all Alien-esque... The titles are also juvenile attempts at mimicking the movies and are awful. The levels belong on an original xbox or PS2 release and are dreary, tiresome, repetitive and ill conceived. The interface isn't innovative in any way and must have been designed on the back of the blank cheque that Sega wrote Gearbox to bring this high school project to fruition.

I've been playing video games for 30 years and not ever has a publisher spent so much dollar on promotion for such a bland, weightless, empty shell of a concept that has not materialised into any semblance of a 21st century hi-def title.

In conclusion its like playing a several year old platinum title that has no place being in the modern era of video gaming. A poor poor title that'll keep you happy (in anticipation only) for about 10 minutes (if you're a die-hard Alien fan) before the disc is on its way to trade in for store credit.

What were 20th Century Fox thinking?! PS. Give the trailer director credit for clever editing, tricking us all into believing that we were actually buying something of substance.

Despite the negative reviews, this game is actually pretty good and worth playing if your a fan of the Alien movies. It takes place just after Aliens (the second movie) but has a new set of characters on a different mission, however Hicks and Bishop from the second movie both appear as supporting characters and they are both voiced by the actors that play them in the movie (Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen) which is pretty awesome. The plot is above average, but it is really just there so that the action has reason to play out. The action is great however and the gameplay and controls are good (despite what some users have said about messed up controls). The aliens in the game are well done and there are a good variety of them. The graphics are good but they could easily have come from a game made ten years ago. On the downside, there are one or two glitches every so often (however they don't prevent you from moving forward in the game) and sometimes the AI is a little buggy and it occasionally affects the gameplay in a negative way. Also the game just suddenly comes to a halt and just ends unexpectedly, in a weak and uninteresting way and it may make you angry. Overall, I would recommend this game because, despite its flaws, it is a lot of fun and the multiplayer is well thought out and very enjoyable. 6.5/10. (Additionally, the game does a good job of being scary; particularly when you get to use the Alien radar machine which detects Aliens closing in on you and makes a beeping noise which gets faster and faster the closer they get).

What can I say that hasn't already been said?

At first the game was slightly better than I expected. I was enjoying myself. Then I got to the part where I had to defeat an alien with a loader. I died. And died again. I spent more than an hour trying to get past this part that should have taken me just a couple minutes. I failed and gave up. I even googled how to get past this and the best answer was telling me to glitch the fight. Wow really thanks so helpful. Glitch to proceed. I would have if these aliens didn't keep killing me while I'm trying to pound on the big one. Where did they come from? I'm playing on the easiest setting and yet the the gameplay footage I saw had no extra aliens to kill you in this segment. Just the biggie. So they released all those updates and made this part harder!?! My god you devs who made this game are so so dumb. This game was a disaster and you know it. May Jah have no mercy on your horrid souls for ruining an IP with great potential. Beloved IP for undeserving, selfish developers. That's you. Bad bad bad. Shame on you Gearbox. Shame on Sega for releasing this unfinished, broken trash.

Fudge this game. If the devs cannot be bothered to thoroughly play-test their AAA game before release, then why must we suffer? I hate your team. I want my time back. And I didn't even pay for the game; got it with an Xbox 360 I got from craigslist. I didn't pay anything for this, yet I want my money back. My time is money. Gearbox you owe me $360.

And I was one unforgivable segment from thinking this game was okay. Like a '5' maybe even a six. NOPE. Such a sad disappointment.

I'm not a bad gamer. I've beaten Ninja Gaiden games. But this loader part? Yeah no. Big mistake. Maybe other versions /updates are better, apparently as I've seen online. But mine? Unforgiveable.