10 Video Games That Wasted Your Money

Created by Gearbox Software – who’d already proven themselves with entries in the Half-Life, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, and Borderlands series – 2013’s Aliens: Colonial Marines is a classic case of mismarketing enticing customers to put down big bucks under false pretenses.

You see, the FPS was advertised and demoed with strikingly advanced graphics, smooth gameplay, and authentic atmospheres (all of which were billed as being in-game footage). Furthermore, they revealed levels that weren’t in the game and a fabricated depth of AI performance.

Little, if any, of those assurances were fulfilled by the actual title, and both Gearbox Software and publisher Sega knew it. Soon after it was released, the two companies were hit with a lawsuit, although Gearbox Software was eventually dropped from it.

Of course, Aliens: Colonial Marines still would’ve been a waste even if it’d been sold accurately since it’s a technical mess ripe with one-note characterizations, mediocre voice acting, poor storytelling, and bland, well, everything. The campaign is criminally – or mercifully – brief, too, and the multiplayer side is woefully lacking.

Fortunately, 2014’s faithful and frightening Alien: Isolation totally delivered on its potential and promotion, greatly improving the franchise’s cumulative video game legacy.