The Aliens: Colonial Marines title goes all the way back to 2001, but the game as most of us know it was first revealed in 2006 as a first-person shooter from Brothers in Arms and Borderlands developer Gearbox Software. There was a lot of noise in the press about the game, a tactically-oriented co-op FPS which was said to focus primarily on moving from fixed location to fixed location, setting up defenses against Xenomorph attacks in each new space. Gamers and fans of the franchise alike were excited… and then all of the news faded away.
That all changes today, as Sega has officially confirmed that Aliens: Colonial Marines will finally be making its way into the retail world sometime in the spring of 2012, with releases for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows platforms. The story follows a group of Colonial Marines as they board and search an apparently abandoned ship, the U.S.S. Sulaco. You might remember that name from a little movie called Aliens. The group will eventually move to other locations as well, including the surface of LV-246 and specifically that planet’s human colony, Hadley’s Hope.
“To Gearbox Software and its peers throughout the industry, Aliens is one of the most influential science fiction properties of all time,” Gearbox president Randy Pitchford said in a statement. “Aliens: Colonial Marines, designed as an interactive successor to the landmark films from Twentieth Century Fox, is a dream project about which our studio is deeply committed and passionate.”
Sega and Gearbox will be showing off Colonial Marines at E3, which means more details will be coming soon. It sounds like very little has changed from the game that was detailed five years ago in the pages of Game Informer.