Aliens: Colonial Marines and IP Checkboxing/Laziness

[MKSheppard]

So...Aliens Colonial Marines is now set for a "Fall 2012" date, judging from it's page on Steam.

I'm sort of ambigious about getting it, since it was delayed so long, and because Gearbox is making it -- not good signs for fun playability, from my experience with Duke Nukem Forever, in which Gearbox kept disabling the PC console, and made it so that if you wanted the cheat codes like infinite ammo or health, or slowing down the game; you had to beat it first on "normal", which was a Catch-22 for players like me.

But enough of that. It made me start thinking of how IP rights for big name franchises are used in games; because from what little of the hype I've heard about Colonial Marines, and the screenshots now up on Steam leave me kind of underwhelmed.

It just seems to me like another Generic Aliens Game [tm] that hits every checkbox for the Corporate Suits:

• Sulaco Level. If it's not Sulaco, a ship exactly like her.
• Hadley's Hope level. Or one just like it.
• Hive Level.
• Powerloader battle.
• Story that is virtually exactly like Aliens -- oh no, colony went off the radio, we show up, everyone's dead. WHOOPS TOP SECRET WEYLAND YUTANI BIOWEAPONS PROJECT WAS RESPONSIBLE.

In addition the general overall experience of every Alien IP game heavily borrows from the experience of Aliens, in particular these posed shots from Colonial Marines:

LINK 1
and
LINK 2

A little thought in the design phase have helped a lot.

Consider why LT Gorman did what he did, and how the Marines in Aliens did what they did.

He was inexperienced, and this was the first time that the USCMC had ever encountered xenomorphs. They really did not know how lethal xenomorphs would be in very cramped quarters; so they didn't think much about going into the AtmoProcessor.

But what about when the CMC has had enough institutional experience to deal with xenomorphs? They wouldn't be sending Marines into cramped hallways on fetch quests to turn back on the main power in a colony full of xenomorphs hiding in dark halls. (Aliens Versus Predator remake from 2010)

No, that's a job for Synthetics, or simpler combat robots.

And of course...OH WOW, A MEDLAB THAT LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE THE ONE ON ACHERON!

Intellectually, I can come up with logic for that -- a standardized design is used across US-controlled space to save money and logistical costs, but to my brain it just feels...lazy and a blatant attempt to score points with fanboys.

I'd like to see more of the universe explored besides hyperfocusing on Xenomorphs and LV-426 style environments.

What do the 'bughunts' mentioned by Hudson look like?

What other powers are there in Human explored space?

What's it like working/living on a colony in human space?

You can explore these issues through a variety of ways:

• Make the opening training level a bughunt against purple man-eating zebras or some alien lifeform that is NOT a xenomorph.
• Make the main plot center around a non-US colony that gets hit, and your ship is the closest that can respond to the distress call.
• Make the colony not be overrun when you get there. Hadley's Hope only happened because of extremely limited firearms available to the colonists -- remember the line about sesmic charges as improvised weapons? It could be that while the colonists on Wu's World can hold off the Xenomorphs when they attack; they just don't have the equipment or manpower to deal with the infestation at it's core, particularly if it's on a world with local wildlife, so the aliens are not totally reliant on 1 alien for 1 human.

This way, you get the basic theme of any Alien-based IP -- dealing with xenomorphs -- but in a fresh way which doesn't keep showing over and over Aliens.

But hey, fanboys just love being Hudson.

Checkboxing applies to other IPs as well.

Look at how many Star Wars games are just simply JEDI JEDI JEDI FORCE POWERS JEDI JEDI JEDI.

[Aaron MkII]

You've discovered the power of branding, my son.

In other words, people just want to play the same thing over and over. Look at CoD.

[Stark]

Shep, track down the 15m gameplay trailer the released a few months ago. The game is AWFUL. Its more primitive and less movie accurate than the 90s game.

The alien blood is GREEN.

[MKSheppard]

You've discovered the power of branding, my son.

I already knew branding existed. Here, I'll lock you in a room with a SNES and a random sample of cartridges from that era.

[Aaron MkII]

That sounds like cruel and unusual punishment to me.

[Edi]

They made the first Aliens game already back in the 80s for C64. That one was movie accurate all the way, divided into phases cut from the movie and you had command of the same crew of marines as in the movie. Hudson, Gorman, Vasquez, Hicks etc. And it basically also ended with about as many casualties through the labyrinth section even when you knew the route.

It'd probably still be better than some of these new rehashes.

[MKSheppard]

Shep, track down the 15m gameplay trailer the released a few months ago. The game is AWFUL. Its more primitive and less movie accurate than the 90s game.

I just did that now. I can't tell what's going on due to no subtitles, but....are they actually walking around Hadley's Hope?

You know, the place that was like 2km away from an atmospheric processor that exploded with an explictly stated blast radius of 30 kilometers and a yield of 40 megatons in Aliens?

[Anguirus]

Drat. I was looking forward to this in a dumb guns-blazing kind of way, but if it's really THAT pedestrian...

I mean, I get it, you need the Excuse Plots so the game/comic/whatever FEELS like the film experience of Aliens, but it's been seen too many times. It's like all the Colonial Marines ever do is get their asses kicked by Aliens and Weyland-Yutani.

[Stark]

Nah shep there's another one; some setpiece on the Sulaco. I'll try to find it; I've only watched it on Xbox.

[MKSheppard]

I mean, I get it, you need the Excuse Plots so the game/comic/whatever FEELS like the film experience of Aliens, but it's been seen too many times. It's like all the Colonial Marines ever do is get their asses kicked by Aliens and Weyland-Yutani.

If you really wanted to keep the "Aliens Experience" for the lame fans...you could design the multiplayer component around that.

Do a co-op map based around the final battle at the command center in Aliens (the one that Hudson bit it in); and your group gets scored on how well you did vs Ripley's gang, along with a powerloader multiplayer mode.

[MKSheppard]

Nah shep there's another one; some setpiece on the Sulaco. I'll try to find it; I've only watched it on Xbox.

You know. Given that the fire on the Sulaco was bad enough to prompt crew evacuation via EEVs, wouldn't the Sulaco's flight data recorder have been jettisoned too?

You know, the one with the copious video feeds from the Marines (right up to when the APC was trashed, terminating the uplink), along with post-battle recordings by Ripley as she records everything in writing for use against W-Y when she gets back, and possibly a feed dump from Bishop's hard drives...

...So wouldn't the USCMC then know enough about the Xenos to avoid the setpiece mistakes again?

[Stark]

I'll have to check what its called at home (or maybe Aaron can check if he's at home). All I can find on yutubs is the one you saw, the e3 one. But thats got all the green blood, no persistent acid blood, no ironsights, bad lighting, clunky gunplay and aliens with heaps of hitpoints that I saw in the older trailer anyway.

What happened to 'I shot an alien and his arm came off and covered the whole team in blood and we all died'? I don't even think they got the goddamn sounds right, so what's the point of the licence?

[MKSheppard]

bad lighting

The lighting effects looked acceptable to me. However, everything being dark dark dark dark failing lights, flickering lights got old fast in Aliens vs Predator 2010 and was a major reason I said fuck it to that game after 30~ minutes

[PREDATOR490]

AVP 1 & 2 were effectively the end of either franchise games. Everything after that is just restamped horseshit.

If they made a new and original AVP3 then... well that aint gonna happen now is it. Although I suppose with the way modern gaming is gone you will eventually see a Aliens vs Predators MMO.

Choose your side: Predator, Alien or Marine
Naturally the gore, darkness and general horror aspect will be played down to appeal to the mass market which totally undermines a good portion of their themes.

[Stark]

I honestly don't get why they have apparently abandoned the really interesting mechanics from the first one. Dangerous blood splatters, heaps of dismemberment, high-lethality, low-hitpoint play was a big part of how it captured the atmosphere of the movies. This is just 'typical shooter with lizard enemies'.

Only no irons, bad sound, terrible animation, and apparently heavily setpiece focused. Yay?

[Aaron MkII]

I'll have to check what its called at home (or maybe Aaron can check if he's at home). All I can find on yutubs is the one you saw, the e3 one. But thats got all the green blood, no persistent acid blood, no ironsights, bad lighting, clunky gunplay and aliens with heaps of hitpoints that I saw in the older trailer anyway.

What happened to 'I shot an alien and his arm came off and covered the whole team in blood and we all died'? I don't even think they got the goddamn sounds right, so what's the point of the licence?

This one?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EOlzCrVFvs

Or this one?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyyBm7ll ... re=related

[Stark]

The first one! Complete with awful commentary. PULSE RIFLE HELLS YEAH.

20 bullets to the head to kill an alien just like in the movie am I right? That trailer instantly set my interest in the game to zero.

[PREDATOR490]

Yeah fuck this, wouldnt touch this to begin with but after seeing that. No chance.

Aliens have SOOO advanced AI - Right, fuck off
Somehow a Marine can wrestle with an alien... ?
Obvious scripting... is obvious

Standard cliche bullshit with people sitting in front of vents that Aliens magically punch through because naturally if you have been fighting these things for more than 5 miniutes you will quickly realise this is what they do. The nerdgasm they have over the level of 'detail' pretty much captures whats wrong with the game. The have done such a fine job trying to make jerk-off material that looks so like the movie and yet completely fucked themselves for whatever ingenuity or creativite spark could be mustered out of the franchise.

[Stofsk]

I saw a longish gameplay trailer, it may have been the same one Stark refers to. I remember at the start thinking 'SHIT YEAH AWESOME IDEA'. By the end of the video I was thinking '...they can't be serious, are they?' I was mainly rolling my eyes at how they've sent a battalion IIRC on two Sulaco-type ships... to Hadley's Hope, which should have been a radioactive crater as per the ending of the movie. There was other shit too, like at one point there was QTE where you're grappling with a fucking alien, and IIRC you end it by sticking a gun in its mouth and shooting it Hicks-style, only there was no acid splash damage or anything that really makes you think putting a gun in the thing's mouth at such close range would be a bad idea. There was other shit too like different kinds of aliens, which just struck me as lame given that the giant bull alien (lol) is basically just something you gotta run away from.

(hey OT question: the pulse rifle prop used in the movie - did it have iron sights? I can't remember and it's been so long since I watched it. I think it didn't but who cares, it was a pretty boss prop)

[Stark]

No, they had had a groove along the top. They appear to have added iron sights even bough you can't use them. :v

[MKSheppard]

I was mainly rolling my eyes at how they've sent a battalion IIRC on two Sulaco-type ships...

If you go by the Technical Manual it says that Sulaco class ships generally carry 90 cryosleep chambers as standard; though up to 2,000 more can be installed in the cargo bays if you needed to carry a lot of troops.

So it would be possible to split up a battalion between two Sulaco-type ships.

But it's just sheer laziness to keep using the Sulaco's class over and over; the same TM says that the Sulaco was planned to be sold off in five years.

[Stark]

Dude, if you think the specific class of flying penis they use is relevant to game quality, you need a lie down. Those trailers are full of all kinds of actual game-relevant problems without needing to complain about how the space navy isn't run right in the fluff nobody cares about.

[Stofsk]

It's not that I think a battalion on two Sulacos is somehow a dumb idea. Stark's right in the sense that it doesn't really matter. I just think when you're dealing with that many guys, you'd have to fuck up really bad to allow the aliens to have the upper hand at any point.

If you really want to replicate the Aliens experience, you need a platoon (actually you need like, half a platoon or whatever it was we saw in Aliens). Squad-based stuff where it's you and maybe one other squad and like a guy in a dropship and Lance Henricksen and that's it. Once you start bringing in hundreds of dudes and more than one Big Ship you're just hitting a brick wall when it comes to disbelief and the suspension thereof.

Like seriously are they gonna have the Colonel go 'oh shit they're under a gigantic bomb? wait better not use that high-explosive ammo you guys get as standard issue switch to the dull shit that takes a million rounds to scratch anything'

wait

Maybe that explains the gameplay we see in the trailer? :V

[MKSheppard]

Those trailers are full of all kinds of actual game-relevant problems without needing to complain about how the space navy isn't run right in the fluff nobody cares about.

It's a minor point to be sure. The ships are likely going to only be "on screen" for maybe 5-10 minutes out of a 2 hour game, with most of their in game appearances being references:

"Why did the USS Hard Dick stop responding to our hails? We're stuck on Acheron now!"

It's kind of a hard balance between a creative staff which goes overboard (just about every Star Wars property license creates some sort of unique vehicle which we never ever see again ever); and a staff which is ultraconservative and limits originality (the Imperial Navy always uses Star Destroyers, always).

[MKSheppard]

Once you start bringing in hundreds of dudes and more than one Big Ship you're just hitting a brick wall when it comes to disbelief and the suspension thereof.

I was going to say this, but you said it.

When you get into a battalion sized task force, you now have all sorts of assets available to you that Gorman's Squad didn't, like someone actually being permanently upstairs on the ship(s), providing real time overhead reconnaissance.

Or enough people to man all the cool weapons we saw in Aliens but never got a chance to see; like the weapons on the APC, or all the pew pew weapons on the dropship.