You have the likes of Borderlands, which is title that is arguably one of the top titles.  But, take Duke Nukem Forever and now Colonial Marines, and I have to wonder about this.  What should be made of Gearbox now?  Should Randy Pitchford be considered a minor celebrity in the videogame point.  Is Gearbox at a crisis point of relevance, or just a one title only company at this point?

Forget Duke Nukem Forever. They were just polishing up a game created by other developers. Colonial Marines was almost as bad. These were development disasters before they got to Gearbox. They released them and they're responsible for them but I think it would be a mistake to assign them all the blame.

When dealing with their own games, built from the ground up, we know for a fact that they are a quality development studio. That's good enough for me.

Well lets look at what they have made;
Borderlands series - a very simple, grinder of an fps. I can see why people liked it, but I did not. It had no depth, was not unique, and frankly bored me.
Everything else - not a hollow grinderthon of a game, thus failed (or is really old so I'm excluding it). They do not know how to execute games with immense character and depth, so stop expecting them to. As soon as I heard that they were making A:CM, I knew it would be dire. There was no reason why it should have turned out well. It would have taken a studio that excelled in aesthetics, level design, programming (for good Alien AI and graphics), immersion etc, and I don't know of any studio that can do all of that yet.

overrated. Borderlands too. Borderlands 2 was pretty good but still overrated imo.

Their ports and other games have sucked... except I haven't played brothers in arms.

Only buy their Borderlands games.

Duke Nukem Forever is awesome. Didn't played that Aliens game, though.