Aliens: Colonial Marines Critic Reviews

Like most successful license-based games, Aliens: Colonial Marines is much more than a loving homage; it serves as one of the most robust story-driven co-op experiences to date. The concept definitely has room to grow, but as maiden voyages go, Colonial Marines is a clear winner.

Aliens: Colonial Marines is disappointing in many ways. Though it features some solid mechanics, the game delivers a short single player campaign and some mediocre graphics.

It has combat in both its campaign and competitive modes that feels extremely appropriate, and there’s a generous amount of very “Aliens” content here. Just expect the plotting and atmosphere to feel slightly stale throughout.

The enemies in this game are just dumb as a damned rock.

The abysmal graphics and bland shooting make this game a gigantic disappointment, especially if you consider the names involved in its development. Still, it randomly captures the atmosphere of the movies and can be quite fun online. Truly a missed opportunity.

It’s a shame that a title seven years in the making could result in something so lackluster. Aliens: Colonial Marines had the foundations of a solid game, involving writers (David Weddle and Bradley Thompson from Battlestar Galactica fame) and a talented artist (Syd Mead from Blade Runner, Aliens and Tron). It even had the right voice talent bringing back Lance Henriksen as a Bishop-model clone...But it appears that the elongated, ‘stop-start’ development ultimately resulted in an inconsistent and disappointing final result.

An unremarkable FPS plagued by dim AI and repetitive set-pieces.

This is really a review of two games: a derivative story campaign (that you can play solo or with up to three friends in co-op) and a riveting, far superior multiplayer mode that allows you to compete as marines or alien xenomorphs in online matches. Considering Colonial Marines’ relatively long gestation period — roughly six years — it seems more attention was paid to fine-tuning multiplayer than to the campaign.

Colonial Marines can't trade on nostalgia alone... It needed to offer intense combat against an unstoppable force, deft storytelling that matched the cinematic flair of the films, and some new ideas that could have rejuvenated an overexposed franchise. It needed, in short, to be a better game.

Once you best the 6-8 hour campaign - and suffer through an absolute butchering of some long-held Aliens narrative themes - it's time to try out the surprisingly solid multiplayer modes. While the head-to-head options will likely be an afterthought for many franchise faithful, the online throwdowns actually manage to capture the Aliens feel better than the campaign itself.

With solid shooting mechanics, well-designed environments and a tense atmosphere, it’s a fine first-person shooter, but its repetitiveness, glitches, substandard graphics and insubstantial story make it a far cry from anything close to matching the prestige of James Cameron’s beloved film.

Aliens: Colonial Marines is a decent love letter to a great sci-fi movie, but it falls short of being something special in its own right. It’s an above-average licensed game, but a below-par shooter. Fans of the franchise will either love it for the subtleties and little details it gets right, or hate it for missing some of the most important parts.

Aliens Colonial Marines is a half baked cake. The recipe and the pictures look delicious but the implementation reveals the only obvious thing: The game's age. Old look, old feeling and old design. Some fresh ideas, a fun multiplayer mode and decent fan service save the day.

Aliens: Colonial Marines is not the bad game that most reviewers have made it out to be. With the reviews it's been getting, you would think it was unplayable! However, the hoax that Pitchford sold with his video demo two years ago has clearly poisoned the well. Everyone seems to want to know: Where is that game? With Colonial Marines supposedly outsourced, all the talent went to Borderlands 2, I guess.

In essence if Colonial Marines were chocolate it would be Cadbury's; it's chocolate, has all the ingredients of chocolate, but the only real attraction is the name, the quality leaving you somewhat hollow and unfulfilled.

A missed chance both for Sega/Gearbox and every Aliens or even FPS genre fan. Unsatisfying in every aspect, Aliens: Colonial Marines doesn't do justice to the name it carries.

This is a wasted chance. While Rebellion's Aliens vs. Predator remake at least occasionally managed to deliver horror atmosphere and suspense, Colonial Marines mutates to a rather dull run-and-gun-experience, while the visuals seem older than the movie this is based on.

If you’re a fan of sci-fi classics Aliens: Colonial Marines will be worth a nostalgic trip down memory lane because of the authenticity in the game. Even the multiplayer is worth a shot, but the generic and boring single player mode will not entertain you for long. On nearly every field this game falls short and adds little to the first-person shooter genre.

Like a trip to a natural history museum. It's empty and nostalgic, meticulous and dated. More importantly, it's hands-off. Like a museum, Colonial Marines is at its best when you're admiring the view. The moment you attempt to reach out to interact you're met with a barrier, reminding you that you're there to look, not to touch.

I haven’t been this disappointed in a game in a long, long time. Not only does the campaign welch on its opportunity to create interesting and additive content in the Aliens universe, but the multiplayer is languid, broken, and laughably frustrating. Colonial Marines plays it as safe as possible and still can’t manage to copy successfully proven ideas.