10 Times In Gaming You Got SCAMMED
9. Aliens: Colonial Marines
The depressing tale of Aliens: Colonial Marines is one of gaming's all-time most outrageous bait-and-switches.
Gearbox's hotly anticipated FPS showed off all the right things in its marketing campaign, namely that the game would be an atmospheric, faithful follow-up to James Cameron's Aliens and finally give fans the AAA-quality bug-hunt simulator they'd long been waiting for.
But Colonial Marines released to predominantly negative reviews from critics and fans alike, who lambasted the mediocre graphics and atrocious Xenomorph AI, both of which appeared to be significantly downgraded from the trailers.
Add in an abundance of glitches, the generally unremarkable gameplay loop, and shameless lack of consistency with Cameron's film, and it was painfully clear that Sega and Gearbox had used a name IP to cheaply nickel-and-dime players.
On the day of Colonial Marines' release, it emerged that Gearbox had outsourced portions of development without Sega's knowledge, re-allocating resources to work on Borderlands and Duke Nukem Forever instead.
Between this and reports that the game had been rushed to market, two players decided to file a lawsuit alleging that it had been falsely advertised.
While the suit ultimately lost class-action status, Colonial Marines remains today a towering example of how publishers can attempt to exploit beloved properties without putting in the developmental leg-work.