10 Video Games That Were Sold On Lies

Colonial Marines will forever remain the game that was finally going to give xenomorph fans the game they deserved, only to release as a buggy trash fire; a murky and slapdash piece of software cobbled together with seemingly no consideration for what made the Alien franchise work in the first place.

Upon release, the internet was flooded with videos depicting dancing xenomorphs, broken AI and muddy textures. This would have been bad enough in isolation, but considering that the game we had been sold at E3 2012 was so radically different to the one filling up trade-in shelves, emotions started to morph from confusion and disappointment to pure anger.

For a start, the game fans bought was missing a lot of the textures, shadowing, dynamic lighting and cinematics that had been trailed at E3, and comparison videos by the likes of Videogamer served as damning indictments of developers Gearbox Software.

The inevitable fallout was something to behold. The debacle almost cost Gearbox its credibility, as fans rushed to decry CEO Randy Pitchford as a liar and a con man. YouTuber and reviewer Jim Sterling launched a barrage of criticisms and investigative reports at the developer, who eventually wound up getting sued for false advertising.

Insider sources eventually revealed that significant portions of the game had been outsourced to other developers, while Gearbox shifted their workforce over to Borderlands. Gearbox has categorically denied these accusations, but have been completely unable to provide a sufficient explanation as to why the release version of Colonial Marines was so much worse than the game they had had convinced people to buy.