The saddest thing to report is that Aliens: Colonial Marine doesn’t even achieve that “so bad you just have to see it” place. The innumerous bugs only frustrate, rather than offering the surprising jazz-style joy of a Soldner. (“Soldner”.) And it’s not even the “If you found a copy in a charity shop you’d have to experience it” level of awful that something like the Starshop Troopers game offered. Although as I was playing, that was the game that came to mind most frequently. (Weirdly, the defunct team who made Starship Troopers, Strangelite, now mostly work for Rebellion, who made the execrable Rogue Warrior and Aliens Vs. Predator for Sega in 2010. Small world.) It occupies that worst of gaming spaces – just a very badly put together game that’s infuriatingly tedious to play. It’s pretty telling that it’s when you’re just shooting men in corridors that it’s its most passable – you slump into the muscle memory of it all and pass the time. It’s every time an alien comes on screen that you know unfair deaths, dreary, repetitive combat, and broken code is coming to the front.
It’ll be fascinating to learn what went wrong in spending half a decade making this game, once enough time has passed that everyone will speak. Until then, there’s nothing of interest at all within, especially for those with a great passion for the Aliens franchise. Yes, this is now official canon, but no, you don’t want to know it.