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

[Vendetta]

It turns out Gearbox have made a really bad Aliens game. Now, I know this comes as a shock, after all those wonderful trailers which showed great uses of the franchise like alien blood as silly yellow decals and not convincingly dangerous acid, but who could have predicted they'd go on to make an uninspiring shooter with poor weapon variation and braindead AI, and waste things like the tension building potential of the motion tracker by consistently spawning mobs too close to the player for it to be useful.


I mean these are the people who release Duke Nukem Forever, surely they know about quality vidjagames?



(On the bright side, I head Dead Space 3 actually has all the things I did like from the old DS games still, and is slightly less linear than DS2 because side missions, so shooting horrible space wotsits is still on.)

[Stark]

A terrible game based on the Alien licence? You'll have to really convince me.

DS3 at least looks more interesting than the other ones, even if the plot appears to be well into fruit loop city.

[CaptHawkeye]

But, but Gearbox made [insert some game I liked years ago].

The gameplay trailers revealed the game's extreme reliance on scripted events, clown closet alien attacks (just...like Cod?) and a complete and total ignorance of the tone of the Alien films. All this long before a journalist told me to hate the game.

What's going to be really fun is picking out all the folks who *suddenly* think the game is bad because a review told them to feel that way. After they thought the gameplay trailers looked "ermagawd so awesome".

EDIT - http://www.gamespot.com/news/aliens-col ... ev-6403761

You can now add "habitual liars" to Gearbox's reputation.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Called this in 2008. The trailer I saw at the cinema for... something, ages ago, also made me think "Oh yeah. That's not come out still. And that's not a good thing".

Also, embargoes on reviews until release date = bad omen. When film studios do that, it's never because they fear tickets will run out.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Incidentally, I might be misremembering here, but wasn't there a rather large 'splosion at the end of Ripley's little adventure? I'd like to hear how they retconned this in the game, when it's supposedly canon and carrying on from after Aliens. Pretty large deviation, having a place that was vaporised, show up in game.

[weemadando]

Also, apparently certain people who were killed on screen aren't dead and come back in this game.

And there are thousands of aliens.

Sure. Why not.

[weemadando]

Oh man. Thanks to Twitter for pointing to this:

http://www.egmnow.com/articles/reviews/ ... l-marines/

EGM gives it a 9.0, just happens to be covered in A:CM ads.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Wow. Now I have to play it to find out.

Mind you, The Guardian had a guy review it and give it 4/5 after an opening disclaimer of what he likes (turns out it's bad ports of '80s sci-fi horror) which most people called him out on in the comments.

[Stark]

Is 'calling' a game as crap when it barely existed better or worse than basing the judgement in actual facts like at hilarious first trailer that couldn't even get the colours right or every Aliens game ever sucking?

What's really sad is the multi stuff is worse than the 90s game, and arguably worse than fucking Alien Swarm.

[Havok]

Man, I knew this game was gonna suck and I haven't played and Alien game since the fucking Jaguar.

[Stark]

They released a trailer which showed the game was so bad I heard they had to make statements like '... changes made in response to feedback'.

Because making a game with assymetric threat is really hard, right?

Everyone should go back and read the 'previews' from like 2008 where everything Gearbox said was obviously a lie. :V

[Vendetta]

You don't even have to go back to 2008 to find Gearbox totally lying about the game. The public demo for it from places like E3 last year? Loads of bits that aren't in the game.

[Stark]

Oh yeah but remember the stuff were they were like 'natural open environments that the marines have to fortify and defend using tools and environments to defeat the aliens'?

I mean who knew previews and interviews were marketing vectors? :V

The saddest part (since Aliens games have had crap gameplay since AvP2) is that the story is literally forum fanfiction level. I bet they had a poll to choose the TOTALLY AWESOME SCENES they'd insert/rip off.

[Thanas]

My trusted German review site gave it a 5/10, with comments like "Rarely have I ever played anything so boring" and "little to no immersion feeling".

[Stark]

Yeah even the most bankrupt review site is out for blood now it's been declared a 'bad game'. It's almost funny to see how badly they reach for criticisms (after at lest two paragraphs of useless gonzo shit about aliens brand). Journo dead etc.

[TheFeniX]

Incidentally, I might be misremembering here, but wasn't there a rather large 'splosion at the end of Ripley's little adventure? I'd like to hear how they retconned this in the game, when it's supposedly canon and carrying on from after Aliens. Pretty large deviation, having a place that was vaporised, show up in game.

The reactor on the planet went up, but the Sulacco was in one piece as of the end of Aliens. Then again, I recall the explosion being pretty fucking big, so the colony should be gone, but I guess you could make the case for the alien craft being intact depending on how far it was from the colony.

I was hoping this game would at least be passable with the co-op and the Left 4 Dead style gametype, but all I've read about is how aliens are depressing to play and the co-op only seeks to make the campaign even more annoying. Man, I really miss the survivor gametype from AvP2.

EDIT: I was on Steam and saw this:

Hungry for more Aliens: Colonial Marines? Purchase the Aliens: Colonial Marines Season Pass and get access to four downloadable content packages at a 33% discount! All add-on content packs are scheduled to be released from March through to summer 2013.The Aliens: Colonial Marines Season Pass will give you access to campaign content, additional multiplayer maps, new modes, character customisation and more!

If you purchase this Aliens: Colonial Marines Season Pass, all included content should be downloaded in-game and not individually from Steam, or you will be charged twice.

Is that some kind of fucking joke? $30s for a 33% discount? How... wait, people would do that? Pay money to pay a bit less money if any DLC actually gets released for this shit-box? I mean, I got roped into the Borderlands 2 Season pass (friends + I'm an idiot), but you actually GET the DLC with that. This is just a whole new level of.... is there a word for this?

EDIT2: my brain is officially broken. I thought SWTOR would be the worst example of fleecing people out of money (pay cash for extra quickslots) for years. I have to lay down. Good night.

[Stark]

Blands 2 was bad enough, but at even a soulless reskin of a successful game with a catastrophe of a story isn't as bad as yet another crap Aliens licenced game.

Frankly it's pretty sad when reviews all draw similar comparisons/use similar benchmarks/whine about the same things, because when they've cut and pasted their 'ruthless exposes' from each other like that in the past, the game has often turned out to actually be good. Its not hard to be critical guys - maybe cut back on the gonzo Brand 101 stuff. :V

[Executor32]

TheFenix: It's best that you went to bed, your tiredness has you very confused. This season pass is just like the one for Blands 2: when you buy it, you get access to all four planned DLC packs for less than if you bought them piecemeal, in this case for 33% less. Not to imply it's at all worth it, mind; it's still a terrible game, and I can't imagine the DLC will make it much better.

[Dendrobius]

Well, not ALL Aliens games have sucked. The PC AvP2 was pretty good after the 1.0.8.x patch for multiplayer mayhem, especially after the Exosuit and the Queen were added in. I still have fond memories of LAN parties where the game modes like Evacuation were innovative for its days. Species Deathmatch with Class Restrictions and Alien Lifecycle turned on was all that was good about asymmetric FPS...nothing like going from a facehugger all the way to a Queen and causing the Marines, Mercenaries AND Predators to all go for you, then watch as the backstabbing happen on the side. It was glorious.

Then we get this pile of crap. *sigh*

[Grumman]

...clown closet alien attacks...

And there are thousands of aliens.

Great, now I'm imagining clown car chestbursters, with twenty of the suckers exploding out of each colonist.

[TheFeniX]

TheFenix: It's best that you went to bed, your tiredness has you very confused. This season pass is just like the one for Blands 2: when you buy it, you get access to all four planned DLC packs for less than if you bought them piecemeal, in this case for 33% less. Not to imply it's at all worth it, mind; it's still a terrible game, and I can't imagine the DLC will make it much better.

Ok, so reading fail on my part, even though it's pretty awkward wording. That I can deal with. Thanks for the correction.

Then we get this pile of crap. *sigh*

You could always play AVP 2010 and it's hilarious over-reliance on the "execution" mechanic, complete with poor hit detection. The game itself isn't terribly bad, but they could have just ported AvP2 and made something that wouldn't have immediately been forgotten. I honestly don't know how they keep fucking up the Alien movement mechanics though. The camera in AvP2 could make you nauseous at times, but I never had issues moving around or randomly falling off walls (an issue that plagues Natural Selection 2 which wasn't an issue in NS1).

It really irks me because it's not hard to test and is a major pillar of an entire class, but developers seem pretty content with the phrase "good enough."

[FSTargetDrone]

Better? Or worse? Better? Or worse?

Feb 13, 2013 3:00 PM

The Aliens: Colonial Marines Demo Looked Great. The Actual Game, Not So Much.

Kirk Hamilton



By almost all accounts, Aliens: Colonial Maries isn't a good game. Patricia certainly didn't care for it, saying that "it was literally a pain just to get through."

But hey, it happens. Sometimes, for various reasons, video games aren't as good as the people who made them wanted them to be. What's remarkable with Aliens: Colonial Marines has been the fact that the game's developer, Gearbox, showed A:CM off in numerous hands-off demos and previews, and those demos looked far better than the finished game.

In the video above, two chaps from VideoGamer.com put the demo footage side by side with the actual game. The results are… pretty galling, actually. (They've got the "Demo" and "Final" labels mixed up for a chunk of the video, but have remedied it using YouTube annotations.) Update: They've now posted a new video with the correct notation; that's embedded.

They're playing on PC with their settings maxed, and you can see how vastly different huge chunks of the game look—the final version is missing detail, environmental effects, dynamic lighting, even whole characters. They also take a look at the Xbox version toward the end.



In this video from last year, Gearbox president Randy Pitchford walks viewers through a demo presentation of the game. Patricia, who has played through the game, tells me that the final game is very different from this demo.

It's hard not to get the sense that the story behind Colonial Marines' development is more tortured than your average game. Watching these videos, it seems like Gearbox did know how to make a good Aliens game, but that somewhere along the way, they had to compromise the game.

I've reached out to Gearbox to get their perspective on why the demo differed so vastly from the finished product, and will update if I hear back. In the meantime, this is a good reminder that no matter what a game looks like before it comes out, it's always wise to take these sorts of hands-off demos with a grain of salt. Or a bucketful.

Pass. Not even a Steam sale would make me want this.

[Stark]

I love the excuses. 'They knew how to make a good game, honest'. Too bad taking vision and making it into a product is their job, I guess. Gearbox is pretty consistent with their 'no idea what works' style even when they don't farm stuff out.

But maybe we should be more stunned by how naive the 'gaming press' is. Marketing event not true representation of final product? What next? People demoing console games using PC hardware?!

[TheFeniX]

But maybe we should be more stunned by how naive the 'gaming press' is. Marketing event not true representation of final product? What next? People demoing console games using PC hardware?!

The naivety seems pretty forced in a "please don't pull advertiser money/deny us pre-release review copies of your games" way. There's just too many examples over the past decade(s) of developers trying to pass off pre-rendered or "hands-off" demonstrations as final products for anyone to actually be fooled by it. Either reviewers are mesmerized by "peek-a-boo" or it's more likely they're protecting the bottom dollar by wearing kids-gloves.

Colonial Marines is a pretty good example for devs pulling weak shit though (like SWTOR) because what they were showing wasn't exactly some next-gen shit that would blow your computer up trying to accomplish.

[CaptHawkeye]

Hilariously Gearbox didn't even make it. They outsourced development to a low cost studio with a shitty track record a while before it was released. Then took all the credit during the trailers and PR events. I don't doubt a stipulation of their cooperation stated the other studio couldn't claim they developed the game, but it's really kind of interesting to see this deal-with-the-devil shit is typical in the video game industry. Or that Gearbox sought to cheaply profit on the work of others while claiming all the glory because as it turns out, the industry is populated with brand slaves.

Of course now they're paying the price in that a fucking awful game was released with their name emblazoned all over it. Can you say "shit management"?