10 Worst Ever Downgrades In Video Game History
6. Aliens: Colonial Marines
Most of you likely expected to see Aliens: Colonial Marines on this list. The game is as synonymous with terrible launches as facehuggers are with Xenomorphs. But what makes it so infamous is the amount of promise it squandered.
The game teased players with the power fantasy of becoming a rough and tough marine battling Xenomorphs. It was a great idea on paper, and got even better with the thrilling trailer and E3 gameplay demo.
Both the cinematic and gameplay trailers painted this as a well-designed, atmospheric action game with brilliant lighting effects, graphical fidelity, and convincing enemy AI. But, in the end, the advertising campaign was lying through its teeth, as this wasn't the quality delivered.
Colonial Marines was an absolute mess, with one of the most notable problems being the drastic decline in visual quality. The lighting and details seen in the E3 demo were dramatically downgraded, and the game itself was a buggy mess with terrible AI thanks to a typo in the code.
An intrepid modder eventually fixed that last issue (reported here by Kotaku), but it wasn't anywhere near enough to save this awful game.