Aliens: Colonial Marines now available for pre-order

Gearbox’s upcoming first person shooter (FPS), Aliens: Colonial Marines – is finally available for pre-order. Buyers can pre-order the limited edition or the collector’s edition of the game on the game’s official website. There is no any way to buy the regular version of the game yet. Even Steam – where the game has a page – doesn’t have the option to pre-order the regular version. Along with making the game available for pre-order, Gearbox has also released a trailer.

The game will be released on 12 February 2013 and the Collector’s Edition bundle of the game will come with a figurine of a Power Loader, among other things, such as US Colonial Marines Dossier that has a bunch of paperwork of the characters, exclusive multiplayer weapons, and an exclusive bonus level. The Limited Edition comes with four characters from the movie being playable, the flamethrower that Ripley used in the Aliens movie, and additional customization options for your characters.

Gearbox had released a trailer for the game earlier this month that showed off a multiplayer game mode – Escape. The Escape game mode seems a lot like Versus from the Left 4 Dead games, where four players play the Marines and are trying to escape from some facility, while four players play the aliens, called Xenomorphs, and their objective is to kill the Marines. The trailer also shows off some of the special Xenomorphs, which will be playable, including the Xeno lurker who uses stealth to pounce on unsuspecting marines from the shadows and the Xeno spitter, who has the ability to spit out pools of acid on the ground where the marines are standing.

Aliens: Colonial Marines is now available for pre-order

On the single player side of things, players will step into the shoes of a United States Colonial Marine and investigate the mysterious circumstances behind what happened to Ellen Ripley after the events of the movies, and the survivors who escaped. The player will travel through various locations that were shown in the movie, including Hadley’s Hope Colony and the U.S.S. Sulaco, among others.

Here’s a summary of the game’s plot according to the developers: “Aliens: Colonial Marines begins with an ostensibly abandoned ship, the U.S.S. Sulaco, recovered in orbit around LV-426. Players lead a group of highly trained United States Colonial Marines as they board the deserted craft to uncover the fate of the crew. They will have to fight to survive unspeakable horrors and their own anxieties as they chase down the truth behind a galaxy-spanning deception that places humanity at the mercy of the most murderous and deadly species in the universe. Aliens: Colonial Marines features authentic environments, such as the surface of LV-426 and Hadley’s Hope, weapons inspired by the film series and is designed to provide an exhilarating and engaging new chapter in the Aliens universe.”

Originally set to release in 2012, the game got delayed to a February 12, 2013 release on all the major platforms. Publisher SEGA released an official statement to GameInformer explaining the delay, "Aliens: Colonial Marines is a process of creativity and invention and those don't necessarily follow the structure of an assembly line. While setting clear goals, deadlines and predictions is helpful, they are often subjective. We don't want to sacrifice the creative process just for the sake of following a blue print. We prefer to have the creative discovery shape that blue print because our goal is to make a great game, and we are prioritising this goal over the previously targeted date."