Aliens: Colonial Marines Reviews Tear Apart Gearbox's Latest As Word Leaks of Troubled Development Cycle

Aliens: Colonial Marines released yesterday to mostly negative or mixed reviews. Now, according to GameSpot, it appears that the six years it took to develop the un-acclaimed game has strained the relationship between Gearbox and Sega, the developer and publisher of the game, respectively.

In the GameSpot exclusive, an unnamed source close to Sega has said Gearbox has been concerning the company because its focus on Borderlands 2 overtook the attention and resources it needed for Aliens: Colonial Marines.

"Sega was very concerned that the bulk of Gearbox's resources/manpower was being spent on Borderlands and that they weren't investing the effort in Colonial Marines that they should have been, hence it being repeatedly delayed," the source said to GameSpot."Obviously, judging from the end result, that issue was never resolved,"

Aliens: Colonial Marines took six years to finally be pushed out to market, after it was announced in late 2006. Compared to that, Gearbox's plans for Borderlands 2 were unveiled in August 2011 and the game hit the shelves about a year later, in September 2012 to a much warmer critical and fan reception.

Gearbox's last delay was announced in May of 2012, months before Borderlands 2 was to be released. According to a disgruntled Reddit post, 5 of the 9 months of Aliens: Colonial Marines' delay was because of Borderland 2. That same anonymous poster accused Gearbox of outsourcing development of Aliens to other companies, dumbed down gameplay features, and ignored bugs and other game problems if they weren't absolutely egregious. The veracity of the Reddit claims are unknown, but supposedly Sega was close to suing Gearbox over the delays and sloppy production.

Aliens: Colonial Marines garnered a 4.5 "poor" rating (out of 10) from GameSpot. IGN commented that the game "presents a fairly convincing façade but its thrills are forced... for the most part disappointingly mundane," adding that "it simply feels unfinished."

"Unfinished" is a nicer way of putting it than Kotaku, which posted a video from YouTube user grizzle360 featuring a bug in Aliens: Colonial Marines and suggested it would've made a better musical than video game. Aliens: Colonial Marines is out now for Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, and Windows.