Set as a sequel to Alien 3? Interesting... :hmm:
http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/ingame/aliens-colonial-marines-everyone-will-hear-you-scream-970431
So it's just the Marine campaign from Alien vs Predator? Bleh.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on September 02, 2012, 05:27:01 PM
Set as a sequel to Alien 3? Interesting... :hmm:
Resurrection of a game that's been in development for over 10 years. I'll believe it when I see it on the store shelves.
You know, I've seen the trailers, and it looks so far like any other military shooter, with an Aliens veneer. It doesn't seem to capture the suspension of the movie, or make the Aliens much more than cannon fodder, while going through nearly all the set pieces of the movie.
Fan service, yes. Good shooter? Maybe. Original? Not at all.
It's hard to have a horror game and have a big fucking gun that you can blast anyone into tiny pieces.
Seems the game is, uhm, not so good.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/02/12/wot-i-think-aliens-colonial-marines-single-player/
Quote from: Syt on February 12, 2013, 04:15:55 PM
Seems the game is, uhm, not so good.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/02/12/wot-i-think-aliens-colonial-marines-single-player/
Damn you barely managed a days worth of enthusiasm, you fail at hyping a game. :(
Tamas needs to give you some lessons on how to mount a mult-month long campaign across numerous threads, interjecting positive comments about the game at almost every opportunity. :P
Quote from: Syt on February 12, 2013, 04:15:55 PM
Seems the game is, uhm, not so good.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/02/12/wot-i-think-aliens-colonial-marines-single-player/
A short video of gameplay footage showed me that is was.....underwhelming.
After reading the article i can only come to the conclusion it is all Jake's fault.
Quote from: mongers on February 12, 2013, 04:32:25 PM
Damn you barely managed a days worth of enthusiasm
:huh:
I had a quick look at the Steam forums which have the usual rage, but several people seem to say they were sold on the game based on this 10 minute long gameplay footage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBIpUEjFFHA
Only that none of it was in the game they bought. :lol:
everything i've heard makes it seem like a truly awful, atrocious POS
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/803/avp.gif/
:lol:
Even IGN who usually spooge over every game derided the game in a video commentary as a huge amount of fan service, ripping off locales and the most famous scenes, but without the tension of the movie - you kill countless aliens, their acid blood doesn't have any major negative effect, and there's only a few tense bits. Also, you spend a lot of time killing people, not aliens, and it's another on-rails shooter with different dressing.
Which is a shame, because you could make a great tactical game here; maybe something in the style of the first Dead Rising - survive till the cavalry arrives. Give the player the run of a large facility (even Hadley's Hope if it has to be), with tight resources and tactical decisions thrown in. Which doors to seal up? Where to put defense turrets? Are there any medpacks anywhere? Where should I put my handful of sensors? Also, make trying to keep your squad mates alive a game feature - don't let them be invulnerable or killed off by a set piece cut scene, depending on what the script says. Make it hard but rewarding.
Alternatively, take the XCOM tactical combat and make a Colonial Marines vs. Aliens total conversion.
I think the worst bit here is that the game is to be considered canon for the Alien franchise.
RPS trashes it very badly.
Which convinces me its crap.
Somewhere in the earlier criticism there was something like "you just go ahead, open doors and kill stuff" which is NOT a proper criticism if you do no trash every other FPS in existence (well, most of them). But it is pretty clear the game has tons of issues.
Quote from: Tamas on February 13, 2013, 03:59:40 AMSomewhere in the earlier criticism there was something like "you just go ahead, open doors and kill stuff" which is NOT a proper criticism if you do no trash every other FPS in existence (well, most of them). But it is pretty clear the game has tons of issues.
RPS does that to COD/MoH regularly, referring to them as non-games. :P
Quote from: Syt on February 13, 2013, 04:00:20 AM
Quote from: Tamas on February 13, 2013, 03:59:40 AMSomewhere in the earlier criticism there was something like "you just go ahead, open doors and kill stuff" which is NOT a proper criticism if you do no trash every other FPS in existence (well, most of them). But it is pretty clear the game has tons of issues.
RPS does that to COD/MoH regularly, referring to them as non-games. :P
yeah I read that somewhere else. Mainstream sites celebrate CoD games for being on rail shitbuckets.
RPS is much better, yes.
Stick to Alien vs Predator on the Jaguar. :contract: :smarty:
Quote from: Syt on February 13, 2013, 04:00:20 AM
Quote from: Tamas on February 13, 2013, 03:59:40 AMSomewhere in the earlier criticism there was something like "you just go ahead, open doors and kill stuff" which is NOT a proper criticism if you do no trash every other FPS in existence (well, most of them). But it is pretty clear the game has tons of issues.
RPS does that to COD/MoH regularly, referring to them as non-games. :P
I think it's a Euro thing.
Quote from: Razgovory on February 13, 2013, 08:40:31 AM
Quote from: Syt on February 13, 2013, 04:00:20 AM
RPS does that to COD/MoH regularly, referring to them as non-games. :P
I think it's a Euro thing.
Euros are more interested in games with multiple subplots, problem solving and hugs.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on February 13, 2013, 08:58:43 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on February 13, 2013, 08:40:31 AM
Quote from: Syt on February 13, 2013, 04:00:20 AM
RPS does that to COD/MoH regularly, referring to them as non-games. :P
I think it's a Euro thing.
Euros are more interested in games with multiple subplots, problem solving and hugs.
That's not it, not at all. Euros like to manage their genocide games, like Patrician; Populous, while North Americans prefer to be the sword tip of it.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on February 13, 2013, 08:58:43 AM
Quote from: Razgovory on February 13, 2013, 08:40:31 AM
Quote from: Syt on February 13, 2013, 04:00:20 AM
RPS does that to COD/MoH regularly, referring to them as non-games. :P
I think it's a Euro thing.
Euros are more interested in games with multiple subplots, problem solving and hugs.
I've noticed it a lot amongst Euro reviewers. Games were you play US soldiers are "racist" and "imperialistic". There also seems to belief that wealth (or more accurately the lack there of), indicates superior morality.
I don't know about "European reviewers", but RPS' complaints usually are that COD/MOH are so heavily scripted that they're little more than CGI movies with the occasional interactive bit. I don't recall complaints about the plot except that it's paper thin.
Btw, here's a gameplay video from Obsidian's cancelled Aliens game. The graphics are dated (2008/9) and the voice acting isn't too great. Still, it looks a lot like Mass Effect with colonial marines, with dialogue choices, skills, inventory . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdVedBa0-mk&feature=youtu.be
I've got 28 mm Colonial Marines and Aliens that I can play with whenever I want. :)
Here's how ACM rewrites the canon (which, to be fair, probably deserves to be rewritten, but not by this shitty game):
QuoteAccording to 20th Century Fox and Gearbox, Aliens: Colonial Marines is part of the official Alien series canon. That means the disastrously bad shooter, which takes place shortly after the end of 1986's Aliens, has ramifications on 1992's Alien 3 and 1997's Alien Resurrection (which didn't do the lore any favors either). Major ones. Aliens: Colonial Marines' storyline features some lore-breaking elements that directly contradict major events from the films and makes me wonder if Fox and Gearbox (or TimeGate, or whoever actually developed the campaign) even understand what "canon" means. Here are my three biggest problems with this incredibly damaging new version of the Alien lore. Note: We're about to delve into MAJOR SPOILER territory.
1: Hicks Lives... Somehow
Corporal Dwayne Hicks, composed yin to Ripley's yang and fan favorite, is alive. If you haven't played yet and seen for yourself (and I don't recommend that you do) you've likely seen him in the preview trailers and reasoned, "Well, this is obviously just a recording of Hicks created after the events of Aliens and before Hicks' unceremonious off-screen death at the beginning of Alien 3." That's true, as far as the recording goes, but Hicks -- voiced by actor Michael Biehn and all -- is actually physically present in Colonial Marines -- living, breathing, and fighting alongside you.
How, you ask? Good question. We're told at the start of Alien 3 that Hicks was aboard an escape pod jettisoned from the starship Sulaco, along with Ripley and Newt. The pod crashed into penal colony planet Fiorina, with Ripley the only survivor (as the franchise inexplicably washed its hands of two of its best characters).
According to Gearbox's new and "official" Alien lore, though, Hicks was never aboard that escape pod. Fooled you! In Aliens: Colonial Marines, we learn that the Sulaco was seized by the omnipresent Weyland Yutani Corporation before the ship could make its way back to Earth. Hicks was pulled from cryo sleep somewhere near Fiorina, at which point he started a gun battle and caused an electrical fire (previously believed to have been started by an alien facehugger) that led to the escape pod ejection of Ripley and Newt. Then Hicks was taken back to LV-426, along with the Sulaco, and held prisoner while Weyland Yutani got down to the business of trying to capture, study, and breed Xenos. So who was the dead body cremated in Alien 3, the one everyone was told was Hicks? No clue. Gearbox has thus far avoided trying to explain that one.
2. Hadley's Hope is Still in One Piece
Equally perplexing is the fact Colonial Marines takes place on LV-426, and we are able to return to the planetoid and explore many of its familiar places, including Hadley's Hope and the derelict alien spaceship that kicked off the chest-bursting terror phenom in the original Alien. The fanboy in me loved seeing the hallway and lab in Hadley's Hope where Hicks, Hudson, and crew made their "Oh, you want some too? Get some!" last stand, and walking around the giant alien Navigator (or Engineer, as Prometheus calls them) in the derelict was pretty damn cool. Still, seeing all of these sites made me question how the hell any of it wasn't completely obliterated by Aliens' thermonuclear conclusion.
Here's what we know: when the nuclear-powered atmosphere processing plant on LV-426 went kablewy, it was, according to milk-blooded android Bishop, comparable to a "40-megaton nuclear blast," with a radius of roughly 18 miles. That sounds like it should be a pretty thorough means of obliterating everything we saw in the film. And yet... in the levels outside Hadley's Hope in Colonial Marines, you can actually see the dome of the massive plant looming large and burning in the background, but the colony itself is still largely intact. The derelict ship? Completely untouched by the blast.
So the seemingly world-ending nuclear explosion Ripley and crew were so desperate to escape wasn't so bad afterall, Gearbox? In fact, they'd have been fine if they'd simply hunkered down in Hadley's Hope or hidden out in the derelict to survive the blast instead of going to all the trouble to retrieve the dropship. Contamination and the danger of radiation poisoning are also never brought up in Colonial Marines, which leads me to believe Gearbox's writers employed the vaunted Chewbacca Defense to explain how any of this is even remotely possible.
3. Xenos are Everywhere
Aliens: Colonial Marines takes place 17 weeks after Aliens. During that time, Weyland-Yutani Corp. has been very, very busy. It's managed to find and capture the Sulaco in the vicinity of Fiorina (which, according to Alien lore is roughly 19 lightyears from Earth), return to LV-426 (39 lightyears from Earth), construct an enormous new research facility, staff it, find, capture or somehow breed another alien queen, and have her start cranking out eggs like some sort of fertile Xeno chicken. The facehuggers that popped from those eggs were then allowed to have their way with some unfortunate, hastily gathered test humans, after which the baby Xenos chestburst to freedom, grew to maturity, were held in captivity, and studied. Did I mention they did all this on a recently irradiated planetoid 40 lightyears from Earth in just over four months?
Oh, and those Xenos are running rampant all over LV-426 (not to mention the Sulaco) by the time you arrive. If you know anything about Alien lore, it's about as easy to swallow as a facehugger embryo, particularly when you consider what happens in Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection. This is Aliens Vs Predator level of dumb writing.
Looking ahead at Alien 3, more questions are raised. Weyland-Yutani is so desperate to get ahold of the lone Xeno on Fiorina (and Ripley) that they dispatch Michael Bishop Weyland himself, not to mention a squad of soldiers, to retrieve them. Aliens: Colonial Marines makes me ask, "Why?" According to Gearbox, LV-426 is overflowing with the double-mouthed buggers, and they were still running rampant when I took off. In fact, based on Colonial Marines, it's now safe to call LV-426 the thriving Xeno home world. Why go to so much trouble to grab just one on Fiorina?
Then, in Alien Resurrection, which is set some 200 years later, it seems the only possible way to find a Xeno anywhere in the galaxy is to clone Ripley, extract alien queen larvae inside of her, and go from there. An odd choice when Aliens: Colonial Marines makes it seem like Xenos are plentiful.
It's Not Game Over, Man
Hicks lives, the prisoners on Fiorina cremated some random dude who decided to take a nap in Hicks' cryo chamber, Hadley's Hope and the Derelict are not only still standing, they're impervious to atomic blasts, and capturing, breeding, and researching Xenos, even though the queen and nearly all her eggs were destroyed in Aliens, is a snap. Welcome to the new Alien canon.
Oh, and Gearbox isn't done with the rewrites just yet. Aliens: Colonial Marines ends with Hicks, player character Winter, a new Bishop-bot, and a couple other survivors learning the intimate details of Weyland-Yutani's Xeno plans. In fact, the game concludes with Bishop telling the crew he knows "everything."
Seems like he's the only one, because based on the storyline in Colonial Marines, it appears Gearbox doesn't really know much about Alien at all.
Have they figured out yet who actually developed the game? Gearbox and TimeGate keep passing the ball back and forth on who actually held the reins in this disaster.
There's a comparison video of the E3 "gameplay demo" vs the actual game and the difference in tone, quality and graphics is staggering. Considering that the E3 demo remained one of the primary ad tools (and never clarified that this might be a pre-render) there's a vocal group crying "foul". This would indeed go far beyond a few touched up screenshots which is pretty much the norm. Sure, preview gameplay demos usually have the caveat "subject to change", but the understanding in general is that things will improve, not become worse in the course of development.
And yeah, reviving Hicks and those other retcons are total bullshit.
They should have just done like I did and pretended alien 3 never existed. Then just pretend the derelict was like 100 miles away since they never said how far away it was anyways.
I would've thought simply reclaiming a lost and infected Sulaco would've been enough of a plot line to develop from. Morons.
Quote from: Syt on February 21, 2013, 10:00:30 AM
And yeah, reviving Hicks and those other retcons are total bullshit.
Works just fine with comic chronology. Now if only the game wasn't ass.
Quote from: Syt on February 21, 2013, 10:00:30 AMThere's a comparison video of the E3 "gameplay demo" vs the actual game and the difference in tone, quality and graphics is staggering. Considering that the E3 demo remained one of the primary ad tools (and never clarified that this might be a pre-render) there's a vocal group crying "foul". This would indeed go far beyond a few touched up screenshots which is pretty much the norm. Sure, preview gameplay demos usually have the caveat "subject to change", but the understanding in general is that things will improve, not become worse in the course of development.
The video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_588812&feature=iv&src_vid=3z2qVebxlUo&v=6lGXDM3LGnk
Quote from: Syt on February 22, 2013, 09:17:20 AM
Quote from: Syt on February 21, 2013, 10:00:30 AMThere's a comparison video of the E3 "gameplay demo" vs the actual game and the difference in tone, quality and graphics is staggering. Considering that the E3 demo remained one of the primary ad tools (and never clarified that this might be a pre-render) there's a vocal group crying "foul". This would indeed go far beyond a few touched up screenshots which is pretty much the norm. Sure, preview gameplay demos usually have the caveat "subject to change", but the understanding in general is that things will improve, not become worse in the course of development.
The video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_588812&feature=iv&src_vid=3z2qVebxlUo&v=6lGXDM3LGnk
They are pretty naive. Who doesn't know that the the E3 demos are often fake. Shit, valve's demo of Half-life 2 was largely fake. Not to defend the makers, but c'mon you shouldn't get suckered in by that.
Quote from: Razgovory on February 22, 2013, 09:45:08 AM
They are pretty naive. Who doesn't know that the the E3 demos are often fake. Shit, valve's demo of Half-life 2 was largely fake. Not to defend the makers, but c'mon you shouldn't get suckered in by that.
Most of those pre-rendered scenes act as cut-scene-like material, not as a work in progress gameplay video. Also, it's true that that console titles are often shown off on PCs for better graphics quality - but if even on PC you can't get anywhere near that quality something's amiss.
I had a look at a few E3 trailers for games I've played (Mass Effect, Red Dead Redemption, Dragon Age Origins, Saints Row: The Third, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Sleeping Dogs, GTA IV), and I've only found the Saints Row trailer (which was clearly a pre-rendered, non-gameplay cutscene) not to be indiciative of the visual quality of the final product.
I don't think it was pre-rendered, but I suspect it was heavily touched up and scripted.
Without a doubt, but a number of games writers from different publications who attended different screenings of the materials have gone on record that they were told that this was a demo of actual gameplay footage - work in progress, yes, but representative of the final game.
Quote from: Syt on February 22, 2013, 10:41:33 AM
Without a doubt, but a number of games writers from different publications who attended different screenings of the materials have gone on record that they were told that this was a demo of actual gameplay footage - work in progress, yes, but representative of the final game.
Yeah, they shouldn't have believed that. Developers lie like crazy at E3. I would think that game writers would have figured that out by now.