- The bold and futile attempt to fix the disastrous Aliens: Colonial Marines - 11 October 2025
Aliens: Colonial Marines is one of the most infamous misfires of gaming history, a disaster of a scale that's relatively rare in the upper echelons of game development. Virtually everyone who played it at the time acknowledged that it was a buggy, broken, unfinished mess, and there were rumblings that Gearbox outsourced large portions of the game's development while it focused on building Borderlands 2... Read more.
- Alien Day Steam sale drops prices on some real highs and lows - 21 April 2023
Alien Isolation is an incredible example of how to perfectly capture the vibe of a beloved movie series and transform it into one of the best horror games in years. As Alien Day 2023 approaches, a celebratory Steam sale offers a big discount on Alien Isolation , along with similar deals on other hits, as well as some less-successful takes on the beloved space horror franchise. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LINKS: Alien: Isolation mod adds "more aliens" to classic horror game Kitty mod makes Alien: Isolation the hardest horror game ever Summer GOG sale brings free games, Sega, and Alien Isolation
- Meet the modder who's spent years trying to fix the "unfixable" Aliens Colonial Marines - 24 January 2019
2013's Aliens: Colonial Marines is one of the most memorable gaming disappointments we've ever seen. After witnessing a gorgeous, atmospheric engine showcase back in 2011, fans of the series were hungrily awaiting a true sequel to the iconic 1986 film. But then, in February 2013, Aliens Colonial Marines came out and the horror of its truth became reality. Gearbox's first-person shooter was an infestation worthy of being nuked from orbit. The AI was broken, the gunplay was unreliable, and the "perfect organism" - the Aliens themselves - couldn't even run at the player properly. Meanwhile, down under, Australian modder James 'TemplarGFX' Dickinson wasn't playing Colonial Marines. He bought it, downloaded it and installed it, but he wasn't playing it. In James' eyes, playing comes second to modding. As he tells me numerous times over the course of our conversations, he doesn't play games,…
- Gearbox legal battle with former employee becomes messy publicly - 12 January 2019
Back in November, the Borderlands and Aliens: Colonial Marines studio Gearbox Software filed a suit against their former lawyer, Wade Callender, accusing him of “exploit Gearbox s generosity and trust for his own personal gain.” The suit was not particularly interesting, alleging that Callender did not fully pay back a loan he borrowed to secure his house, and that he used a business credit card for personal expenses. Then, last month, Callender counter-sued, accusing Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford of “siphoning” a $12 million ( 9.34m) “secretive ‘Executive Bonus,'” as well as a number of significantly more salacious details that have rocketed the case into the public eye. (more…)
- Gearbox is seeking a 'Programming Copy Editor' to frag future typos - 17 July 2018
Aliens: Colonial Marines suffered from a lot of issues, including wonky enemy AI that resulted in erratic and confused Xenomorph behavior. More than five years after it came out, someone discovered that the bad behavior could have been the result of a simple typo in the code—a theory that we put to the test and found to be at least partially correct. Launching without that typo probably wouldn't have been enough to "save" the game but it sure would've helped, and so to ensure that something like this doesn't happen again, Gearbox has posted a job listing for a Programming Copy Editor . Copy editing, as defined by Wikipedia , "is the process of reviewing and correcting written material to improve accuracy, readability, and fitness for its purpose, and to ensure that it is free of error, omission, inconsistency, and repetition."  "Gearbox Software is looking for…
- A single typo wrecked Aliens: Colonial Marines and people are handling it fine - 14 July 2018
In what feels like The Games Story Of The Year, during the Steam summer sale the much reviled Gearbox title Aliens: Colonial Marines was marked down to a stupidly low three dollars. A modder happened to notice that in the INI file for the game, there is a single typo that is — get this — responsible for many of the awful AI choices that the xenomorphs make in the game… like running directly at you on their hind legs instead of crawling on the walls and using ducts to surprise you. A once horribly broken game is now… functioning? Thanks to a single letter? Sure. That’s about at 2018 as a games industry story can get. (more…)
- All this time, Aliens: Colonial Marines' stupid AI may have been caused by a single typo - 14 July 2018
Aliens: Colonial Marines released on February 11, 2013. It wasn't very good. As Chris Thursten noted in our review , the AI of the aliens was especially bad. At the time, he said, "aliens pop out of vents and pop back in again, get stuck on the ceiling, fall off walls and run in circles." Well, it turns out the game's laughably stupid xenomorphs may have been caused by a typo—more specifically, a single letter mucking up the game's code. As ModDB user jamesdickinson963 explained in a recent post , a line of code in one of the game's .INI files has a small but serious typo. This was spotted by poster JigglesBunny on Resetera , so we decided to investigate. Note the unneeded 'a' in 'tether' in the second line of this snippet: ClassRemapping=PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachXenoToTether -> PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachPawnTo Teather In theory, fixin…
- The worst marketing misfires and PR moves in PC gaming (and a pair of console flubs, too) - 8 June 2018
Image source: The Elder Scrolls Wiki What happens when PR goes awry? Not slightly sideways, as we saw recently with the leak of Rage 2 (which is probably the best thing that could have happened to it anyway) but completely, irretrievably wrong, in a way that inspires conversation and funny stories for years to come? Game publishers do their level best to keep the hype machine running along smoothly and inoffensively—that may be the most important part of all—but sometimes, out of malice or greed or plain old good intentions, the bus goes off the cliff and there’s nothing to do but hold on and ride it to the bottom.  That’s when legends are born. Daikatana: John Romero's famous bitch-botch Back before the turn of the millennium, John Romero proclaimed that he was going to make you his bitch. "Suck it down," he added, presumably to ensure that we were…
- Have You Played Aliens: Colonial Marines? - 6 December 2016
Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time. You probably haven t and you probably shouldn t. A year before the world finally got the Alien game it deserved with Alien: Isolation , the burning wheely bin known as Aliens: Colonial Marines was dragged into public view and stank out the industry with countless bugs, terrible writing, awful levels and magically teleporting NPCs. There were so many problems, they were coming out of the god damn walls. …
- We talk to lawyers about the No Man's Sky false advertising investigation - 30 September 2016
To better understand the potential consequences of the UK's Advertising Standards Authority's investigation into No Man's Sky , we reached out to a number of legal experts proficient in the realm of video game law for their take on the situation. Stephen McArthur, a "Video Game Lawyer" of McArthur Law Firm , Ryan Morrison of Morrison Lee , Jas Purewal of Purewal and Partners LLP , and Tom Buscaglia, The Game Attorney , agreed to lend us their knowledge and explain what this investigation could mean for Hello Games, Valve, and the industry as a whole. What's the ASA, and what power does it have? The ASA is an independent authority with the power to issue, but not enforce, sanctions on advertising that breaches the UK Advertising Codes. As such, its judgments are not legally binding, and it is up to the offending company as to whether it follows the ASA's recommendations. It's highly…
- Someone Is Trying To Fix Aliens: Colonial Marines - 5 April 2016
I mentioned Gearbox’s woebegotten Aliens: Colonial Marines in snarky passing earlier , and so was surprised to see the disappointing Xeno-shooter crop up in the news for Actual Reals. Turns out there’s a mod intended the make the lousy not quite so lousy . My main question at this point is why? …
- Modder improves Aliens: Colonial Marines - 4 April 2016
Intrepid modder TemplarGFX has overhauled Aliens: Colonial Marines, taking it from middling shooter and legendary disappointment to competent FPS that does some justice to its source material (I fear the disappointment might be permanent). TemplarGFX's ACM Overhaul , on ModDB, focuses on rejigging the xenomorph AI to make them a credible threat. Headshots are essential, acid blood is a constant worry, and aliens have had their decision timing increased by at least 500%. They move and accelerate faster, and every animation has been re-timed to make them look more organic. Human animations have received the same treatment, and even the voice work is better timed to provide better situational information. AI vision has been reworked too, offering the potential for rudimentary stealth. Accompanying the rebalance is a suite of graphical enhancements: brand new particle effects, higher shadow…
- Which Digital Game Store Is Best For Refunds: Steam vs. UPlay vs. Origin vs. GOG - 28 July 2015
Rumour has it that the decrepit Arkham Knight port beat a retreat on account of Steam refunds. After all, what better way to get a dastardly developer to blush and shuffle its hooves than to reverse its cash flow? Until June, when no-questions-asked refunds came into force, such a feat was impossible. Perhaps, after years of pro-consumer jabs at Microsoft and other corporates, Valve sought to make a material gesture that player interests are truly the heart of the Steam empire. Or perhaps they dislike being sued. Hint: they are currently being sued. By now, you ve likely encountered a shop and have a reasonable feeling about how refunds should work: if it doesn t do what it s meant to, you take it back. Nothing could be simpler. Refunds for digital products or, as is often the case, licenses for digital products are a legal hellscape of false assertions and misinformation, in large part…
- Randy Pitchford defends Aliens: Colonial Marines and Duke Nukem Forever - 24 July 2015
The likelihood is that, if you played Aliens: Colonial Marines or Duke Nukem Forever , you didn't much care for them. Maybe they were buggy, or maybe they didn't look as good as you expected, or maybe they were just offensive. For a variety of reasons, lots of gamers just did not like them. But Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford insists that he did—and he knows how much that bugs people. "I liked . And it frustrates the people who didn't to hear me say that," Pitchford said in a long and wide-ranging interview with Eurogamer . "It's almost like they want to hear me say, yeah, it was rubbish. But it would be a lie for me to say it. I actually like, fuck, I like Duke Nukem Forever. I thought it was brilliant. I did! I know I'm not objective. But when I say that you should go, that guy's clearly not objective. Why would you expect me to be objective? Have you ever seen weird, bizarre art y…
- Gearbox boss says Colonial Marines lawsuit was like "Mafia-style extortion" - 10 July 2015
My favorite thing about the legal action filed over Aliens: Colonial Marines is the way Sega tried to portray Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford as a loose cannon. He was initially seen as a "respected development celebrity" who would help garner coverage but, like a cane toad in Australia, once he got going, there was apparently no stopping him . Now that the matter is effectively over, Pitchford is speaking his mind again. "That whole thing was a huge waste of time," he said in an interview with GamesIndustry . "The market proved it was doing its job perfectly. The market is dispassionate—rewarding what it likes and punishing what it doesn't. There is an objectivity and fairness in the open market's harsh, firm justice." But while the market worked as it should—and by that, I assume he means that people found out that Colonial Marines was a train wreck and opted to spend their m…
- Gearbox Dropped From Colonial Marines Class Action Suit - 1 June 2015
Gearbox Software, the studio that developed dreadful nonsense in the misshapen form of Aliens: Colonial Marines , have been dropped from a lawsuit that claimed the developers – with publishers Sega – falsely advertised the Aliens game with unrepresentative demos. …
- Gearbox dropped from Aliens: Colonial Marines lawsuit - 29 May 2015
It appears as though Gearbox made the correct move last year when it refused to settle the Aliens: Colonial Marines lawsuit filed against it and publisher Sega in 2013. Polygon reported today that the plaintiffs in the suit have agreed to drop the complaint against Gearbox, in exchange for Gearbox agreeing not to seek legal fees. The suit was originally filed over claims that the game did not match what was promised in pre-release promotional trailers. Gearbox asked to be removed from the action last year, saying it just made the thing and had nothing to do with publishing or selling it. Sega, meanwhile, blamed Gearbox , and particularly studio boss Randy Pitchford, for loose-cannon marketing and making promises it couldn't keep. In August of last year, Sega agreed to settle the matter for $1.25 million, but the plaintiffs couldn't agree to terms with Gearbox. Now, however, Gearbox is o…
- Aliens: Colonial Marines and Alien vs Predator are back on Steam - 7 January 2015
If you've lost sleep over the absence of Aliens: Colonial Marines and the 2010 version of Alien vs Predator on Steam, then it's time to relax: they're back. Both Sega-published games disappeared from Steam and several other services late last year, and while no explanation was provided it was likely due to some dizzyingly complicated licensing conditions. You're probably not overly concerned by the disappearance of one of the most notoriously poor video games of the last decade, but sometimes when licenses expire, games disappear from digital storefronts for good: a deal between Activision and Marvel expired at the start of 2014, leading to the removal of, um, Deadpool . It's still not back. Here's hoping this doesn't happen, even temporarily, to Alien: Isolation, which took our Game of the Year gong for 2014.
- Aliens: Colonial Marines and AvP 2010 removed from Steam - 1 January 2015
Two Sega-published xenomorph-based games - Aliens: Colonial Marines and Rebellion's 2010 version of Aliens vs Predator - are no longer available to purchase directly through steam. Some might think it's because they're pap, but it's likely because of licenses expiring and all of that silly gubbins that's hard for us normies to understand. Basically it's a regular thing for licensing issues to stop games from being on sale via certain outlets - we've seen it with a bunch of Activision's licensed titles in recent years, as well as a similar situation with Crysis 2 the other year. It's alright though, you can still buy both titles in physical form, and digital stores like Green Man Gaming offer both that can still be activated on Steam. ( Here and here , in case you want to punish yourself). And it's even more alright because you can continue to ignore a terrible game (Colonial Marines) an…
- How the concept of cool cheapens our game worlds - 1 October 2014
Fallout 3 begins in Vault 101, an underground nuclear shelter that s been sealed away from the outside world for well over a century. When the player character reaches the age of sixteen, they tussle with a group of obnoxious delinquents calling themselves the Tunnel Snakes. They re greasers in the classic mould, with leather jackets, slicked quiffs, and bad attitudes. This is Fallout s thing, of course. Its world is a kitschy retro-future, as predicted on the pages of pulpy 1950s science fiction. But replaying the game recently, it struck me just how little sense the Tunnel Snakes make, even in this fantastical, stylised universe. Think about it. They re greasers—a subculture that emerged around a passion for motorcycles, hot rods, and kustoms—in a closed-off bunker of narrow tunnels, where where there are no roads or vehicles to speak of. Then there s those matching leathe…
