From the very beginning, Aliens: Colonial Marines was meant to be a part of the original Alien franchise.

Everything, starting with the official statements released by Sega and ending with the way in which the script was made confirmed that supposition. But beyond simple appearances, Segas new game has little if anything in common with this one of a kind SciFi series.

Let the adventure begin The story behind the single player campaign starts about 17 weeks after the events depicted in the second Alien movie when USS Sephora answers a distress call coming from USS Sulaco the ship with the survivors saved from the disaster on planet LV 426, the same place where Hellen Ripley and the Nostronomo team discovered the first alien eggs. The thing is that the first teams sent aboard Sulaco are slaughtered becoming quite obvious that this ship is infected with the alien life forms. And so, the gamers will take on the boots of corporal Christopher T. Winter, whose mission is to find his missing team members and take them back if theyre still alive. But following a sudden malfunction, the tunnel that joins the two ships is broken and Winter gets isolated aboard Sulaco. Not long after that, Winter gets to that part of the ship where the aliens started to build their nest and here things start to take speed as the corporal finds one of his team mates alive and after a brief fight with a xenomorph, he manages to break him free, going in search of more alien. But as the game progresses, it becomes obvious that something else is happening here as some mercenaries working for the Weiland-Yutani corporation are dropping on board of the Sulaco in order to protect the alien life forms. And when things couldnt of looked worser, the mercenaries make use of Sulacos weapons, destroying both space ships and taking the fight down to the planet. Gameplay There are aspects of Aliens: Colonial Marines that handle well on an overall basis, like the graphics, even if that isnt brilliant either, but things like gameplay, well, they ju st suck even in their best moments. The gamers arent stimulated to get connected with their characters and because of that the whole game is failing in terms of motivation. Playing becomes a waste of time and it doesnt take long until you getbored.

Theres no thrill, no suspense and even if the alien life forms are decent enough in their rendering, they act stupid, without preparing any surprise attacks, most of them just barging in you sight line. As for the marines, well, think of them in terms of Segas old games: no facial mimic, no passion and no fear, just a bit of boot legged irony. Multiplayer Well, guess what, the devs found some time to create a multiplayer version of the single player campaign. But dont get your hopes up as this is only as much of a failure as the rest of the game: a 4 vs 4 escape mode where 8 players confront each other 4 as marines and 4 as aliens. Also theres a split screen and a co-op mode that can accommodate up to 4 players. Such a lack of originality Who thought of conceiving the levels had serious problems with his imagination. Theres nothing innovative here, just scenes from the 90s movie taken and turned into the background of a failed shooter. And guess what, the overall graphics is even worse than it was the one in the demo published prior to the games official launch. I wonder why Expecting to fail The guys at Gearbox Software really messed up with this game. Aliens: Colonial Marines is completely unbalanced both in terms of gameplay and graphics. It doesnt even qualify for a 5. But how could that happen? First of all, back in 2006 when Sega first announced with pride that it had acquired the Alien gaming franchise from 20th Century Fox, the famous publisher gave the production task to Gearbox Software, another well known company. But after that, almost two years have passed without any news of this game. So the 2008 news that the game is going to be called Aliens: Colonial Marines generated a wave of hope that the game will be soon published. But hopes went down the drain quite fast and no one heard of the game until E3 2011 when we got the chance to see a brief trailer of Aliens: Colonial Marines And from that point we started to get delais, first until spring 2012, than until January 2013 and in the end, until February 2013. Officially all these delais were dore in order to co-opt famous actors like Lance Henriksen or William Hope to take back the voices of their original characters. But in the cruel reality of gaming productions, the truth was different. The whole production was brough down by some basic mistakes made by Gearbox software management.

Recently it surfaced out that some of the people working on Aliens was redirected towards finishing the Borderlands game and Colonial Marines was subcontracted to other smaller devs like Demiurge and Nerve Software. And when SEGA caught news of what Gearbox was doing on its money, they somehow packed all the game in a hurry without too much attention to details. As bad as it gets Im a fan of Alien and Ive watched every movie in the series at least once. But I never thought that such a franchise will ever be treated like this. I never thought I was going to see in 2013 a game looking like this. its like making fun of all the gamers in world, taking their money for nothing. Im not the only one that saw the ridiculous of this game, more and more gaming website are talking about Alien: Colonial Marines as of a true failure and theyre right. This isnt game worth playing. You have much better alternatives on the marker.