20 Disappointing Video Games That Didn't Fulfil Their Potential

6. Aliens: Colonial Marines

Aliens Colonial Marines
Sega

What can we say that hasn’t already been said about Aliens: Colonial Marines? It was released as a bug-infested mess that was the cause of many controversies and a lawsuit, which SEGA tried to settle but failed. Thankfully, it wasn’t the death of the franchise as we got the unbelievably good Alien: Isolation just a year later. 

Colonial Marines might not have been an amazing game even with all the bug fixes, as many critics and players noted that the game was just boring to play, with unfinished-looking graphics and a dull story. But a common complaint was just how bad the AI was for the xenomorph, especially when you compare it to what comes after with the fantastic stalker AI in Alien Isolation. 

Many of these issues were never fixed for Colonial Marines, and we just had to suffer with what we got, but in 2017, something bizarre happened. A modder known as TemplarGFX was tinkering with the coding and scripts for the game when they happened to come across a typo. They discovered a line of code that read, “AttachXenoToTeather”, which does nothing. Simply changing the line to “AttachPawnToTether” made dramatic improvements to the xenomorph AI, making them far more of a threat to the player. That’s all it took, a typo fix, and we couldn’t even officially get that.

 
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Hey, I’m Matt. I work full-time at WhatCulture's neighbours, MyVoucherCodes. I first joined MyVoucherCodes as a Deals Expert, scouring the internet, leaving no stone unturned in finding the best discount codes, sales and offers for our customers. Moving into my first home during the worst possible time (during lockdown), I understand the necessity of saving money when the purse strings are tight. Outside of saving money, I’m into video games, movies, books and music. I host and edit a video game podcast called The Retry Hard Podcast, where my friend and I go through news, reviews and video games in general. I love movies and watching how they’re made, and I’ve worked as a set decorator for a few months on His Dark Materials season 3, which gave me a massive insight into how it all comes together. I also put out music as a solo artist named Matt Kiano, where I won the award for Best Male Artist of 2025 for Radio Wigwam and have been nomiated for Best Live Act at the 2026 Radio Wigwam Awards.