Aliens: Colonial Marines Demo Allegedly Lied To Customers

In one of the biggest surprises in the last few days, the recently released Aliens: Colonial Marines is receiving almost universally negative reviews across all major websites. It is practically unheard of for a AAA title to receive such universally bad press upon release with all but a handful of reviews displaying either middling or extremely negative scores. What is more surprising however is the apparent duplicity in early promotions, and the stark contrast in actual content.

In a recent tweet by Destructiod and Escapist contributor Jim Sterling, AKA the Jimquisiton and official Mysterio of video games, the man claims that the public demo was a deception. That vast amounts of content within it were in fact not present within the title and never made any kind of appearance within the game. While no official statements have been made by other reviewers or articles to directly support this it would explain a great deal. Just for starters the vast difference in opinion between those who played the demo and journalists claiming that, to quote Kevin VanOrd of Gamespot, it is “a functional shooter, but little more.” Those at the London 2012MCM Expo who played the demo reacted positively to what they were given to play through. Giving nothing but high praise for the title in both its enemies and atmosphere, and that the title would be well worth the long wait.

Having had high expectations prior to released, and been a top seller on Steam through pre-orders alone, this is a crushing disappointment of many. It’s an action which brings developer Gearbox Interactive’s honesty to its customers and loyal fans into serious question.  This is an action we have seen repeated in the past however, with promotional material barely reflecting the game it is representing in the slightest. An infamous example being the cinematic trailer to Dead Island, which gave atmosphere, tone and characters which the game did not resemble in the slightest.

How developers can perform such blatant deception and yet still make a profit is clearly a problem which will be in the industry for some time yet.

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Aliens: Colonial Marines and all related characters and media are owned by Gearbox Software and Sega