Aliens: Colonial Marines Collection

If Gearbox didn't make this game or actually put love into like how Rebellion did for their Alien vs Predator remake, I genuinely think this game woulda crushed back in 2013. I can see why everyone, myself included, were disappointed when this game released. But nowadays when you and some friends can get the game for $5 and play it CO-OP I don't think it's that bad. Sure the story sucks, the graphics are below par, and the sound design doesn't always work but there are mods for this game that patches a lot of these bugs/problems to make the game more authentic. I did have to remove the mods because it kept crashing my game for some reason, I probably needed to download an updated driver for it or something.

Not a bad game. I wish there was more people playing the MP portion but the single player is ok.

Honestly, I couldn't recommend this game to anybody. Where do I start? The story itself takes place between Aliens and Alien 3 from what I could make out of it. Thats the thing "make out of it". Its a confusing mess and makes me glad that they never made this into a movie. The characters are like robots trying to figure out what emotions are for the first time. The dialogue is just as bad and with the emotionless voice acting It becomes funny at times. Some things that happen in the campaign are suppose to make you feel something, but sadly it falls flat. For example when one of the marines, Bella, has a chest chestburster and you think you're about to find a way to extract it. She ends up dying anyways in a scene that kills any sympathy towards her. With what it looks like your're suppose care. To add to that, the marines won't stop talking about leaving no marine behind constantly. Got to the point where that phrase loses all meaning. Causing your character, Winter, to just make way for a grant plot that falls into a void. I think the worse character in my opinion is Hicks himself. I was pretty excited for the original actor from aliens to voice himself. I don't know if he cared when delivering his lines or the fact that he didn't know what to do with the terrible dialogue. I was glad his character did return though. Just sad that his character in this is absurd. The DLC on the other hand is interesting, but not much better. I did love the beginning of the DLC. Where you're a woman trying to find your parents while having a chestburster inside you. Even though that section is short; it was believable when she does find her parents and they're dead. I also did like stone with the little screen time he had. Throwing in the synthetic version of Michael Weyland. He was pretty good with again little screen time.
With the story not being great I was hoping to just shoot Xenomorphs with the pulse rifle. Yet its really bad here. To begin, the weapon sway with all the guns is too much and you'll constantly miss you're shots hitting a single enemy including humans. I found that hip fire was much better than aiming down the sights for accuracy. When it should be the other way around. The attachments are really pointless and the reflex scopes are sometimes worst than iron sights some how. To be the most accurate you have to quickly press aim and shoot at the same time. Reason being that you snap to targets pretty easy, but not all the time. As far as the Xenomorphs, they run straight towards you sometimes ignoring your teammates. This for me is fine but had been better in other alien games or AVP games. Sometimes they do just attack out of nowhere in a cheap way. I get that these are creatures that have sporadic movements, but in AVP 2010 it felt like it was still fair. Where here its just a cheap death for no reason. Speaking of AVP 2010. It looks like to me that they tried to copy the rock, paper, scissors melee system from that game and failed to replicate. AVP 2010 had heavy attacks, light attacks, and a block that would balance out. Here the system is one button that doesn't always work. Sometimes Winter will just knocks the Xenomorph back and other times he just shoots with his pistol point blank. Combine that with the sporadic movements; it doesn't work. Another feature with this system is the knock down from the Xenomorphs. When knocked down it takes forever to get back up. Now the human enemies. They look like CSGO terrorists copy and pasted into this game. Which is fine until you got shot through cover. Yes shot through cover. The hit boxes are pretty big. Sometimes you will take damage from a bullet even if you're behind a crate that covers beyond your head. Add the other fact that they can shoot you all the way across the room with even a shotgun. Its challenging, but not in a good way. That goes the same for the boss battles. They are by far the worst parts in the game. Enemies that can take a ton of damage and kill you quickly even when you take damage already quickly. You will die a lot. Weather it be humans with smart guns or rocket launchers to a Xenomorph that charges right through and hits you.
I will admit there was some enjoyment here. Like I said I loved the beginning of the DLC because you start off with no weapons and have to sneak around. In the campaign there was this one level that you don't have you're weapons either. Having to sneak around these Xenomorphs that are only attracted to sound and will explode if you make to much. One part in the level for all of a minute a regular Xenomorph chases you down a hall way. Reminding me of Alien Isolation. Both the campaign and DLC start out strong with the combat until the further you get in either. They start throwing more and more along with all the other bad things to make it seem more challenging. I know that this game got a bad reputation over a decade ago when it first came out. I figured that it couldn't be that bad. I will admit I was wrong and did not enjoy this game at all. There are some other games that you can get for $5 on a sale.

Aliens: Colonial Marines trips and stumbles its way into a fun multiplayer mode, however, there’s a feeling this was an accident more than anything else.

My willingness to defend Aliens: Colonial Marines goes only so far. I generally don’t look for hills to die on, and while I love the fact Randy Pitchford burned up to $15M of his own money on the game, I still had to endure the final product. To put it simply: this game is awful, and I need to address the elephant in the room before I go further.

Colonial Marines lacks soul, direction and, strangely for the budget, production values. The game’s asset quality is downright horrendous; character models, weapons, turrets, vehicles and textures look like a 360 launch title. Your teammates look long-since dead inside, and the game’s art direction can be summed up with “it’s blue, it’s sci-fi, and it’s running on Unreal Engine 3”. The lighting does what it can to salvage the game’s look, hiding just how blurry the textures are, but this feels like damage control. Colonial Marines’ ultimate aspiration is to remind you a bit of the movies, but to say they look similar is perhaps a step too far.

The audio sounds like it’s been taped directly from dying VHS copies of the films. The assault rifle, for instance, has virtually zero bass and sounds like it’s taken from a recording surely no greater than 64kb/s. This is accentuated by the fact that Xenomorphs sponge so many bullets, giving an altogether unsatisfying feeling in combat. The player character, the eponymous Colonial Marine can take a fair beating too, so it’s not like the Xenos feel like unstoppable creatures to fear either.

It makes it all the more strange that Aliens: Colonial Marines multiplayer is actually really fun. It still suffers from the problems in the single player - walls are merely a suggestion, for instance, and you will repeatedly clip through the environment. However, the high time-to-kill provides a good bit of balance between both human and alien factions. The campaign is, simply put, a corridor shooter. Yet, the ‘Escape’ game mode somehow flips this into the game’s greatest strength.

The mode has a group of four marines slowly etch through a series of linear rooms to the finish line, completing small objectives to open up the next space while being hunted by the aliens. One death as a marine, and you’re out for the game. Meanwhile, the Xenomorphs have the opportunity of unlimited respawns. It’s tense, fun, and while teamwork is required, the levels are so small that simply timing your attack alongside a non-verbal teammate is enough to make decent innings. The game mode brings the intensity of Left 4 Dead, but removes all the elements that insist on removing control from the player in Valve’s title.

The individualist inside me wants to give Colonial Marines a positive review, especially since I dumped 30 hours into this fantastic game mode. But, sadly, the game is virtually dead. I’ve seen a few Discord groups set up to keep the multiplayer alive, but I’m not sure how confident newcomers would feel attending these, nor how frequently they meet.

Aliens: Colonial Marines is full of glitches, plays like a PS2 movie tie-in and under-delivers on absolutely everything. Still, there goes the best damn multiplayer mode an Alien game ever had.

It's not the worst game of all time but it sure is dissapointing. Still, if you are a fan of Aliens be sure to give it a go as it's not without its momements and you can play it with friends. Serves as a great reminder to never pre-order anything as the E3 demo looked much, much better.

A very generous 6/10 from a life-long Aliens fan, 3 or 4 for anyone else.

The enemy AI is a joke, but a very funny joke. It's likely you've already guessed the full story line too, but I have to say, it's incredibly fun to play. Multiplayer is dead, so it's only campaign and co-op, still worth the price though, just have fun.

Wasted opportunity, the company did not understand what made Alien/Aliens movies so great and thought that if the just slap a half-baked shooter it will stick.
Yeah, I enjoy my Alien game with shooting synths and almost no horror accents - thanks for setting my straight Gearbox.

Well at least I had some laughs with a colleague when we cooped the campaign althiough definetly not in a way the developers would like to.

It’s mostly a good game… mostly.

I would recommend this to any fans of the Aliens franchise, but buy it on sale.
The game can have more bugs than the xenomorphs in the game. I know the AI of the aliens can be poor and the squad AI is bad, not really helpful at all, blocking walking and can be a hindrance. Not shooting anything etc

All this being said, if the AI of the Aliens were true to how they behave in films or novels then the game would be way too hard. If the squad AI was better then it would make the player feel like a 5th wheel. If the aliens actually had the acid for blood then combat in the game, corrosion to platforms, floor, walls, people etc then the game would play out very differently.

The game is fun to play even with all the flaws, the sound of the pulse rifles and the screams of the aliens is very well done. The story was good and interesting but left a lot of whys and hows.

(Spoiler/rant ahead)

For example, why the Sulaco is back over LV426? how the aliens got on board? How did the eggs get on board? why are they experimenting on them? How did Hadleys Hope survive the reactor blast that would have destroyed an area the size of Nebraska?

While it was great walking around the colony, it was very much relatively intact, contrary to the films premise.

A better story would have been one involving the original ship from both alien and aliens, it would have survived the reactor blast, the eggs on board would be viable. Make a game out of that, hell, make a movie of that and then a game.

All rants aside, flaws, plot holes, bugs, glitches etc etc it’s still a game with xenomophs in and fun to play.

you play as a w*man this makes it one of the worst games ive have ever played

Great game. I've been playing the Alien and AvP games since AvP II in 2001. They really did a good job with this game.

killin and grillin

Good on PC. If you use the mouse and keyboard the movement is smooth. Bugs have mostly been worked out. Graphics are a bit dated but it is an older game. I never tried the multiplayer.

end mission many long good alien + boss pretty hard better

One of my favorite games growing up while on the ps3 - this game is hella old so it was nice to come back to it and try to 'relive' the memories of it. I can admit I took alot of time trying to load into the game with my friend on campaign and dethmatch 😓 but it is what it is I guess. Still love the game and hope to play it more too.

Reliving my childhood again, 10/10

Game is old, but definitely gold.

I can imagine how big of a blockbuster this game was back when it came out, and to be fair, playing this in this day and age you do of course notice the out of date graphics for example, but the game is actually still fun.

Make no mistake about it, it is an Aliens' game. Very true to the franchise.

2 OLD

The game doesn't have the full function of gadgets and buttons for a real like interaction as it should have been built with, given the fact that the game does have a lot of years behind since it's creation, a lot can be done and added for much more real-like and improved user experience.

yes

It is AWSAM

Huge fan of Aliens, so of course I'm going to give this a positive review. In fact, for me - that's where the saga stopped. Hicks, Ripley, and Newt lived happily ever after. <3

Really though, if you're a fan of the movie - you'll probably love this game. Otherwise, yeah - it's meh.

Run and gun fun! The weapons are well crafted and fun to use on hundreds of aliens. The weapon upgrades added purpose and enjoyment to the game, and make me want to play it even after I beat the campaign in order to achieve more upgrades.

Many fun boss battles, and enjoyable moments. I really wish the story was better, they just throw you into battle without any rising action, and the dialog is... Sadly, only one brief section with suspense/horror. AvP did a much better mixing suspense with action, and is a much more polished game than this one.

Many small bugs, and rough edges, but it was still a blast for an Aliens fan like me.

Was pretty fun, pretty good overall really enjoyed it.

One of my favorite games of all time! Grew up on the 360 version, and the PC version is so much better its criminal. It still good in 2025 at max settings and has one of the best multiplayer components ever. Highly overlooked game and is easily the best Alien experience aside from Alien Isolation. I think Colonial Marines blows Fireteam Elite out of the water.

always on your feet and very tense.

Is it the greatest game ever NO...but i really like how it continues after the ALIENS movie and shows what happen'd to hadley's hope and the little nods it gives to the movies (the better ones).
Its even got HICKS in it so there's that.
It's better than watching ROMULUS at least.

SIGMA

Despite installing ACM overhaul and additional fixes, there's still some AI issues, as well as balance issues. Despite that, I was still enjoying the main campaign until I encountered a game-breaking bug which disallows progressing through the game, so I have to sadly give it a negative review which is something I rarely do.

Even though "85" is not around, i slightly might feel like him, when recommending the game and at the same time, i don't.


The game:
First of all...free your mind from the expectation of a great "Alien"-movie-like game.
This is more a "Half-Life"-/"Half-Life²"-game, with an "Alien"-movie-related (sugar-)coating.
With this knowledge provided (and after you watched Alien 1, 2 and 3, to be in the right mood), you probably will be able, to enjoy it.

I played the main-game and the DLC "Stasis Interrupted" once on "Ultimate bad...", to make it count and worthwhile.
Was a pain in the neck, especially with many situations feeling "rigged"...but maybe it just was this way on my end and you won't experience the horrible issues with aliens not dying but 1-striking you with full health and armor, spawning around and insta-killing you out of nowhere and all the funny annoying things, that happened along my way.
Wishing you the best, so you can enjoy it a bit more, than i did.

Multiplayer feels dead, at least i could not find any sessions, but discussions on Steam-community assume, you might have to add another person as a friend on Steam and team up with each other then...yeah, why a good old random public Half-Life-matchmaking, when you just can let strangers know your account's ID and details instead!?

Luckily some of the multiplayer-stuff (for Steam-achievements) can be done with "Advanced settings" and set to "offline"...the mission-scores just might be way lower, than you hoped for and it'll be pretty boring.


The story:
"Aliens: Colonial Marines" takes you into another squad's point of view, taking place after "Alien 2" / midst "Alien 3"-ending and - seemingly - slightly changing the lore of the movie, to make the game stick.

Its' DLC "Stasis Interrupted" makes you play another sequel, relevant as a "prequel" to the main-game, letting you experience 4 different character's points of view, who's actions are/were essential, to make sense.


PRO:
- great cinematics/cutscenes;
- average/alright graphics for an old game like this, if on highest details;
- delving into an interesting approach among the original movies;

CONTRA:
- aquisition - not sure, what's wrong with Steam or SEGA, but if i would want to aquire any further content/DLC, i only could buy an expensive/overpriced bundle (if it would let me, maybe it removes these at the checkout, didn't try, don`t want to buy);
- hardest difficulty feels rigged, or really is beyond expectations of hard;
- even though, it's not "Starship Troopers", many bugs can be found around;
- monotonous and redundant battles against - felt like - infinite enemy-spawns / poorly balanced on hardest difficulty, didn't try lower ones;
- enemies' dmg-output, accuracy and "bulletsponge"-like behaviour can turn the game boring, annoying and frustrating at some point (it still is worth completing it once in your lifetime);



So, i know all these downsides, struggled with them and still recommend the game?
Maybe i should rename into "84"?
Or i just want to recommend sth., that "Half-Life"- and "Alien"-fans alike might enjoy each in their own way.

But referring to the age, overall quality, complications etc. i also have to admit, i - nowadays - wouldn't want to spent more than 10 bucks on the main-game and 5 on the DLC...15 to 20 bucks seem a fair share for an outdated fanmerch-cashgrab at a time of mostly overpriced computer-games.

The game is not bad...maybe a remake-bundle containing both - with bugfixes - might be worth 20 to 35 bucks, but not even "SEGA"/"GEARBOX" seem to see the efforts worth the outcome.
I still am glad, i finished it after - approximately - 10 to 12 years after buying and starting it.


P.S.:

For a more pleasant experience and better visuals "Binary Domain" though could be a more enjoyable title published by SEGA...my hollow child.

THis is a a game about the "murtles" benos heads get loose jump 10ft in the air run up and and slap with hands. Shoot them 10 times (or 2-3 times with shotgun) to kill as a mariune. Where are the alien? NOWHERE! JUST MURTLES!

Aliens colonial my balls brother. and thats not slander, thats comedy.

This review is based on 100% completion and 30.9 hours of gameplay.

Recommendation:

Would I recommend this game? I would—but keep your expectations in check. This is an older title, and it definitely feels like it, but even after all these years, it still holds up fairly well. While it has its ups and downs, I wouldn’t call it a bad game. I enjoyed my playthroughs for what they were.

The biggest letdown for me was definitely the story and writing, which just isn’t great. If you’re looking for a solid narrative experience, this isn’t the best option. You play as a marine, and you’d expect them to be calm, strategic, and collected, but instead, they make questionable decisions that don’t make sense. A great example is in Mission 1, where a marine casually throws a grenade next to a stack of missiles like it's a great idea. The dialogue and story moments don’t do much to immerse you, so if you take an "it is what it is" approach, you’ll have a much better time.

Gunplay is another area that didn’t quite hit the mark for me. Most weapons have poor accuracy, and enemy hitboxes can make shooting frustrating at times. When aliens get in close, melee attacks don’t always register properly, which can leave you taking unnecessary hits. Another annoyance was the friendly AI—your teammates constantly walk in front of you, blocking your shots, which got frustrating fast. That said, I didn’t have any major technical issues with the game’s mechanics, and while the combat could be frustrating at times, I still found it to be a fun shooter overall.

There are some aspects of the game I really liked. The Doom-style weapon wheel for quick switching was a nice touch, and being able to customise weapons on the go was super handy. A small but cool detail is that alien acid actually melts your armour if they die too close to you. A little thing that helped to make the gameplay experience a bit more immersive.

Graphically, the game holds up surprisingly well. I was genuinely impressed by how good it still looks. One thing I’d strongly recommend is disabling the film grain, as it adds a harsh blue filter that makes the game look worse. Without it, the visuals are much cleaner. The sound design and audio were also well done, and I didn’t run into any issues there.

The DLC, in my opinion, didn’t feel as strong as the base game. It adds some extra story content that takes place just before the main campaign, and while it wasn’t bad, it wasn’t particularly engaging either. A downside is that you can’t bring over your upgraded weapons, which made the DLC feel a bit dull. Since you don’t really get much out of it besides some extra backstory, it felt more like a filler addition rather than meaningful content.

I didn’t play much of the multiplayer or co-op, mostly because this game is completely dead. You won’t find random matches, but you can still host private games, so if you have people to play with, that’s the best option. The co-op campaign actually worked really well when I tested it, and the connection was surprisingly stable with minimal lag. Same can be said for the private games.

Overall, the game isn’t anything amazing, but it’s still enjoyable, especially if you have nostalgia for it. If you go in expecting an absolute masterpiece, you’ll likely be disappointed, but if you’re just looking for a fun time, you’ll probably enjoy it. I don’t recommend buying at full price—instead, wait for a good sale, as this game frequently goes on discount.

Achievements:

DLC and co-op achievements are required for 100% completion.

The achievements in this game aren’t too difficult, but there’s a mix of campaign, kill-based, difficulty, and multiplayer achievements. Unfortunately, you’ll need to complete every single challenge in the game for one achievement, and some of these require multiplayer. Since the online community is dead, you’ll need other players to boost these with you.

There’s a great guide by "Plasma SKX" in the Steam guides, which covers all base game achievements really well. However, since it’s only in video format and doesn’t cover everything (especially outside of the campaign), I’d also recommend checking TrueAchievements to fill in any gaps. You can view Plasma SKX’s guide Here

One of the good things about this game is that mission select allows you to go back and clean up any missed achievements easily. The challenges themselves are split into three categories: campaign, combat, and multiplayer. The campaign challenges are straightforward and can all be done solo. The combat challenges are mostly doable alone, but two require another player. The multiplayer challenges, as expected, require additional players, and for some, you’ll need at least two other people.

For multiplayer-related achievements, you can complete them in private matches—you’ll just need people to help. I found a really helpful post by "Lie" on AVPGalaxy.net that breaks down all the challenges and provides a brief on how to complete them. This post had more useful information than the TrueAchievements guide, so I’d highly recommend checking it out. You can check out Lie’s post Here

For the "Max Level Marine" achievement, there’s an XP farming exploit on the final campaign mission that significantly speeds up the grind. It still takes time, but it’s much faster than playing normally, and there are plenty of guides online explaining how to do it.

Overall, the achievements in this game aren’t too hard, but the multiplayer and co-op ones will require coordination. If you have a group to play with, you should be able to knock everything out fairly easily.

Buying a Gearbox game is a lot like paying someone $30 to step on your balls. Even if you're into that kind of thing, you can just take one look and tell, it won't even be worth the bargain-bin price.

before you play this game, Please be aware the face huggers are sex offenders

uuhhhaaa

this game blows

fun but dead

God... so much promise.. awful game.

great game that is a fan of the franchise

decent game for its age, but you can literally run through all the mobs and not fight them :P.

playing this again in 2025 felt like a fever dream its still buggy and weird but the multiplayer was alot of fun!....whenever it didnt crash of course still not as bad as it was on relase

Queen Bossfight is impossible. Cannot play game with just one hand. Please fix.

If you like the Alien franchise, then youll enjoy this game.
Its a lil jank, Its lil ugly, but its fun and interesting.

Overall, not anything I would every play again.
Taking it in the context of a ~10yr old game, the graphics are still a bit of a let down. Environments were ok enough, but character models were pretty rough. And plenty of clipping glitches and getting stuck on terrain.

May different guns, but just about all of them feel significantly worse than the main two so I really never found a reason to use any aside from saving ammo. Aliens either run in waves for you to mindless mow down, or drop on you with zero warning. No in-between. Armor feels useless and damage seem to have no consistency.

For me, as a fan of the early franchise, the story. It's bad. Like ... completely nonsense bad. And that 20th Century tried to insist this was 'canon' to the franchise makes it even more silly. Oh and if you are watching the little trailer video on the Steam Store page, trust me, the game looks NOTHING like that. Game play footage is worse in every way.

nice addition to the franchise

Hi old style shooter loads of action well worth a go good fun and that puls rifle sound woww

One of the best Co-op games I have played. I like campaign co-op.

This game gets A LOT of unnecessary hate, but I find those who hate it, aren't really big on alien, and that's the issue, this game will only make sense if your into alien, yes the AI is buggy, but it was 2013, who gives a crap. The game has spirit and a TON of action, I am a die-hard alien fan and I enjoyed the game a bunch, so much so I wish there was more content for it. Some missions were so good I had to replay them over and over. There's a lot of parts that hit to home with the alien franchise, and I'm all for it, don't listen to the haters.

I can only recommend this game to Aliens fans, given the soundtrack taken straight from the movie, as well as the accurate pulse rifle and motion detector sounds. There are as many easter eggs as there are plot holes! And that's about all the good things I can say about the game...
But hey! It's pretty cheap and the campaign won't take you long to complete, even on Bad Ass difficulty.

i played this all the way through in 2017.
That said, i am, doing a run because i want to immerse myself in the Alien Universe.
And kill mass quantities of xenomorphs while i do it.
I really would've loved an update of this game. Where the code that was taken out to make the Xeno's less powerful was put back in.
Looking forward to the atmosphere as well.