Have You Played… Aliens: Colonial Marines?

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.

It was only later that the chaotic nature of its seven-year development would be half-revealed. Gearbox started work on it, then handed the space reins over to Timegate. Depending on who you talk to, Timegate either botched the thing badly or were driven down their perilous path of grievous errors by a haphazard back and forth between the three companies involved (Sega were also in on the disaster - they held the rights).

The campaign mode, which John reviewed, was subject to last minute alterations and demands from one place or another, meaning it was essentially designed by Timegate in a ludicrously short window. After its release and justified panning, the whole thing descended into a prolonged legal spat. “The game feels like it was made in nine months,” one source involved told Kotaku, “and that’s because it was.”

So yeah, maybe give that a go.