Aliens; Colonial Marines a Sci/Fi L4D ?

Derangel said:
While I don't disagree with some of what he is saying, I'm sick of the attitude of "anyone who pre-orders is a chump". I pre-order quite a few games and guess what? I rarely ever get a game I don't like. Anyone with half a brain can spot the warning signs a mile away. This game had so many warning signs that it's shocking anyone thought it would end up being good. It being complete shit comes as no surprise to me. Also, he ignores that people don't just pre-order for the crap that comes with the pre-orders. They're occasionally nice extras, but I like having games I really want on release. I work when games come out. I don't have time to come home from work, read reviews, read a bunch of news, read forums, etc and then buy the game and wait for it to download. Whats the point of doing all that when 99% of the time my feelings about a game prior to release end up being right?
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I'm kinda curious what were the warning signs? This is my first-preorder in forever and it was based on the gameplay demo. I didn't even have high expectations I just thought "well if that's the gameplay it'll be a nice romp if nothing else." As far as I know this is the first time this particular scenario has ever happened. A pre-rendered trailer is one thing but this was actual verified gameplay.

Our industry runs on little white lies controlled by marketing. Peter Molyneux makes promises that won't be delivered, while major publishers distribute bullshots -- touched-up images that present the game in a better light than it ever will be when in the player's hands (see Edge's excellent article). Pitchford's act of deception goes beyond being a white lie. He earned fan trust and admiration through manipulation. Not only at press events, but also Gearbox's Community Day where the same demo was shown and presented in the same light of being indicative of the final game.

How can we ever trust Pitchford and Gearbox again? Because they made Borderlands 2? Sure, but what about that Brothers in Arms: Furious 4 demo that I am now questioning?

And the lies didn't even stop at the E3 demo. Gearbox and Sega kept showing a screenshot of the Alien Queen fighting a Power Loader. This scene does not happen in the game.


Read more at http://www.destructoid.com/gearbox-...tail-product-244966.phtml#2FutjZv8Ve3ZMmYM.99
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Derangel said:
While I don't disagree with some of what he is saying, I'm sick of the attitude of "anyone who pre-orders is a chump".
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I don't really agree with your reasoning, but I do agree that that attitude needs to go, especially when you can get pre-orders for like 40-50% off the retail price of the game. Plus, sometimes the pre-order bonuses are actually worthwhile (Karkand for BF3 for example).

I'll definitely think twice before pre-ordering another game again after this debacle, though. Certainly never pre-ordering from Gearbox again unless they make this right, and maybe not even then.
 
the big pre-order savings and extras always seemed like a desperate attempt to sell a game before people get any true impression of it. it's lame marketing 101... as bad as infomercials IMO. It's especially disheartening when a game goes "gold" or whatever (talking about copies sold here) before anyone's actually played it... I mean, really?! The shit some developers get away with...
 
Youn said:
the big pre-order savings and extras always seemed like a desperate attempt to sell a game before people get any true impression of it. it's lame marketing 101... as bad as infomercials IMO
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Sometimes that's true, but not always. I think everyone knew BF3 would be a good game before it ever came out. Granted, I don't feel it's the best game ever, but it was certainly worth the pre-order for $35 or whatever I paid.
 
MavericK96 said:
Sometimes that's true, but not always. I think everyone knew BF3 would be a good game before it ever came out. Granted, I don't feel it's the best game ever, but it was certainly worth the pre-order for $35 or whatever I paid.
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BF3 had a Beta I was in I believe and had tons of user uploaded footage before it released.
 
Ah, yeah, that's true.


Anyway, regarding A:CM, I really wonder what they are going to do about the Season Pass now. I can't imagine they would continue to push out content for this incredibly sub-par game, yet at the same time they can't just scrap the whole thing either unless they refund everyone who purchased the Season Pass.
 
piscian18 said:
I'm kinda curious what were the warning signs? This is my first-preorder in forever and it was based on the gameplay demo. I didn't even have high expectations I just thought "well if that's the gameplay it'll be a nice romp if nothing else." As far as I know this is the first time this particular scenario has ever happened. A pre-rendered trailer is one thing but this was actual verified gameplay.
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Outside of that one demo Gearbox and Sega didn't show a single thing about the game. All the trailers and videos focused around that one segment. The press reaction to the game was fairly mild and unconvinced. No one outright said they thought it wouldn't be good, but I rarely heard anything positive only questions and concerns. Pitchford was pretty quiet leading up to release. He was all over the place during trade shows and the like, but if you look at Borderlands and it's sequel he was pretty mild here. Pitchford loves to hear himself talk and loves to hype the hell out of stuff his company does, even something as shitty as DNF he talked up more.
 
MavericK96 said:
Ah, yeah, that's true.


Anyway, regarding A:CM, I really wonder what they are going to do about the Season Pass now. I can't imagine they would continue to push out content for this incredibly sub-par game, yet at the same time they can't just scrap the whole thing either unless they refund everyone who purchased the Season Pass.
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good point, I'm thinking most of the season pass is MP only, and from what I've heard the multiplayer in it's current state is horribly unbalanced which means that it will probably be dead by the time bug hunt goes live about a month from now...

so yes, cancellations and refunds are bound to ensue
 
piscian18 said:
I'm kinda curious what were the warning signs? This is my first-preorder in forever and it was based on the gameplay demo. I didn't even have high expectations I just thought "well if that's the gameplay it'll be a nice romp if nothing else." As far as I know this is the first time this particular scenario has ever happened. A pre-rendered trailer is one thing but this was actual verified gameplay.
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The game had this giant DISASTER neon label all over it since it got rebooted.

Back in 2006 SEGA announced it had acquired the rights and currently working on two Alien games - an RPG by Obsidian and unspecified FPS. In 2007 Gearbox showed a few screenshots that looked kind of OK at the time.

It was pretty obvious we're talking UE3 game using the very first UE3 lighting model. This is why lighting sucks big time even in the so called DEMO footage. The most disturbing thing was what we were told about gameplay, though. Slow and confined. Pitchford was actually selling an Aliens type of experience. As if this is a movie, ffs.

Pay attention and no pre-order is going to catch you off guard. It works for me.
 
Well finished it. The ending was fantastic. Just like an aliens movie. All said and done, it is definitely worth 7.5/10 in my books. With ultimate bad ass difficulty, it took me over 7 hours to finish. That is more time than what I spent on Crysis 2 :rolleyes:.

I normally play my games slightly faster than a normal person would but this one took a long time. I died a lot. Having no HUD and crosshair was absolutely phenomenal. Pulling up tracker to know what's up was really authentic. Setting up guns, killing aliens, and kicking the shiznit out of all types of queens was also fantastic.

Finally, this definitely had the most authentic setting in an aliens game. The AVP games always felt removed from the Aliens feel but this one had everything. The lighting, shadows and gunplay was solid. The arsenal was quite fulfilling. Dialog could have been improved but I don't mind some cliches thrown in.

To set the record straight, DNF was utter crap compared to this. Also AVP 2010 was utter crap as well. This is the true Aliens game I have been waiting for. Yes, more atmosphere would have been nice like in that demo, but who gives a crap. It is what it is and at ultimate badass difficulty it is a solid corridor shooter just like Doom 3 was back in the day.
 
Heard bad things about this game. It's a shame coz it was made for a really long time like Duke Nukem Forever.
 
Derangel said:
While I don't disagree with some of what he is saying, I'm sick of the attitude of "anyone who pre-orders is a chump". I pre-order quite a few games and guess what? I rarely ever get a game I don't like. Anyone with half a brain can spot the warning signs a mile away. This game had so many warning signs that it's shocking anyone thought it would end up being good. It being complete shit comes as no surprise to me. Also, he ignores that people don't just pre-order for the crap that comes with the pre-orders. They're occasionally nice extras, but I like having games I really want on release. I work when games come out. I don't have time to come home from work, read reviews, read a bunch of news, read forums, etc and then buy the game and wait for it to download. Whats the point of doing all that when 99% of the time my feelings about a game prior to release end up being right?
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I would tend to agree, however:

– Most people do not have half of a functional cognitive system;
– People who pre-order are contributing to a system which leads to this kind of mess.

I believe Gearbox have been deceptive in regards to Alien Colonial Marines and understand that folks feel they have been lied to. I do also believe this should serve as a lesson as to why in this digital era pre-ordering is a bad thing and drives the industry in the wrong direction.

I'm eager to see if and what Gearbox will officially do to respond to the ordeal surrounding this game. Pitchford on a personnal level has stated on Twitter that he has not been lying to us.
 
_PixelNinja said:
I would tend to agree, however:

– Most people do not have half of a functional cognitive system;
– People who pre-order are contributing to a system which leads to this kind of mess.

I believe Gearbox have been deceptive in regards to Alien Colonial Marines and understand that folks feel they have been lied to. I do also believe this should serve as a lesson as to why in this digital era pre-ordering is a bad thing and drives the industry in the wrong direction.

I'm eager to see if and what Gearbox will officially do to respond to the ordeal surrounding this game. Pitchford on a personnal level has stated on Twitter that he has not been lying to us.
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A: CM is an anomaly. It's a very unique case far above and beyond the usual level of trickery pulled by marketing and PR. Calling A: CM an example of why people shouldn't pre-order games is as ridiculous as saying the Batman Arkham games are examples of why we should have licensed games. Both are anomalies that are not likely to repeat themselves often.
 
Derangel said:
A: CM is an anomaly. It's a very unique case far above and beyond the usual level of trickery pulled by marketing and PR. Calling A: CM an example of why people shouldn't pre-order games is as ridiculous as saying the Batman Arkham games are examples of why we should have licensed games. Both are anomalies that are not likely to repeat themselves often.
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I wish it were like Stalker where you found a priceless gem out of the anomaly. Except you find a worthless turd.

Sidorovich - "Some pretty shit games you have there Stalker".

:(
 
KickAssCop said:
Well finished it. The ending was fantastic. Just like an aliens movie. All said and done, it is definitely worth 7.5/10 in my books. With ultimate bad ass difficulty, it took me over 7 hours to finish. That is more time than what I spent on Crysis 2 :rolleyes:.

I normally play my games slightly faster than a normal person would but this one took a long time. I died a lot. Having no HUD and crosshair was absolutely phenomenal. Pulling up tracker to know what's up was really authentic. Setting up guns, killing aliens, and kicking the shiznit out of all types of queens was also fantastic.

Finally, this definitely had the most authentic setting in an aliens game. The AVP games always felt removed from the Aliens feel but this one had everything. The lighting, shadows and gunplay was solid. The arsenal was quite fulfilling. Dialog could have been improved but I don't mind some cliches thrown in.

To set the record straight, DNF was utter crap compared to this. Also AVP 2010 was utter crap as well. This is the true Aliens game I have been waiting for. Yes, more atmosphere would have been nice like in that demo, but who gives a crap. It is what it is and at ultimate badass difficulty it is a solid corridor shooter just like Doom 3 was back in the day.
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Are you playing the same game? :rolleyes:
 
Krenum said:
I wish it were like Stalker where you found a priceless gem out of the anomaly. Except you find a worthless turd.

Sidorovich - "Some pretty shit games you have there Stalker".

:(
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Agreed. I love when games like STALKER just kind of appear out of nowhere and end up being amazing. Needs to happen more often.
 
Derangel said:
Agreed. I love when games like STALKER just kind of appear out of nowhere and end up being amazing. Needs to happen more often.
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Well stalker didn't exactly come out of no where, they got stalled, restarted, disappeared for a year then came out of the dark and went gold.

But we all knew it would kick ass.
 
Derangel said:
A: CM is an anomaly. It's a very unique case far above and beyond the usual level of trickery pulled by marketing and PR. Calling A: CM an example of why people shouldn't pre-order games is as ridiculous as saying the Batman Arkham games are examples of why we should have licensed games. Both are anomalies that are not likely to repeat themselves often.
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Granted — you make a fair point there. However, anomalies such as ACM are bound to happen here and there and companies should not get away with it (I'd consider WarZ as a similar scenario in regards to the trickery/false advertising that has been used to obtain people's money). I still think this should be an example in the sense that this happening is the risk that one takes when pre-ordering a game. And no one can predict how many of these "anomalies" will occur in the future.

All I can say is I do not understand that one can give away his or her money in advance for an immaterial product that we cannot certify is up to standards.

As of note: in today's episode of ACM: "SEGA were well aware the game sucks".

The rumor of the day is SEGA knew the game was bad and GBX have been using the funds for ACM on Borderlands 2.
 
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So this isn't a Aliens version of L4D? Does it even have coop with up to 4 players?
 
It does have the coop feature. my friends and I have been playing through on coop mode.
 
Is it worth the price they are asking? What kind of replay does it have? IE: When you run through the coop, do you intend to do it again and again?
 
Skillz said:
Is it worth the price they are asking? What kind of replay does it have? IE: When you run through the coop, do you intend to do it again and again?
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The coop is very lazy and simply pasted on. They simply add nameless marines that are never seen in cut scenes of referenced at all instead of letting you control the other characters that are almost always there. The coop is done so poorly that apparently it can break the one good level the game has. If you're after a good coop game, look elsewhere. It's just a shitty game with a feature put on hastily at the last second.
 
Derangel said:
The coop is very lazy and simply pasted on. They simply add nameless marines that are never seen in cut scenes of referenced at all instead of letting you control the other characters that are almost always there. The coop is done so poorly that apparently it can break the one good level the game has. If you're after a good coop game, look elsewhere. It's just a shitty game with a feature put on hastily at the last second.
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This sounds like what I wanted to know. Thanks for looking out. Holding out for Sniper Elite Nazi Zombie Army; hopefully it becomes a good coop game on the scale of L4D.
 
_PixelNinja said:
Granted — you make a fair point there. However, anomalies such as ACM are bound to happen here and there and companies should not get away with it (I'd consider WarZ as a similar scenario in regards to the trickery/false advertising that has been used to obtain people's money). I still think this should be an example in the sense that this happening is the risk that one takes when pre-ordering a game. And no one can predict how many of these "anomalies" will occur in the future.

All I can say is I do not understand that one can give away his or her money in advance for an immaterial product that we cannot certify is up to standards.

As of note: in today's episode of ACM: "SEGA were well aware the game sucks".

The rumor of the day is SEGA knew the game was bad and GBX have been using the funds for ACM on Borderlands 2.
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As I've said before, this game had plenty of warning signs prior to it's release. People chose to ignore those signs and buy it anyway. They bought it blindly because it's Aliens and the single demo they showed looked mostly decent. People should take this as a lesson to pay closer attention to potential warning signs and not to ignore all of them. If people find any warning signs at all they shouldn't pre-order. Every doubt should be a reason to step back and wait.

It wouldn't surprise me in the least bit if Sega were fully aware of all the problems, they're not exactly a good company when it comes to stuff like that.
 
Derangel said:
As I've said before, this game had plenty of warning signs prior to it's release. People chose to ignore those signs and buy it anyway. They bought it blindly because it's Aliens and the single demo they showed looked mostly decent. People should take this as a lesson to pay closer attention to potential warning signs and not to ignore all of them. If people find any warning signs at all they shouldn't pre-order. Every doubt should be a reason to step back and wait.

It wouldn't surprise me in the least bit if Sega were fully aware of all the problems, they're not exactly a good company when it comes to stuff like that.
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I guess in a sense we agree then.

In regards to SEGA I'm not too sure what to think, what I gather is they pushed the game out the door because they had lost too much money on the development cycle. maybe they should have just sued GBX for breach of contract...
 
_PixelNinja said:
I guess in a sense we agree then.

In regards to SEGA I'm not too sure what to think, what I gather is they pushed the game out the door because they had lost too much money on the development cycle. maybe they should have just sued GBX for breach of contract...
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I don't blame Sega. They gave them 6 years and multiple extensions then had to threaten legal action just to get them moving on it.
 
piscian18 said:
I don't blame Sega. They gave them 6 years and multiple extensions then had to threaten legal action just to get them moving on it.
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At any point Sega could have pulled the plug and demanded a return of their money that Gearbox spent on other games. Sega lied to buyers just as much as Gearbox in this situation. Sega may not have the lion's share of the blame here, but they are not faultless.
 
that's what they should've done. seems to me gbx played them for chumps, just because they knew they could. what I really want to know is, the difference between what they were getting from 2k for bl2, and what kind of deal they had with sega. someone had to be getting a raw deal, for it to come out like this after so long.

1. get funding for overhyped side project
2. spend said funds on development for titles you actually care about
3. ???
4. PROFIT
 
after playing the game alot i really enjoy it. i find it funny all those videos posted about that alien walking past the guy.

well thats part of the lvl based on stealthy those aliens use sound to hunt so if your standing still they wont go after you. The guy says it in the dialogue to be quiet. so far i see no issues with the AI
 
Filter said:
after playing the game alot i really enjoy it. i find it funny all those videos posted about that alien walking past the guy.

well thats part of the lvl based on stealthy those aliens use sound to hunt so if your standing still they wont go after you. The guy says it in the dialogue to be quiet. so far i see no issues with the AI
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Yeah, that is one thing that got completely blown out of proportion.

However, I will say that the AI is not all that good. It's not the worst I've ever seen but the Xenos just run straight at you, and fall right in front of you and just stand there. It's pretty underwhelming because they don't feel like a real threat, you are just mowing them down and moving down the corridors.

I am also sick of fighting W-Y mercenaries. It was an epic fail having a good portion of the game being fighting humans.
 
MavericK96 said:
Yeah, that is one thing that got completely blown out of proportion.

However, I will say that the AI is not all that good. It's not the worst I've ever seen but the Xenos just run straight at you, and fall right in front of you and just stand there. It's pretty underwhelming because they don't feel like a real threat, you are just mowing them down and moving down the corridors.

I am also sick of fighting W-Y mercenaries. It was an epic fail having a good portion of the game being fighting humans.
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I think the sewer aliens were the best example of the developer not really giving a shit about Aliens. They could have made them much scarier, but yeah it was on purpose just kinda silly. Once you start turning on the generators it just gets kinda comical which is bad. Also I had one of those fuckers actually blow up in my face just to see what it did and it barely scratched me.

I feel like the W-Y stuff was just a cop out. Like "well we need an enemy" and it was an excuse to reuse assets from FEAREP. Now I will say it's odd that the W-Y facility with the scientists and the queen were actually done pretty well and looked good. It's another instance of that whole deal where GearBox redid stuff last minute or another developer was involved.
 
MavericK96 said:
Yeah, that is one thing that got completely blown out of proportion.

However, I will say that the AI is not all that good. It's not the worst I've ever seen but the Xenos just run straight at you, and fall right in front of you and just stand there. It's pretty underwhelming because they don't feel like a real threat, you are just mowing them down and moving down the corridors.

I am also sick of fighting W-Y mercenaries. It was an epic fail having a good portion of the game being fighting humans.
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they should of just threw a predator in there for good times sake.
 
ET woulda been scarier, they already got his walk animation down
 
Gearbox president Randy Pitchford has finally acknowledged the discrepancy between the Aliens: Colonial Marines hands-off demo and the final game that shipped to lackluster reviews last week...When asked for an explanation as to why the demo looked so much better, Pitchford tweeted, "That is understood and fair and we are looking at that. Lots of info to parse, lots of stake holders to respect."

He also noted that the explanation wouldn't be fit for Twitter, but he's looking into how to best address this issue...

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...demo-looked-much-prettier-than-the-final-game
 
Interesting, but it's not like he's going to announce that they are going to recreate the game with better graphics. It's just going to be a long-winded "letter to the community" about how sometimes projects don't go as planned, yadda yadda yadda.
 
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