Despite my love for the film, I wasn't impressed with Aliens: Colonial Marines. It wasn't the worst game I've played, but it was far from the best. Now as I was looking through reviews on wikipedia, I noticed that Electronic Gaming Monthly had slapped a 9.0 on A:CM. So I had to share the surprising review of the game, considering the borderline hatred most other reviewers have given:

SUMMARY: 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.
THE GOOD: A modern Alien game that does much more than avoid being total crap.
THE BAD: AI teammates that seem to forget the alien menace must be obliterated.
THE UGLY: The cutscenes. Love-ya-mean-it, guys, but next time, can ya get Halo 4’s CG squad?

SCORE: 9.0


For the full review by EGM, see here. There are several of these moments to be had.

11 years ago*

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11 years ago
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Hotlinking from memegenerator seems to work fine. Stick with that.

11 years ago
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They mentioned the friendly AI to be "oblivious" while the alien AI to be "solid". That's about it. I personally think it's the other way around.

Especially if you've seen the Aliens: Colonial Marines - Pacifist Mode.

11 years ago
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11 years ago
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...................................well sorRY.

11 years ago
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9.5/10

It's okay.

11 years ago
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At least now we know the one reviewer that Gearbox managed to pay off.

11 years ago
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Wow its silly when game with bad AI gets 9/10. Bad for them and another argument for people hating "pro reviewers" for being easily bought.

11 years ago
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EGM thought there was "solid alien AI" lol.

11 years ago
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Yeah lol, I haven't played the game but from all the footage I've watched it seems to be a major issue :/

11 years ago
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The aliens just crawl straight at you, they don't try to ambush you or anything! Most of them follow the same path too, so it's like killing a train of Aliens.

11 years ago
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That's sad =/

11 years ago
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Aliens: Infestation is the best Aliens game ever.

11 years ago
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I don't respect Nintendo enough to ever play it :P

11 years ago
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It's a great Metroidvania game, really love it and I don't like Metroidvanias that much really.
Also why does it matter if it's on a nintendo console or not? D:

11 years ago
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I love Metroid, but the rest of Nintendo related games don't interest me at all. I have to buy a 3DS just to play Aliens: Infestation, and I haven't owned or played a portable platform since the PSP came out :)

11 years ago
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A DS does have a good number of other games at least. I still like my PSP more, but I could easily name a good number of DS games in several genre.

11 years ago
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I understand it has several games, but 90% of them really don't interest me :P These days I get more than enough game time from Steam, so I doubt I'll be buying a portable platform. It's quite overwhelming when I think about all the different ways to play games >.<

11 years ago
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But.....but...but what about the Donkey Kong.

THE KONG BRO!

:-(

11 years ago
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I really need to try out that game some day. I have a DS but for the last year, I haven't played more than Pokemon and the occasional testing of newly purchased games that collect dust in my backlog.

11 years ago
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Yeah i saw that review yesterday. People are tearing him apart in comment section lol

11 years ago
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Yeah it's quite brutal as you go further down the page lol. I'm really considering the possibility that he hasn't actually played the game.

11 years ago
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4 from 10

11 years ago
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  • THE GOOD: A modern Alien game that does much more than avoid being total crap.

Lol what kind of argument is that. I guess it's considered a success for Alien games not to be total crap

11 years ago
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Alien vs predator 2 was fantastic

11 years ago
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So was the first one until AvP (2010) came out.

11 years ago
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People elsewhere made something of the fact that the reviewer was the same guy who gave Halo 4 a 7/10. I don't know if that's supposed to mean anything or whatever.

11 years ago
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I haven't played Halo 4, but it's not a series that usually gets sevens lol.

11 years ago
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It wasn't just that he gave Halo 4 a 7. You can give Halo 4 a 7 if you justify it and you grade other games on the same scale. But he didn't give particularly good reasons in his review, and now he's given the almost universally derided Aliens: Colonial Marines a 9. Even if you don't like Halo 4, it should score better than the mess that is Colonial Marines. (If you check the collected Reddit information that is floating around sites now, even Gearbox knew months before release that Colonial Marines was a lost cause. Gearbox released it knowing it was bad, because Sega was getting increasingly upset after years of delays.)

The guy's Halo 4 review knocked the game for reasons like "ignoring obvious enhancements like big-ticket sequences and proper iron-sights mechanics in favor of their age-old addiction to slow, methodical combat in unnecessarily large environments."

His Aliens: Colonial Marines included stuff like "On an express elevator to otherworldly awesomeness" and praising the "excellent level design and solid alien AI". Even if you haven't played it, you can YouTube plenty of video evidence of the game's level design and alien AI...

11 years ago
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Thanks for elaborating. I don't own an Xbox 360 and the Halo series isn't something I'm all too keen on and follow closely. I didn't read this guy's review either. Yeah, I read about the issues concerning ACM's development and made a quick post about here. That said, I'm just watching from the sidelines, I don't own the game and I'm not interested in playing it.

11 years ago
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Oh yeah, that Halo 4 review; a true gem... Basically marking off for Halo being Halo. "No iron sights? Bah! Big environments? Bah!"

11 years ago
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Really odd standards and justifications for his score. If I just read the part above the score I probably would envision a 6 or 7 game, not a 9. When the best you can say is that you avoided being total crap, you're in trouble.

11 years ago
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Like I mentioned somewhere above, I don't think he spent any significant time playing the game lol. Which is surprising, considering how well known EGM are.

11 years ago
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Weren't they one of the publications involved in one of those scandals with reviewers being bribed individually or en mass (i.e. the magazine was taking bribes as opposed to individual reviewers). I don't remember if it was them or someone with a similar acronym.

11 years ago
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They got paid by Weyland-Yutani fot this review O_O

11 years ago
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Gotta watch out for the Ysalamiri!

11 years ago
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What does Thrawn have to do with Wey-Yu?

11 years ago
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SCORE: 9.0 hallo are you from another dimention 2 of 10.

11 years ago
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Reminds me of that guy that reviewed both SMNC and NS2 without actually playing them.

11 years ago
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........................................................what?

11 years ago
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Don't recall his name or even the publication he worked for but he wrote an EXTREMELY generic review for NS2 giving it a 6/10. Problem was, he never really talked about anything specific to the game, not the gameplay or graphics or anything. The entire review read like it could have been written for any FPS really, and a bunch of people got pissed.

Then somebody discovered that he wrote a review of SMNC or MNC or one of those a while back that was very similar and the developers had actually gotten out and called him out on not having played the game prior to writing his review.

Both reviews were deleted and replaced.

11 years ago
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Yeah, some such scandal breaks every few years.

Back in 2010, Gamespot posted a review of Samurai Warriors 3 that was so cut-and-paste, the reviewer was talking about the wrong game. In his zeal to knock the game, he put it in the wrong country, time period, and event. He wasn't being sarcastic, either. He just wrote about the wrong stuff. When fans started replying with complaints, and questioning whether the guy had even played the game (since the rest of the review was a by-the-numbers knock at a Warriors game with only passing mention of features), Gamespot quietly edited the text and deleted all user replies from the review.

Way back in the early Dreamcast era, the web site Daily Radar posted an Ecco the Dolphin European import review where the guy roasted the game for missing features that were in the game. Not only did he barely spend any time with the game, he apparently didn't even bother to press some of the buttons (to miss some of the features), much less do something like look at the manual. That caused quite a dust up on their forums, but Daily Radar refused to pull the review.

Years back, the head of Working Designs had a dust up with a review site because he felt the guy reviewing one of their games had obviously barely played it. The stuff the guy had talked about had all been in the first few hours of a long RPG, but he'd implied that he'd played most if not all of the game.

11 years ago
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i have played this game for 4 hours. Some in game textures are good some are bad. Cut scenes are not good. Models are average. Music is awesome. Sound effect is average.
Aliens theme and atmosphere are there. So, I am trying to be objective to rate this game. then I give it 7 or 7.5.

11 years ago
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I think a 7 is a good rating too. You have to really get into the game before you can properly start enjoying it. The first few levels on the Sulaco are extremely weak in my opinion. This is why I'm really disappointed in the finished product.

11 years ago
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Reviewr: GAME IS GREAT OMG GUYZ GO BAI EET.

User: Why?

Reviewer: IT GOTZ ALIENS, AND YOU SHOOT DEM! AWSUM!

User: We know, but why is it great?

Reviewer: ITZ GOT GUNZ, ALINES, AND MARINES, WUT MOAR DU U WANT?

This is either a major troll attempt, or the guy actually reviews games that way and ended up giving CoD a 15/10.

11 years ago
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What's with all the hate for this game?

11 years ago
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Here's one bad thing about it. The game is designed to look great and feel atmospheric, but it doesn't play too well :/

11 years ago
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z2qVebxlUo

The atmosphere looked really great in the demo, even better than the final product as far as I can tell.

11 years ago
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Yeah that video was very surprising. I knew there was a good reason I pre-ordered the game........

11 years ago
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I was dumbfounded when I saw that video... How can you take something good and make it bad? :/

11 years ago
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11 years ago
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I would love to play this game, reguardless of what reviewers say, I want this game

11 years ago
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It was alright but it wasn't as good as Mary Kate and Ashley: Sweet 16 licensed to drive.

11 years ago
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I hate when reviewers put in minimal effort to critique the game. But then again, reviewers aren't really receive treated well so I'm not surprised.

11 years ago
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i like the background advertisement i wonder what thats for..... seemslegit

11 years ago
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9/10 for this garbage. impressive. ;)

11 years ago
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wtf is EGM?

11 years ago
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I wonder how much money they recieved to put a 9/10 :D ?

11 years ago
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Did this guy play the game? ;D

11 years ago
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I wonder how much money he got paid for doing a review like that, anyway in the end he got to pay bills somehow, i don't condone that, and lying to people and earning easy money is sad and unprofessional, yet many reviewers does that, and will keep doing.

11 years ago
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11 years ago
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Closed 11 years ago by Jonex.