Fan Reviews

[Mihail]

Finished the game on ultimate badass difficulty, it's the only way to play it & i can say it's an average game not the AAA title(like Dead Space 3) we were hoping it would be.It has a lot of bad parts & just a few good.I personally wanted a survival horror game, a good story & to fight the classic aliens we all know(no crusher, sitter, boiler etc.).Strange the materials about this game that appeared before the release didn't make it in the final product.The game feels unpolished, loots of bugs, it's like they didn't have testers or someone sabotaged it.I think next time the developers should listen to what the majority of fans want.I give it 5/10.

[Grey_Yautja]

Welp, thanks for all the info, all the opinions, and thanks Gearbox/Sega for yet another game that was overly hyped and completely sank. Think I'm going to play the AvP 2010 marine campaign now...at least that one was alright.

This is just me, but personally, I think it's high time Sega let the big game developers have a crack at making Alien games, like Bioware or Valve. Or just a bunch of honest-to-God devs that KNOW what they're doing and actually CARE for the game they're making.

[robbritton]

Just finished it. That's the end?! Prometheus is looking like the forefront of narrative clarity right around now!

Spoiler

"that's a longer story"?! Christ, I could write you twenty explanations in as many seconds.

[close]

Lazy, lazy self-congratulatory swine. All I wanted was a bit of story.

[EmptyVector]

I pretty much pre-ordered my copy of the collectors edition of the game as soon as it was available. I am a big Aliens fan as quite and collect a lot of the collectibles so it was something I wanted for my collection. The special edition came with some nice extra's and a pretty decent quality figurine.

After playing it for a few days and getting a feel for the game, I now feel I can comment on it. Now I know full well that I am an aliens fanboy BUT I am not blind to a games flaws and issues. I was going back to the E3 2010 10 minute game footage and wondered "Um, why wasn't any of this cool stuff in the finished product?" To say I was disappointed with the games campaign would be a understatement. The levels were heavily scripted and boiled down to essentially a corridor shooter. The plot had some "WTF" moments and the over use of Weyland Yutani mercs instead of aliens as the main enemies just felt wrong. There was one level I felt got the feeling right and I just wished that they had more levels like that. You are unarmed and you are being stalked by a massive xeno and you have to navigate through a dark sewer filled with alien husks and a new alien type called a boiler that reacts to your movement.

The lighting effects in this game are very good though, environments look okay but aren't pushing any envelopes in terms of graphic fidelity. But the atmosphere is spot on and the sound effects are taken directly from the movie.

Enemy A.I however is dumb, I wished we had more alien A.I similar to the lurker that moved round and attempted to flank and ambush you. Once again I look back at the 10 minute game demo where you see aliens squeeze through little gaps and slink into the ceiling to try and attack you from unexpected angles. The human A.I tends to line up and let themselves be shot, they take cover behind crates but they are small enough for you to still be able to shoot them. Partner A.I is equally bad as half the time they tend to shoot at walls or completely miss enemies.

The multiplayer aspect of the game however is what I like about the game. You have many different perks and abilities to tryout for both alien and humans but I am having a lot of fun with it. My favourite mode so far is Extermination as it forces you and your opponents to move around the map and capture objective. Escape mode and Survival mode is also fun with some interesting scenarios and tense moments.

Overall I feel Gearbox jilted me, the promises Randy Pitchford made were not met and it's clear that palming it off to other developers so you could work on Borderlands 2 didn't work out for you. It could have been so much more and from that 10 minute gameplay video released at E3, I was expecting it to be much more. What we got though was watered down, Gearbox knew the fans would buy it anyway so they put it in the hands of other developers rather then work on the project themselves.

I give the game a 6 out of 10

[Njm1983]

redboxed it last night, especially after reading some members saying the multiplayer is fun.

Happily it is fun, though the alien has a hell of a learning curve. My first round I died the whole time as the alien, though as the marine I felt much more comfortable. The motion tracker usage is the absolute best part of this game - despite all the ranting on the dot colors, There is a sense of paranoia that comes from using the tracker and not having a weapon out.

[Prime113]

Well, bad or not, Rich and I seem to be f**king shit up with Aliens.

Your inherent sissiness cast a dubious shadow on this.

You wantin some of this, Foxy?!

[YutaniDitch]

Hello there, guys... I just wanted to tell that this trend of outsourcing games to invest on cell shaded Borderlands 2 is a slap on the face of Aliens fans, especially when they profess to be fans of the franchise... Also, it becomes quite clear from comparing the gameplay demos from 2011 that this game was redone... The fights, the dialogue, the awesome graphics were gone, never to be seen again... NO atmospheric darkness, which was actually required since Hadley's Hope was supposedly without any power after being nuked, although the damage to the infrastructure was pretty minimised in the game...

I have seen the comparison between the demo and the final thing and it pissed me off... I was going to let it slide, as I did in my review, but having been reminded of HOW GREAT the visuals were on the demo, I am disgusted to see Gearbox smearing their record like this... That is what happens when you outsource what coudl have been a huge and great game...

I think they can minimise the graphics bit with an HD patch, but the dialogue, the firefights, the rest, is irretrievable... The demo looked amazing and it was just two years ago... How in the hell did it devolve into this?! I mean, the graphics are somewhat ok, but not at all when you compare them with the  gameplay demo... What the hell happened, Gearbox?!


By the way, even a moron can cook up some maps and make it fun... The campaign is where the difficulty lies... I am tired of people saying that COD games, Medal of HOnor, and this one is to be played online... WHat the crap?! Are you really willing to spend what you spend on a console game just to play online?! I sure as hell don't, especially an Aliens one...  The demo was going te right way... Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it for the nods and outdoors, but with the sample from the demo, it would have been dynamite with those graphics, that level of darkness and effects...

So, I am not rethinking my review of the game, since it was my first reaction to the game itself and the enjoyment of it, WITHOUT remembering the gameplay demo that was what made me think this game would be awesome!

BUt like I said, always be afraid of a game that takes 3 years to do and with other games being done by the developer... Hell, it could even be FOX meddling in it, as they are so well-known of doing... I think that Gearbox is the sole to blame, because it was their job to do the game... The outsourced company was given a poisoned apple to chew on! AND Gearbox was the one marketing the game as well, so sorry, Gearbox, when most fans of Aliens disliked it, you know you fouled it up!

Cheers!

[ScardyFox]

Well, bad or not, Rich and I seem to be f**king shit up with Aliens.

Your inherent sissiness cast a dubious shadow on this.

You wantin some of this, Foxy?!

Sadly I am on PS3 or I would gladly rend the flesh from your bloated corpse!

[Le Celticant]

Just to point a word on a couple of points that are used here and here in every reviews.

We do all acknowledge (I believe at least) that by registering on any Alien/Predator forum you are a fan.
There's no need to justify yourself here, we share a common love for the licence (well at least what's good in it  but that's a different topic).
Also want to say (not sure if it was here or on Gearbox forums that it was said multiple time by trying to justify their point of view) that "true" fan does not exist otherwise we do have "false" fan which makes absolutely no sense at all.

Just my 2 useless cents to the community I love.
Love ya bro.

---------------------------------------

IMO A:CM doesn't just insult the fans (that would be too easy) it simply insult consumers.
There's no way you can expect good reception when your actual demo looks better than final product and when the Networking system, which is supposed to be the big point of every Alien / Predator / AVP game is broken.

[Elicas]

AvPR all the way. Nothing will be as bad as that.

Admittedly that post was 5 years ago now, but would be interesting to see how Darkness compares the two

[Cal427eb]

AvPR all the way. Nothing will be as bad as that.

Admittedly that post was 5 years ago now, but would be interesting to see how Darkness compares the two

I think I remember him saying that he was enjoying the game.

[Salt The Fries]

What I'm most afraid of is the fact it might be very difficult to tie in any aliens-related games to the existing universe from now on.

[R-850-A]

Hi everybody. I been waiting for this game since a read from it in 2008, and was one of my 3 reasons for buy an Xbox 360 (the other two were Halo 3 and AvP 2010). Every day since then I been cheking the news, and get a really bit, angry when I knew that A: CM will be realeased until 2013. When the pre-orders were announced, I purchased the collectors edition and even I made a video review the day the game was released, and I played it with my brother, and we finish it yesterday, but the 12/20/13 I make the mistake of reading the critics and get so angry, that I did go to the gearbox software forums and told them that A:CM is the first (at least from my point of view) the first decent Aliens game since AvP 2, but yesterday I tought that the critics were not so wrong, even I almost get sick of thinking, but my brother told me that I don´t have nothing to worry about it, and I keep my position, Aliens colonial marines is the first Aliens decent game since Aliens vs. Predator 2, it has its failures, but at least, is superior in comparison with the "AvP 3", and, to keep my position I asked myself, "If the game is so bad, why I started to play it again just yesterday?" Theres a litle things that could be done better, but the game fullfill it´s work for entertainment, my brother enjoy it, I enjoy it, and it worth the almost 160 dollars (in Mexico almost 1600 pesos). My advice, for the people that didn´t do it, play it, finish it, a commet. And for the ones who say that the game is not scare, it would be because it is harder scare the people now than 25 years ago, for example, I look for scary images in the night, to relax 

[Elicas]

the first decent Aliens game since AvP 2

That's a damning verdict on the state of the franchise, not a plus point for this game.

[Salt The Fries]

Facehuggers which magically burrow underneath an egg and ground and can't get un-stuck aren't scary.