4gb Patch For Aliens: Colonial Marines Improves AI, Graphics

[jecht35]

Is this still going to be released on the Wii U? Will they even bother at this point?

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

It's nice to see them trying to get something out there, but only a few people still care at this point. I think most everyone I know has moved on or has it for consoles.

 

[V da Mighty Taco]

The contents of this mammoth patch couldn't have been included some time during the lengthy development of this game why?

Because Gearbox had Aliens CM, Borderlands 2, and Duke Nukem on their lap and then got hit with layoffs shortly after they picked up the rights to Duke Nukem but were still held accountable by the contracts to produce a game within a certain timeframe that sold a certain number of units. It's not like they were flicking cards into a hat the entire time, they had 2 other projects and not enough people to go around.

At least they are trying to improve the game. It is more than I would expect from other, much larger, developers.

That's exactly the problem.

A:CM was announced nine months before the first Borderlands was even released and well before Gearbox picked up DNF. The fact that they prioritized picking up DNF, finishing it, starting development on BL2, and then finishing that in it's entirety all before actually working on the game that Sega was still paying them to make is unbelievably incompetent at best. The fact that it was suppose to be a canon sequel to Aliens, that Randy was making a lot of very specific promises about what the game would be like that turned out to simply not be true, and that the game was apparently a unbelievably bug-ridden mess even after 6 years in development only makes things worse.

The simple truth is that development on DNF and especially BL2 should have never started before A:CM was released, especially if they had to lay people off during this time. They signed a contract with Sega and were being paid to work on this game. That alone should have made it their top priority after the release of the original BL. After 6 years of development on a AAA title, there is simply no excuse for needing to release a patch two-thirds the size of the base game just to hopefully get it in a functioning state, especially (I say that word too much) when you start development on and release another AAA game that far more polished during the former game's development cycle. That is unacceptable no matter how one chooses to look at it.

EDIT: As many others have said already, I will give them this though - it is respectable of them that they are still trying to salvage this game even after they botched it so badly. For an obvious example, I still remember how bad all the CoDs become when the next one comes out and how they'll utterly refuse to fix the mess that they become. However, this does not excuse Gearbox or anyone else *coughEAcough* for putting themselves into a position to need to do this in the first place.

 

[FFP2]

Still never buying another Gearbox game again.

A case of "too little, too late" .

 

[Hazy]

I'm sick of developers treating patches as a "get out of quality control free" card.

Don't get me wrong, there are going to be bugs, and depending upon the size of your game, they're probably going to be quite hefty. But this is the shit you address before your game is shipped. It's evident that either no real testing was involved (which I find very hard to believe, given the length of this title's development process) or the testers were so incompetent at identifying problems that it should have been classified as "playing with a blindfold."

Too little, too late, guys.

 

[Signa]

after duke nukem, i dont trust them anymore. duke sucked like hell and not even the patches wanted me to even install the game again. and hearing only bad stuff about aliens, which dint surprise me to be honest, even with this patch i dont want to even waste my money on it.

To be fair, Gearbox didn't make DNF, 3Drealms and Triptych Games did. If you beat the game, there is a development timeline and it said that Triptych Games finished the single player mode back in 2009. The last 2 years was Gearbox developing the multiplayer mode, which I don't think many people had a problem with.

 

[Signa]

I'm sick of developers treating patches as a "get out of quality control free" card.

Don't get me wrong, there are going to be bugs, and depending upon the size of your game, they're probably going to be quite hefty. But this is the shit you address before your game is shipped. It's evident that either no real testing was involved (which I find very hard to believe, given the length of this title's development process) or the testers were so incompetent at identifying problems that it should have been classified as "playing with a blindfold."

Too little, too late, guys.

Trust me, when you're in QA, you spot those bugs and bug the hell out of them, if for no other reason than sheer boredom. It's up to the dev team to actually fix them, and more often than not, they refuse.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Film grain? REALLY?

"Oh yeah, we put film grain in so now when the graphics are shitty it'll look like they're shitty on purpose. That fixes everything!"

Good job guys.

 

[Tien Shen]

I like the effort put in by Gearbox but the ship's already sailed and hit an iceberg. Jack's dead and the old lady has tossed the necklace into the sea and credits are starting to roll.

 

[mjc0961]

I'd still like to see more happen to Gearbox and SEGA over this than just people being more unwilling to buy their next games. Why is this kind of thing even legal? Where are the lawsuits? And where are the refunds?!

I believe that ship has already sailed, hit an iceberg, sank, the surviving passengers rescued, the dead mourned, an inquiry into the incident started, plans for a 2nd ship finalised, the inquiry into the incident completed, the findings of the inquiry revealed to the public, public backlash against shoddy ship building and several new law passed through parliament.

And the crappy movie about it staring Leonardo DiCaprio already came out.

EDIT: As many others have said already, I will give them this though - it is respectable of them that they are still trying to salvage this game even after they botched it so badly. For an obvious example, I still remember how bad all the CoDs become when the next one comes out and how they'll utterly refuse to fix the mess that they become. However, this does not excuse Gearbox or anyone else *coughEAcough* for putting themselves into a position to need to do this in the first place.

I won't. I still haven't heard and official apology from Randy Pitchford or anyone at SEGA for screwing me and a lot of other people out of their money for this garbage. I still haven't heard any attempt at trying to make it up to us via a refund or some sort of free content. I don't really care that they're trying to make this terrible game slightly less terrible after the fact, they still screwed a lot of people over and we're owed an apology.

 

[AsurasEyes]

I hope to God that Jim Sterling (thank God for him) comments about this. Hearing him rant on about Aliens has made the internet so much more entertaining for me.

And maybe the improved graphics can help Aliens have more emotions.

How can we watch him comment on this?
He has no polygons.
He has no emotions.

 

[medv4380]

Is this still going to be released on the Wii U? Will they even bother at this point?

Hard to say. It's still listed as intended for the Wii U. I'm sure Nintendo was fighting to get it released on their system prior to the official release. They really want to improve their 3rd party support. Sega probably wanted to release it on the Wii U at the same time as the other releases. However, Nintendo has notoriously strict guidelines. Those guidelines have been the main obstruction for 3rd parties and Indies. Basically, Nintendo demands quality at release, and that's probably why it wasn't allowed to release at the same time as the others. At this point I doubt the game will ever get approved for release. It shows that Nintendo is right to be strict about quality, but they are still a bit of a pain to work with. Hopefully they can find a happy medium. I'd imagine Nintendo would have even rejected Skyrim if they were offered a version that played like the PS3 version. The problem with that is that if the developer says the reason the game isn't released is because Nintendo is holding it up people get mad at Nintendo. In hindsight I'm sure many PS3 owners would have rather Skyrim have missed its release date and been fixed first rather than deal with an unplayable version, but that's the catch. If it's not released you never really know, and you blame the process that protected you from the bad game. In this case everyone knows Aliens is a bad game so no one will hold it against Nintendo for rejecting the game.

 

[RicoADF]

They're trying, at least.
Though the mark was already been made at it's launch, and it's a nasty one.

Now if only someone who'd played the game before-hand could do so again, so he/she could say whether this patch made a huge difference.

Short answer yes, long answer involves a lot of missing limbs in a mission previously walked through without even trying. I heard comparisons with the old AVP in how their now actually dangerous and scary, oh and the acid blood, oh god I lost count how often I died from that after surviving a xeno attack. The graphics improvements confirm what I thought, they just turned the lights down and adjusted a few small details, it was never a big change from the demo.

 

[weirdee]

Unfortunately, no amount of patching will fix the story.

 

[Jedi-Hunter4]

Anybody got anything useful to say like:

Anyone got any significant description of what effect this patch has had on the playbilty of the game? graphics/ai etc

Or anyone know if this patch will come to console?

Personally after the bad bad reviews I was put off buying the game at RRP, planing to waiting for price to sink then picking it up, would be really useful to know how low to go if anyone has any insight on this patch? future patches or if they are even coming to consoles.

 

[Shadow-Phoenix]

Still no apology from Randy and this came a little too late.

Still not going to buy a Gearbox game ever again after this fiasco.

 

[Hazy]

I'm sick of developers treating patches as a "get out of quality control free" card.

Don't get me wrong, there are going to be bugs, and depending upon the size of your game, they're probably going to be quite hefty. But this is the shit you address before your game is shipped. It's evident that either no real testing was involved (which I find very hard to believe, given the length of this title's development process) or the testers were so incompetent at identifying problems that it should have been classified as "playing with a blindfold."

Too little, too late, guys.

Trust me, when you're in QA, you spot those bugs and bug the hell out of them, if for no other reason than sheer boredom. It's up to the dev team to actually fix them, and more often than not, they refuse.

It seems my fury was misguided then.

My bad, playtesters.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

The contents of this mammoth patch couldn't have been included some time during the lengthy development of this game why?

Because they were not done, because it was not ready, because it did not exist back then...

along those lines sounds pretty much within my tolerance of probability.

Pick one that tingles your fancybuds, it doesn't matter.

A DVD's worth of fix n patch data is... all sorts of wrong.

I find myself unable to accept that.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

A little bit too late Gearbox, I am not interested anymore.

 

[Steven Bogos]

Every Aliens Vs. Predator game has been a turd, at best only partially fun in spite of themselves. Why was anyone even excited for this, let alone expecting anything good?

You could not be more wrong. Aliens vs Predator (1999) and Aliens Versus Predator 2 (2001) for the PC were amazing games