I don't want to alarm anyone, but....

[Atia]

Not that it really makes a difference, but can one of the people in this thread who actually played the game explain one thing that’s been bugging me about the game. How the hell is Hadley’s Hope so pristine when it was supposed to have suffered a wicked case of reactor explosion in Aliens? Or do they just ignore that bit from the movie?

[Vendetta]

A combination of

1. The specialist press fellating every title in prerelease hype and previews of unfinished content, building a mass of positive buzz around a title that almost no amount of bad reviews of finished product can dispel, and

2. Developer track record. Which is at least in part invented by 1, but is also impacted by the fact that people are bad at employing their critical faculties towards design qualities of videogames, so they remember "I like Borderlands" but don't think about how the variable quality of the DLC and far less engaging nature of Borderlands 2 mean that Gearbox didn't really get it and therefore aren't actually as good as they think.

So, people preordered because all the websites told them how much Colonial Marines would be teh awesomes, and because they have a faulty opinion of Gearbox' basic competence.

[Rekkon]

Not that it really makes a difference, but can one of the people in this thread who actually played the game explain one thing that’s been bugging me about the game. How the hell is Hadley’s Hope so pristine when it was supposed to have suffered a wicked case of reactor explosion in Aliens? Or do they just ignore that bit from the movie?

They ignore the numbers. The atmosphere processor wreck is there, smoldering like a volcano, but the damage it did to the colony is entirely localized to the convenience of plot.

[DaveJB]

Supposedly one of the developers was asked about this pre-release, and his reply basically went along the lines of "Well, Bishop was obviously talking out of his ass. Everyone knows a nuclear reactor can't cause a nuclear explosion!"

(Which I suppose is technically correct, except for the slight matter of the gigantic nuclear fireball we saw at the end of the film)

As for the whole pre-ordering thing, many websites actually sell the game for slightly cheaper (i.e. £36.99 instead of £39.99) if you pre-order it. That, combined with DLC and other freebies, plus the fact that games can usually be traded in for a significant portion of the release price if done within a week or two, means that pre-ordering's a decent proposition since at best you'll end up with the game cheaper and with free stuff, and at worst you'll only end up £5-10 down on what you initially paid. I don't do it a whole lot myself, mind, but that's the usual reasoning.

[Admiral Valdemar]

I like that in this one instance, a fan used logic and reason to point out something wrong with the film. But did so in a manner as to fuck up everything else, since regardless of the physics of the fusion reactor, it fucking did blow up.

I also hear the sales have dropped off in the UK by over 80%, but Crysis 3 and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance are still unable to break the opening weekend sales record despite being actually good games.

[TheFeniX]

That's why I think its crap that Aliens-licenced stuff always starts off from the position that the player LOVED ALIENS and KNOWS ALIENS STUFFS and thus jumps right into 'Weyland Yutani BAD! Want ALIENS! Aliens BAD!' instead of actually having things like suspense.

Cliches of the IP are easy pickings though. It lets them not bothering hiring decent writers and also keeps people from complaining they didn't get the "point of X," which is funny because they totally missed the point. And if they had such a stupid story, but hadn't created such a terrible fucking game, everyone would have given them a pass on it.

Timegate's whining gets me more than anything. "we didn't know what to do, everyone is changing everything about the story." Not having a locked down script doesn't excuse sloppy animations and an ugly game. There were assets that could have been polished to a mirror shine while they waited on story approval. Instead they passed the buck. Aw man, they're based out of Sugarland. Get the fuck out of here....

They probably could have fixed them if they were given more time. Gearbox aren't the best game developers in town but this is pretty fucking terrible for even them. But given that they had already invested a whole six years, there was pretty much no way SEGA was willing to give them more time to fix the botched job.

I don't know, SEGA's QA probably tested it and said "Looks good to me."

[Pint0 Xtreme]

They probably could have fixed them if they were given more time. Gearbox aren't the best game developers in town but this is pretty fucking terrible for even them. But given that they had already invested a whole six years, there was pretty much no way SEGA was willing to give them more time to fix the botched job.

I don't know, SEGA's QA probably tested it and said "Looks good to me."

"Looks good to me" likely means "Looks good enough to ship". SEGA is probably trying to recoup losses and it's really Gearbox's reputation that's tanking as a result of this monstrosity.

[Stark]

Not that it really makes a difference, but can one of the people in this thread who actually played the game explain one thing that’s been bugging me about the game. How the hell is Hadley’s Hope so pristine when it was supposed to have suffered a wicked case of reactor explosion in Aliens? Or do they just ignore that bit from the movie?

They ignore a lot of bits from the movie, from what things look like to why things happen. WY has a fleet of spaceships and a private army, which is why they increased exposure to their plans by using the USMC, right? :v

People who buy licenced stuff just want to see things they remember. That's why there are two Sulacos now, it's why you land next to the atmosphere processor, it's why every chair looks the same, it's why the evil PMCs use vehicles from Aiens, and why that neon bar sign isn't just not broken but still works. It's also why they have a Bishop android and clumsily resurrect a popular space marine - because like FENIX says, if the game wasn't dogshit horrible people would have lapped it up. I mean they're lapping it up ANYWAY.

I played some multi last night and they managed to fuck up UE3s net code after they made it fuck ugly. Maybe Epic are the ones who should sue.

[TheFeniX]

"Looks good to me" likely means "Looks good enough to ship". SEGA is probably trying to recoup losses and it's really Gearbox's reputation that's tanking as a result of this monstrosity.

This type of mentality is why SEGA hasn't made an A+ product since the Genesis (maybe Dreamcast, but they bailed on that anyway): "It's good enough." And I'm not talking about writing. AAA devs constantly shit out buggy/broken messes with large amounts of ugly models/textures and animations that assault your senses the moment you load them up.

I can just imagine the meetings at SEGA: "Profits are down, quickly shit out another horrifying Sonic game or port Sonic 3/and Knuckles again. Our idiot fans will buy them up." SEGA has no reputation worth attacking and Gearbox has one IP worth remembering to it's name, but they all share equal blame in this debacle and recouping costs off the uninformed/lied-to consumer is about par for the course with shitty devs/pubs. I'll honestly be surprised if season pass purchasers even get to see 4 DLCs.

[Pint0 Xtreme]

This type of mentality is why SEGA hasn't made an A+ product since the Genesis (maybe Dreamcast, but they bailed on that anyway): "It's good enough." And I'm not talking about writing. AAA devs constantly shit out buggy/broken messes with large amounts of ugly models/textures and animations that assault your senses the moment you load them up.

I can just imagine the meetings at SEGA: "Profits are down, quickly shit out another horrifying Sonic game or port Sonic 3/and Knuckles again. Our idiot fans will buy them up." SEGA has no reputation worth attacking and Gearbox has one IP worth remembering to it's name, but they all share equal blame in this debacle and recouping costs off the uninformed/lied-to consumer is about par for the course with shitty devs/pubs. I'll honestly be surprised if season pass purchasers even get to see 4 DLCs.

The nature of SEGA's business has changed quite a bit since the Genesis days. Don't forget that they publish for Creative Assembly as well; and the Total War games aren't half bad.

[Stark]

When Creative Assembly is your star dev, that's pretty terrible.

The DLC guys will almost certainly get their SLC, since it's probably all already made or nearly finished. It'll just be a stone dead MP game you use them in, so they'll be valueless.

[TheFeniX]

The nature of SEGA's business has changed quite a bit since the Genesis days.

Yea, they went from using poor-decision making to drive their hardware and software market-share into the ground into just driving their software market-share into the ground.

Don't forget that they publish for Creative Assembly as well; and the Total War games aren't half bad.

I also heard Binary Domain wasn't horrible. That doesn't change the fact that SEGA was one of the worst publishers to give the Alien IP to. Then again, SEGA likes cheap cash-ins and the Aliens IP is one you can do that with, so it makes sense they bought the rights. What gets me is that they didn't just flop a turd out in a year and make a few bucks, instead letting the IP fester with Gearbox for half a decade. And from what I know, the TW devs went looking for a Publisher for their game. That wasn't the case with Alien:CM.

SEGA sucks, Gearbox is an overrated (not horrible) dev, and Timegate sounds like a bunch of whiny "Programming is haaaaard" babies. That their "by your powers and multiple ensuing class-action lawsuits combined" shtick happened to be Colonial Marines shouldn't have surprised anyone. The only thing I'm really annoyed about is that devs/pubs can constantly lie about their product through "total 100% retail gameplay*" videos, all the while hiding their terrible game in hopes to turn a profit out of a disaster, and people will defend them (note: not saying you're defending CM specifically).

*Note: not actual gameplay.

The DLC guys will almost certainly get their SLC, since it's probably all already made or nearly finished. It'll just be a stone dead MP game you use them in, so they'll be valueless.

I thought they promised more campaigns. I mean, I'm not saying they'll be anymore than corridor bullet-fests, but I'm wondering if they'll just bail completely rather than bothering with it.

[Stark]

The game's terrible finale would certainly support this, but in corridor strollers such content is often quite small anyway. They ALREADY recycled map geometry, after all. I sincerely doubt they'll make a sprawing Fury 161 sequence.

Gearbox sucks shit, but at least they can make games that actually work. They listen to fans and have no idea how their mechanical decisions impact gameplay (they famously claim the Borderlands 2 skill trees are 'perfect') but at least their games have art and sounds and badguys and the like.

[CaptHawkeye]

I remember how similar Gearbox's last homegrown series, Brothers in Arms, was to Borderlands 2 now. The first game was great, by virtue of introducing really unique mechanics to the tired genre of D-Day shooters. It wasn't just a Call of Duty cash in, it actually was special. Too bad Gearbox never figured out *why* it was special.

The sequels were awful, not in the least part because Gearbox broke what worked well and emphasized things no one cared about. The earlier games in the series like Road to Hill 30 concentrated on the squad/fireteam control dynamic. Later games in the series undermined this mechanic by focusing levels around linear puzzle solving. No one even remembered Hell's Highway happened because it was apparent from gameplay trailers it was going to be shit. I personally remembering lol'ing at a white picket fence stopping MG42 rounds. Dutch lawn ornaments are really something else.

The marketing for all those games was something else too. Gearbox was seriously saying shit like "no one else has told the story of American vets in Normandy". Seriously.

[Stark]

Look, they made a game where a character dies in a cutscene and the very next mission is you killing yourself for money. It'll take for years, I'd estimate, before people can look at them without the halo of Blands.