I am in the middle if I should recommend this game or not. But, given that I am a big Alien fan, I recommend it.

Let me be clear. This game has it's issues. Big ones as well. AI is stupid, difficulty is completely random (some segments are way harder than needed). Story is mostly fine, gameplay is mid. Atmosphere is good, and it's short so you don't waste too much time on this game.

Only get it if you're an Alien fan.

First impressions from someone who got this on a 75% discount, loves Aliens and read River of Pain (story of Hadleys Hope, prior to Aliens). I see this game as a bag of fun. It's a nice distraction if you don't expect to much and know what you're getting in to.

Don't get me wrong, it has bugs, graphics are dated, it's not worth full price. If you live under a rock and this is your first exposure to the world of Aliens go watch the films or play Alien Isolation, This shouldn't be your introduction to the franchise.

I don't think I can say a lot about Aliens: Colonial Marines that hasn't been said before. The history, the development hell, the release disaster and the bugs. So I won't. What I can do is review this from someone who didn't follow the development at that time. That went into this knowing that it's going to be bad. That only expected bad things from this game.

First, a PSA: There are quite a few things to do before you start playing this game that can improve the experience. I recommend going to pcgamingwiki before playing.

So I expected the game to be abhorrent. A failure in every aspect possible. So how was it? It was actually ok.

The story is bad. It's nonsense at the best of times and the dialogue is bad. Very bad. The voice acting is also subpar.
The graphics is pretty bad for 2011. It looks like a mid tier 2007 game mostly, with games like Bioshock looking much better. The gameplay is.... serviceable. It's not great but it works. The ai isn't the best but it's serviceable. The weapons are ok, even tough they don't feel correct in terms of the lore of Aliens. There's some irritating sections (Like the loader vs alien bossfight) but overall, I never got too irritated. It's just a boring, run of the mill shooter.

I can't really recommend this for most people. Only get this if you're curious about video game history or if you like bad games. I know you guys are out there.