Johnny Ringo said:

Did anyone buy Colonial Marines? I've been looking at youtube clips and reviews and it looks to be an absolute trainwreck. Interestingly, some of the stuff they showed while the game was in development looks far superior to the final product.

I did. It's....playable. The worst thing about it is the lost potential. Which was intensified by the marketing which was pretty much false advertisement. I've seen a stack of official screenshots that show stuff that is nowhere in the game. Well the lost potential and the terrible story. =P The writing in the game is just terrible. There are plot holes out the the wazoo and the dialog is just awful.

The level designers and audio engineers certainly did their jobs though. The locations feel authentic and the sounds and soundtrack are great. The graphics in general are pretty subpar though.

Six years in development and this is what we end up with. It's a real shame. Ultimately, I'd say the blame would definitely have to fall on Gearbox shoulders. Sega paid them to develop the game and instead they outsourced it to another studio while they focused on their own games. Which sounds like pretty dishonest business practice to me. There are something like five studios credited with developing the game.

Here's a report that constructs the story of what happened with the game based on the accounts of several anonymous A:CM devs.

Sadly the next Aliens game to be released will be an RTS. Not counting the new AVP game that was just released today for mobile devices.