Aleens: Coloneeal Mareens

[MopBox]

I think what everyone likes to forget is that Borderland was a suprise hit. I liked the game, but it was made to be shovelware and it just took off by the grace of god. What else has gearbox actually made outside of the series?

 

[The Wooster]

I think what everyone likes to forget is that Borderland was a suprise hit. I liked the game, but it was made to be shovelware and it just took off by the grace of god. What else has gearbox actually made outside of the series?

A really good Half Life expansion and several Brothers in Arms games.

 

[Darth_Payn]

I wonder, what are those 3 games they mentioned to have turned the fans against BioWare?
Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 2 are obvious, but I have no idea what the third is.

I was confused about this too. I know that Dragon Age 2 is one of them, but the other two I don't know. Mass Effect 3 was great until that which won't be named, SW:TOR from what I heard was good but not the next greatest MMO it was hyped up to be. Maybe that Baulder's Gate remake?

Depends on your opinions I guess. There's many that found TOR a massive disappointment, but I gotta feeling it'll hold enough of a fanbase to live as a F2P game for years. It's not exactly innovative, and this is coming from someone who still subs to TOR. It just wasn't anything special other than the story and the dialogue, and there's a rather small demographic looking for that in MMOs. Most want endgame content and PVP, and TOR doesn't do either terribly well, even after this long. But I'm of the mindset that the story and dialogue are enough for me, and I don't play it enough that I'll burn through the game anytime soon. So as long as the story still interests me, and as long as my friends still play it, I'll still be around.

Wow, this sure digressed away from the comic, which was funny and cute. But then, it's Cory and Grey's fault for saying bioWare's made 3 bad games and not telling us what. I get some people may not like TOR because it feels more like a single player RPG with 1000's of other players, but that's why I like it and keep playing it. It tried something different by having some real story in it besides the usual grindtastic quests.
But back to the strip, it's rightous burn on the latest spit-shined turd that dares to carry the name ALIENS.

 

[MopBox]

I think what everyone likes to forget is that Borderland was a suprise hit. I liked the game, but it was made to be shovelware and it just took off by the grace of god. What else has gearbox actually made outside of the series?

A really good Half Life expansion and several Brothers in Arms games.

You know what? You're right. I completely forgot about Opposing Forces, primarily because it came out in 1999. But were any of the Brothers in Arms games better than mediocre?

 

[UnderGlass]

I don't mean to inflame, but I wonder how any of the last three Bioware games qualify as even remotely bad. One of them is technically The Escapist's latest Game of the Year. Nothing makes me more sad in the games industry today than the amount of shit Bioware gets for slight flaws in otherwise great games. Especially in the RPG genre which I always considered quite tolerant of big flaws in otherwise great games (see Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, any Fallout game). Especially especially when compared to stuff like DNF and (apparently) ACM that has the same price tag. But that's just me.

Thanks for the comment. Bad is relative in this case. I thought DA2 was alright, better than its predecessor in some ways, profoundly worse in others. Likewise ME3 and TOR have their merits, they're just massive letdowns.

I'm not a BioWare fan (they've actually never written a plot I'd call good. Characters, yes. Plot, no.) but I'd quite happily take on of their games over something from Capcom or Bethesda.

Me neither. I'm a huge fan of rpgs, old-school and otherwise, and appreciate Bioware's focus on writing. But I far preferred Black Isle's output for the infinity engine and would take an Obsidian, daring failure over a lukewarm Bioware game any day.

I really don't think they deserve the vile lashing they are receiving right now though. For me they simply peaked at KOTOR (until I played KOTOR 2) and Jade Empire (until I reached the end) and then I was all like, meh. Their games are polished, but competently average and the towering expectations (and subsequent rage) of their fans honestly baffles me.

Captcha: Radio, live transmission! Woo! Punk lives in the spambot filters of the world

EDIT: Clarification

 

[FrostyChick]

its one of those things, where the longer you watch it, the funnier it gets, yet the sadder it gets at the same time

Please tell me that isn't real. If it wasn't for the HUD I could just write it off as a Garry's Mod video. But why would someone release something like that? ._.

 

[Vault101]

I wonder, what are those 3 games they mentioned to have turned the fans against BioWare?
Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 2 are obvious, but I have no idea what the third is.

mass effect 3 wasnt bad it just.....well thats kind of a complicated issue

 

[Vault101]

its one of those things, where the longer you watch it, the funnier it gets, yet the sadder it gets at the same time

NEEEARRRGGGHHH damn kids fir'n guns all round the place...where did I put my glasses!!??

 

[Triforceformer]

I think what everyone likes to forget is that Borderland was a suprise hit. I liked the game, but it was made to be shovelware and it just took off by the grace of god. What else has gearbox actually made outside of the series?

How exactly is Borderlands shovelware? I really wish to see your logic behind that. Gearbox also made the Half-Life expansions, which were well recieved, and the Brothers in Arms series which was a moderate success as far as I know.

 

[Vault101]

This is the funniest strip I have seen in a very very long time, but it's that one small Bioware portion of the post-strip comment that really makes me want to respond (first post ever, anywhere, yay!). And I apologise in advance for making a point that's probably been made a million times over.

I don't mean to inflame, but I wonder how any of the last three Bioware games qualify as even remotely bad. One of them is technically The Escapist's latest Game of the Year. Nothing makes me more sad in the games industry today than the amount of shit Bioware gets for slight flaws in otherwise great games. Especially in the RPG genre which I always considered quite tolerant of big flaws in otherwise great games (see Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, any Fallout game). Especially especially when compared to stuff like DNF and (apparently) ACM that has the same price tag. But that's just me.

Also I don't think it took three games for the fans to turn on Bioware, I felt like the vocal ones turned right after DA2 and they were already turned by the time ME3 came out. I almost think the players who like BioWare don't post on forums all that much (say like, for example, myself) - at least that's the only explanation I can find for ME3 being voted GotY here after nearly a year of ME3 rage in the threads.

I know..its getting kind of depressing, hell ME3 actually DID fulfill my expectations right up untill the ending

 

[Darks63]

If the aliens randomly dance in the game I'll Redbox it

its one of those things, where the longer you watch it, the funnier it gets, yet the sadder it gets at the same time

If you watch Angry Joe's review he shows a alien thats glitched so its doing the dance that the chestburster did in spaceballs.


Edit: whoops looks like frappe beat me to it

 

[Draconalis]

its one of those things, where the longer you watch it, the funnier it gets, yet the sadder it gets at the same time

"Oh no! Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go. Doing the pee pee dance! Cause I really gotta pee pee and I don't wanna do it on myself. It's called the pee pee dance!"

 

[Vivi22]

Gearbox also made the Half-Life expansions, which were well recieved

If we're going to get technical here, only Opposing Force was well received. Blue Shift wasn't completely terrible, but it was pretty mediocre compared to HL and OF. None of their other stuff for Valve got released except CS: Condition Zero, which they didn't start out developing, and which they didn't even finish before it got handed off to another company to complete.

So if we're going to use their collaborations with Valve to give credibility to their development history, I don't think one good expansion, one mediocre one, and one title that got passed off to another developer to complete is the greatest track record to be honest.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I haven't played the game or the demo, but judging by Jim Sterling's video it baffles me that they'd go to all the trouble to release a demo that is better than the finished product. I mean you can talk about cut content, but that doesn't account for having enemy AI that is better in the demo then it is in the finished product. This is why I've lost faith in the games industry.

Well, there have been (well founded) accusations that the demo was entirely scripted. Which means there was no AI present in the video at all.

Still seems like a waste of resources to me, but then what do I know about marketing?

 

[LordMonty]

This is why trade ins are good. Frankly I am massively disapointed but my friends love it because they really love aliens but i cannot even with love allow substandard crap to slip past me. Make a stand tell people to shove it and raise there standards!

 

[Treblaine]

The PC version of Halo was excellent, and the PS2 version of Half-Life was far ahead of console ports of the time (revamped graphics, good performance, USB mouse+keyboard support)...

Well that's nothing to do with game design, that's a port job and porting is not hard, you just have to have the source code available and not do the bare freaking minimum.

Also that was a long time ago.

I'm looking back at Gearbox's Opposing Force in a different light, standing on its own merits and not just coasting in on Half Life 1's coattails... it's awful.

Borderlands... ehhh, I haven't cared enough about it. The "quadrillion-squintillion weapons" comes across as a gimmick when you realise they are including every tiny permutation as a discrete weapon, anyone who knows any maths knows permutations can get HUGE with even a few variables. And it hardly sends the message that the weapons will be well balanced. I'd rather have 12 well balanced weapons than a random combination of weapon attributes.

 

[Treblaine]

If the aliens randomly dance in the game I'll Redbox it

If the aliens randomly dance in the game I'll Redbox it

its one of those things, where the longer you watch it, the funnier it gets, yet the sadder it gets at the same time

The Critical Miss comic is actually not far from the truth ether. That little dancing panel you saw- yea.

Spoiler

This game had such potential to be INTENTIONALLY a funny game

 

[Joccaren]

I don't mean to inflame, but I wonder how any of the last three Bioware games qualify as even remotely bad. One of them is technically The Escapist's latest Game of the Year. Nothing makes me more sad in the games industry today than the amount of shit Bioware gets for slight flaws in otherwise great games. Especially in the RPG genre which I always considered quite tolerant of big flaws in otherwise great games (see Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, any Fallout game). Especially especially when compared to stuff like DNF and (apparently) ACM that has the same price tag. But that's just me.

To be fair it all depends on what you want out of the games.
The RPG genre is fairly tolerant of flaws in games, so long as the game still focuses on being an RPG. You don't find a lot of true RPGs out there these days, and thus people tend to become rather aggressive against games that change from being primarily RPG to being primarily something else.
This is where a lot of the hate for some of Bioware's games comes from. DA2 as an example, where the second can still technically be played like an RPG if you try to, and you bump it up a few difficulty levels, but otherwise plays largely like a Hack'N'Slash with some levelling options. You spam buttons at enemies that randomly appear on the battlefield in fast paced combat, not greatly RPG like. Additionally things like removing armours for followers and just having upgrades that you can only buy at one point in the game and if you miss them are gone for good kinda went against the RPG nature of things too.
ME3... Play ME1 after it and tell me they feel like the same series. You've got the same protagonist, largely the same cast, same world - but they don't feel alike. Its like watching return of the Jedi then Revenge of the Sith. Things like the removal of player choice when it comes to most of the dialogue in the game, as well as increased focus on combat and action based problems as opposed to exploration of the world and more thought based problems took ME2 and turned it even more shooter, despite it supposedly going back to its RPG roots. Then there were the sidequest and journal issues and a bunch of other things that bit by bit wore people out on the game.
I don't think anyone will deny that ME3s combat is the best in the series [Except Infiltrator IMO. I still want to be able to snipe enemies from 1Km away, like I could in ME1, but that's more level design really], but along with the improved combat everything else took a turn to be more actiony - which is not what a lot of people wanted from Mass Effect. Even the story took a more action based turn, and was focused more on space ninja fights and explosions than in finding a way to stop the Reapers or gaining allies.

To be fair I don't entirely blame Bioware for this. Reasons for them doing each thing based off fan feedback can be found [I.E; less dialogue because most of the dialogue was almost the same anyway], however their way of fixing such complaints was the easy and lazy way out a lot of the time, which wasn't what people wanted [Removing choice from dialogue as opposed to improving the options you're given in dialogue].

Also I don't think it took three games for the fans to turn on Bioware, I felt like the vocal ones turned right after DA2 and they were already turned by the time ME3 came out. I almost think the players who like BioWare don't post on forums all that much (say like, for example, myself) - at least that's the only explanation I can find for ME3 being voted GotY here after nearly a year of ME3 rage in the threads.

I don't know. After DA2 a lot of people felt burned, but were fairly willing to forgive Bioware 'cause they said they were making ME3 epic, with tons of promises that sadly never came to be. People were definitely somewhat cautious of Bioware after DA2, but ME3 was the tipping point. Its why, if you go back through a thousand or so threads to the ones made near the start of the whole fiasco, you'll find a lot of people who say "I could understand DA2 thanks to its rushed schedule, I didn't care about SWTOR 'cause I wasn't into KotOR anyway, but this is it", or variants thereof basically forgiving DA2, SWTOR and ME2, dependent on what a given person liked, and damning ME3.
And yeah, most people who liked ME3 don't comment that much 'cause it does cause flamewars quickly. As we can see from a reference made to Bioware as opposed to even Mass Effect, there's been a few posts in this thread already discussing the issue =/

 

[Skeleon]

That should make you feel better.

If we die this day we die in glory... heroes' deaths... but we shall not die... no, it is the enemy who will taste death!
Yay! So rallying! So eloquent!

 

[Erttheking]

If the aliens randomly dance in the game I'll Redbox it

If the aliens randomly dance in the game I'll Redbox it

its one of those things, where the longer you watch it, the funnier it gets, yet the sadder it gets at the same time

The Critical Miss comic is actually not far from the truth ether. That little dancing panel you saw- yea.

Well, there's only one appropriate response to this.