Gamers who play with friends, rejoice! For the time of co-operative campaigns, stories and epic team-ups is almost upon us. That's right, beginning this fall and spanning into 2012, we're finally going to get a pile of major game releases that let players play together... in the same room!

We have Dead Island, Gears of War 3, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City and one game we've been waiting a long time for: Aliens: Colonial Marines. New screenshots for this new installment in the Aliens franchise, developed by Gearbox Software and published by Sega, were unveiled today during Gamescom 2011, showing fans how the co-op gameplay against the Alien creatures.

Aliens: Colonial Marines is game is stepping away from the Aliens vs. Predator brand and bringing fans another first-person shooter, but one that's squad-based and human-focused. It has been in development since 2006 and lets up to four players play together through the game's story. While playing single-player, the player will control one Marine at a time, issuing orders to the others and switching between the Marines during gameplay.

The story of Aliens: Colonial Marines will place long-time fans of the franchise in familiar territory, throwing them directly into the canon of James Cameron's Aliens and David Fincher's Alien 3. If you remember the movies, Marines were sent in initially and called for help, having to wait two weeks for back-up to arrive. That back-up will be the players of this game as they begin on the USS Sulaco ship and head to the LV-426 where they meet their worst nightmare.

Check out the new Aliens: Colonial Marines screenshots below to see what that experience will look like:

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The images come from AvPGalaxy forums and are very clean looking, to the point where some look as if they're concept art. The images depict the Marine team members and some of the weapons players will be able to deal damage with. We also of course get the needed inclusion of the enemy Xenomorphs and Facehuggers.

Each member of the team is unique in personality and weapon of choice, but players will be able to obtain other fun guns including flamethrowers, pulse rifles, smartguns, pistosl and RPGs.  But better than all of these weapons is Lance Henriksen returning yet again to provide the voice behind the android, Bishop.

Aliens: Colonial Marines debuts spring 2012 for the PC, PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii U.

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Source: AvPGalaxy