Get 'em, boys!

They just swapped the alpha demo and the final product by mistake. Shipped the former to the shops and showed the latter as a demo. This could happen to anybody.

One thing's for sure: they're going to have to rename the GotY release.

I hate to say this but, you know your aliens game is bad, when AvP 2010 is good in comparison. And it's considered the worst of that particular series.

But keep him alive, he might be the one and only of his kind. So he might be our only chance to scientifically study this weird deviation of taste.

(Kidding. I haven't actually played the game, so I can't even tell whether I like it. I can see that I would have liked the game from the so-called gameplay demo more than the released one though).

They should have made a Prometheus game instead. "How long can you keep the idiot scientists alive?" It would be the most innovative gameplay concept since FTL.

lol.

Yeah, I got to see it first-hand from my roommate and I think it looks pretty weak and it's also riddled with AI bugs. At this very moment, I wouldn't even pay 5 dollars for the game. It's not that the game isn't worth 5 dollars, but I have so many other games to play, and frankly this one just doesn't even look fun in it's current state, so for me it's not even worth a measly 5 dollars. (Last week, I was ready to pay retail prices for it, expecting a great game -- glad I waited!)

Actually, they've gone downhill since the 2001 AvP. And I'd say you know your aliens game is bad when games that merge it with other franchises end up better.

avp 2 and avp 2012 were both fun, single player and multiplayer, the later being a bit modernized

According to Jim Sterling at least, that seems to be exactly what happened, and the problems go a lot deeper than simply different graphical quality:

Jimquisition - A-LIE-ns: Colonial Marines

As for explanations for it, there's a couple of rumors floating around, but nothing certain:

Aliens: Colonial Marines "primary development" outsourced to Section 8 developer TimeGate Studios

Aliens: CM Dev Spills Beans on Production Woes

I wonder if the Obsidian Aliens RPG was canned because of this game?

Wouldn't that basically be a Lemmings reskin?

It could be, except the Lemmings actually had useful skills they could apply to a situation in order to effect their own survival.

As for Prometheus... the scientists were as useless as they could get. I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but it had the strongest "science is evil" theme I've ever seen.

Science is evil seems a bit high-minded... More like "Science is very, very, world-shatteringly dumb".

Disappointing, I was really looking forward to this.