I like Aliens: Colonial Marines

[wolfyrik]

First off, even games with release gameplay footage in their trailers are tailored to what the developers want you to see. World In Conflict was an RTS that showed cinematic views of their battles and claimed it was gameplay because it was rendered in real time with the games engine. I understand the feelings of betrayal, but this is hardly something new.

First off, that it isn't soemthing new, doesn't make it acceptable. GBX could have come clean, could have told us that the game has had problems and wasn't finished to standard, could have let reviewers have access to prerelease so that they could tell people how it played. They didn't. They lied, they kept up the charade and let people pay knowing that they had been dishonest and they continued to lie right up to release. This is not ok because other people have done it. Fraud is still fraud. No matter how many times it's committed.

Secondly, the bugs on release. Yes the game needs polishing. No it isn't as smooth as Halo. But let's think about other games. Dead Island had a bug where you could get stuck walking up stairs. This happened during a primary quest. The only way past it was jumping down the stairs, completing that part of the quest, quitting and reloading your game so that you would start at the lifeguard station. Fallout New Vegas had a bug that deleted your save. Let that sink in for a moment. Fallout would delete your save. That game takes a much longer time to play through making the investment you lost much greater. Yet there wasn't so much backlash against that game. I'm not saying that the bugs aren't there, I'm just stating that the response is far more intense than the bugs deserve.

This is a fair point but that doesn't negate the first reason people are annoyed and frankly, the bugs aren't what had people so angry. The bugs are just GBX kicking gamers while they're down.

Lastly, the idea that it doesn't feel like an Aliens game doesn't seem to hold. Let's think about what makes Aliens

Marines in a situation they don't have all the information about. Check.
Evil corporation putting profit above morality. Check.
Defending against lots of Aliens( and more to come in the dlc). Check.
Tense searching of the darkness for enemies. Check (in multiplayer).

This isn't evidence. You've just described half the sci-fi games of the last twenty years [hyperbole, I know]. This isn't what makes an "Aliens" experience. What makes Aliens, is tension, drama, suspense on top of the elements you've listed. What good is it having a few points if the AI, scripting and atmosphere are all entirely ruined? The lighting in the game is wrong. It's neither Aliens nor the dynamic lighting we were promised. Dissapointment and Con right there before we start.
The animation is neither Aliens nor dynamic enhanced as we were promised. It's shoddy, buggy as hell and entirely missing from many places such as the face-hugger samples. The Alien movement is the worst I've ever seen in an Alien based game. Including the old megadrive attempt at Alien 3.
The textures, oh god, the textures. Flat, faded, 6 year old. The textures are so shoddy in this game that they're arguably worse than AvP2. Modders are already doing a better job with basic software, only days after release, than GBX have managed in 6 Years of development.

I agree, that there could have been more scares or scripted moments in the campaign to give more of a jumpy, fleeing for your life feel, and that some of the areas could have been done better, but consider that for a 4 player co-op experience, scripting becomes difficult and clunky at best. Sometimes players are left out, sometimes all players see the same cutscene. When that happens in Aliens it breaks the co-op experience.

There could have been, but there aren't. It's the least that could be expected for 6 years work. This excuse of 4 player being difficult is laughable at best. AvP 1 and 2 had more players, on more maps, with better animations, upto ten years ago. If you're referring solely to the coop, this has also been managed by other games already. There's no excuse for failing to pull this off when there's a catalogue of previous games demonstrating how to do this. If they couldn't do it properly, they should have left it alone til they could do it properly. In six years of development, with other games under their belt, there is no excuse for GBX' failures. And definitely no excuse for hiding what had happened to the game from people until pre-orders were paid for.

Sure the game wasn't a 10/10 like everyone was hoping, but certainly it deserves better than "worst game ever" reviews. I played it on PC with 3 friends. It took us about 8 hours or so to complete the campaign, and the multiplayer is the best Aliens multiplayer that I've seen. This game is a shot at greatness that misses. But that doesn't mean it's bad. I feel like I've gotten my money's worth and then some, even though there are problems. I hope that in the next few months with DLC and patching that this game could be one to value in anyone's collection.

You;ve set your standards low, and GBX delivered low, so you're happy. I can sort of understand that. However what I can't understand is an attempt at defending excessively dodgy business practices. That you're hoping that the problems you yourself admit exist, will be fixed in DLC is the worst, most upsetting thing about your entire post. In essence what you're saying to GBX is
"well chaps, you dropped the ball, but I don't mind that you took my money and delivered a sub-par version of what you promised. In fact, although you should have done better, rather than fixing your mistakes and the lies, take some more of my money. I'll iterally pay you to consider doing what you should have done before launch".

Gearbox don't serve to be paid to fix their mistakes. No developer does. They should have delivered the game they promised and having failed to do that, they should now fix it off their own backs. If you bought a pair of £40 trousers from Topshop, took them home. Washed them and tried to wear them, only to find that the thread they used was subpar and had all but dissolved, bits were falling off as a result, you wouldn't then take them back and pay the staff to fix them for you. You'd get a refund or a replacement.
Gearbox and steam owe people a refund or a replacement. We want the version of the game we paid for, not one that falling a part at the seams, with it's buttons hanging off, held limply and tenously together by withered strands.

Plus it's and Aliens game. It's co-op. I for one support that even if it's bad because I want to see more of it.

Then show your distaste for the failures with the rest of us and demand the game you should have been given.

 

[Kukakkau]

Okay let's get started here...

snip

Firstly, yes pre release footage is subject to change, but some of the core features promised and shown were removed (dynamic lighting, good AI, suspense, marines dying around you, plot canon). All this was shown to us in a PR demo, just so you know this baiting and switching which is false advertisement and in a lot of countries is illegal. If I showed you a cheeseburger with salad in it and you asked then gave you two pieces of bread with a shoe sole in it, would you not feel cheated for your purchase? And yes games companies do this all the time, but never to extent as bad as ACM did it.

Right your second point you are mentioning single specific bugs for games, which could be bypassed. ACM has so many bugs you barely have to look for them. Doors don't function properly, sections of roof have empty space between them and the walls, you can clip out the map, you clip through NPCs in cutscenes, Bishop flies into the sky during a cutscene EVERY time you pass an alien it forgets you are there, you can push the raven boss through walls during the fight, it goes on. And these are just the ones I saw during my playthrough there are so many more. You mention Dead Island being buggy, okay how many games like it did Techland make before? Answer 0. How many FPS have gearbox made - quite a damn few. In fact one guy even completed most of the game by running past the aliens.

Marines in a situation they don't have all the information about - And how long does that last? There is no sense of "what is this thing how do I react?" all marines literally see their first alien and spray (often when the aliens are behind walls too). Hell the situation isn't even explained to the player - why are they harvesting aliens, where did they get people from, why are there so many mercenaries, why do they have marine weapons. It doesn't make sense and we get told nothing.

Evil corporation putting profit above morality - Again why? What reason? There's always a character in the films who is a rat and explains what they want from the aliens. In this all we know is there's some humans shoot them.

Defending against lots of Aliens( and more to come in the dlc) - Is it not sad that you need to look at DLC for this? Which will no doubt be paid DLC. And yes there is a lot of aliens attacking you at once... usually coming from 3 spawn points at most, running in a straight line at you and standing in front of you in a pose saying "hug me" before you shoot them with minimal effort. Hell I could do that in a nursery... although I might get charged for it.

Tense searching of the darkness for enemies. - There isn't any, the environments are mostly bright and enemies come straight to you. Spitters glow in the dark even so you don't even need to look, when they could be great hassling enemies. The lurker enemies don't even do as there name says - I had one literally tilt it's head through a door sit-com style to give itself away while it "looked" for me. Also you should not have to look to multiplayer for this in a survival horror game.

As you said it would have better with more scripted suspenseful moments - I can think of 3 at most in the whole game and considering the demo showcasing the first level alone showed around triple that, that is just shameful. There are no marines that die near you in this fashion, they are just your standard CoD style invincible 2 teammates that follow you around and can do everything for you. And yes cutscenes are broken, horribly so with only one player able to see most of the scene then the other players being warped into the scene at a random point, this happens at the end of the first level guaranteed every time you play it.

And a few more points for you:
- Co-op is no challenge, it's literally the same game and number of enemies as single player. You outgun enemies so fiercely and can revive easily
- Bosses are pathetic - the raven is literally a slap fight in the skid loader where it crab walks around, the crusher you run in circles till the AI kills it for you and the queen you beat by having someone hide in a crate and other players push buttons, she just stares at that player till you are done
- Hicks is in the game for no reason - they advertised that an Aliens film cast member would be in the game in a canon fashion. And what we get is Hicks randomly there and when asked who was in his statis pod then he literally replies "I don't feel like explaining it". Thanks no fans wanted to know that at all Gearbox.
- Atmosphere is completely lost - again demo showed tons and the final product you spend a ton of time in big open spaces with aliens running at you from far away in a straight line. Very few dark confined areas that make you look around in panic. The most atmosphere I had was some of the first level and the "stealth" section, then it was all gone and a joke.
- Face huggers are a miniscule presence - you literally only run into these things in 2 parts for maybe a total of 10 of them. They are a small enemy that coming out of nowhere would scare people, they can be used in so many areas to create a panic but they just aren't there
- Multiplayer - we found it to be pretty poorly balanced in most game modes with humans being able to group together and win far too easily with the only way xenos could counteract to get the boiler...which has a large respawn delay. Escape is so heavily tailored to marines with them able to take huge amounts of damage and being able to get armour and health every few steps. Infestation was the closest we found to a balanced experience with both sides having to move and being equally killable.

Now if this was an indie game and hadn't been in development for 7-8 years this could be overlooked. But for a mainstream title people have been waiting for in anticipation and priced at the standard retail, this is just shocking. Think what you will of it, but it honestly is a terrible sorry excuse of a game. I went into it expecting something roughly average , and I finished it literally feeling depressed from something I already had pretty low hopes for.

There was a quote on an article I read about this game that is my favourite:
Aliens Colonial Marines is a game whose only redeeming quality is to remind us of a film from 27 years ago

 

[Auron]

Good for you. I've heard the MP is fun, provided it doesn't lag, and that the campaign is a blast in co-op on Ultimate Badass. I hope it lives up to what hype is left. Anyone interested in Co-Op'ing on Steam?

I'm definitely up for it. My steam should be on my profile.

Myself? I played the campaign solo and enjoyed it. There was some really iffy writing, and I don't like their lazy retconning, but I can just pretend that it isn't canon, like A:R, AVP and AVP 2. As far as I'm concerned, the trilogy is all that matters, and the trilogy is one of the best things to come out of cinema ever.

Trilogy which trilogy? Alien, Aliens and that travesty with a 3 on the title?

 

[Sonofadiddly]

Haven't played much of the campaign. So far I don't give even a single crap about the characters but waiting for that first alien to attack was pretty tense.

Games being buggy on release seems par for the course these days. Though I would love the game a whole lot more if the "pounce" ability worked better.

That being said, I cannot stop playing the multiplayer. I just cannot get enough of murdering humans as an alien.

No, I haven't played those other Alien games where the multiplayer is apparently really good.

What can I say? I just love murdering annoying generic soldier types by impaling them with my spike tail.

 

[Chairman Miaow]

Good for you. I've heard the MP is fun, provided it doesn't lag, and that the campaign is a blast in co-op on Ultimate Badass. I hope it lives up to what hype is left. Anyone interested in Co-Op'ing on Steam?

I'm definitely up for it. My steam should be on my profile.

Myself? I played the campaign solo and enjoyed it. There was some really iffy writing, and I don't like their lazy retconning, but I can just pretend that it isn't canon, like A:R, AVP and AVP 2. As far as I'm concerned, the trilogy is all that matters, and the trilogy is one of the best things to come out of cinema ever.

Trilogy which trilogy? Alien, Aliens and that travesty with a 3 on the title?

3 Is my favourite. Come at me bro. Anyway, there's plenty of stuff lying around the web explaining why 3 isn't as bad as you think it is, I'm not going to just regurgitate their ideas as my own, but Jim's movie defence force may be a place to start. Either way, I'd recommend you watch it again with an open mind. If you don't like it fair enough, but I feel a lot of people were too quick to judge.

 

[J Tyran]

The level where you don't have a gun was an interesting concept though, nice and oppressive.

That level was brilliant, dodging the exploding Aliens and having to desperately weld the doors shut behind you to try and get away from the crusher.

 

[cschraer]

To everyone saying..."Why post this?" or "it's ok that you like it but that doesn't make it good."

I posted this because I think it's not bad. Not that it's good, but that it's not bad. It upsets me that the metacritic score is in the 40's. I objectively think this game is better than that. It upset me that everyone is bashing a game that isn't that bad, and that the result of said bashing could destroy or hinder a sequel.

 

[Marik2]

So like I should wait till price drops and get it for multiplayer?

 

[Poetic Nova]

To each their own, I like Duke Nukem Forever.

 

[Therumancer]

The only part of this that is relevent is the way they produced false information to pre-sell the game, ultimatly making promises that they did not keep.... and defrauding the public.

Bugs are something people can deal with, they just add more rage when there are other problems. All games have them, and whether a developer is hated or forgiven for them depends on the general reception of the game.

When it comes to the central premise, The Xenomorphs are nasty, but aren't all that big a deal without some really contrived situations. The Colonial Marines should have a pretty bloody good chance of handling them when properly armed and prepared, even if they don't have enough information. "Alien" revolved around an unprepared group of space truckers that were out of their depth "Aliens" revolved around not only a lack of information, but also disarming the marines (a key element of the storyline) which is what put them into the position they were in, as they got ambushed while only in possession of a few holdout clips. A pretty straightforward FPS is pretty much how a straight "marines fight the aliens" set up... which this is, would turn out. I've said this before, and really anyone who was expecting this to be a survival horror game, or anything like the first movie at all, was probably going to be sorely disappointed and should have gotten that right from the presentation.

At the end of the day though this isn't just a crappy shooter with high ambition, it's a crappy shooter that was promoted as being something else with counterfeit material, and direct lies. Gearbox (and yes they are responsible, their name is on the box, no matter what they claim) deliberatly defrauded the public by convincing people they were going to be getting something very differant, and of much higher quality, than the actual product they delivered.

That said, as much as I dig Aliens, I am not a FPS gamer, as such I did not pre-order this or buy it. My attitude was "maybe if it drops in price massively" as such I'm sort of detached from the entire arguement, but I still know what it's about.

At the end of the day liking Aliens:CM is irrelevent, the bottom line is what Gearbox did to promote it. It's sort of like why people got all up in arms about "Mass Effect 3", the ending was crap, but at the end of the day it's about what EA/Bioware directly promised people, did not deliver, and then revealed through a downloadable behind the scenes app that they never had any intention of delivering it. Thus people saying "well, I didn't think the ending was that bad" (assuming they are honest) or singing the praises of the game aside from the ending, miss the entire point. If someone tells you one thing to get you to buy a product, and then turns out to be lying, you have every right to be royally slotted off. Gearbox did pretty much the same thing, except where Bioware had developers telling those following the games things, and making promises/saying what they were doing, Gearbox went so far as to produce demos and saying "This is the game you'll be buying in action" when it wasn't even close. That's like being sold a Cubic Zirconium, by someone claiming it's a diamond, and then being to take someone seriously who upon seeing your rage goes "durrr, well they both sparkle, what are you upset about?".

 

[Otaku World Order]

I've finished about half the campaign. It has it's moments, but mostly it's decidedly a mediocre shooter.

Good for you. I've heard the MP is fun, provided it doesn't lag, and that the campaign is a blast in co-op on Ultimate Badass. I hope it lives up to what hype is left. Anyone interested in Co-Op'ing on Steam?

I'm definitely up for it. My steam should be on my profile.

Myself? I played the campaign solo and enjoyed it. There was some really iffy writing, and I don't like their lazy retconning, but I can just pretend that it isn't canon, like A:R, AVP and AVP 2. As far as I'm concerned, the trilogy is all that matters, and the trilogy is one of the best things to come out of cinema ever.

Trilogy which trilogy? Alien, Aliens and that travesty with a 3 on the title?

Which eventually became a "Quadrilogy", as they call it.

I will give "Colonial Marines" the credit of coming up with something even more ridiculous and stupid then a clone Ripley with full memories and an Alien Queen still inside her.

 

[RicoADF]

Good for you. I've heard the MP is fun, provided it doesn't lag, and that the campaign is a blast in co-op on Ultimate Badass. I hope it lives up to what hype is left. Anyone interested in Co-Op'ing on Steam?

Sure, add me and we can get some games in.

OT: I also enjoy the game, the changes aren't that great and frankly I'm ashamed that there's such a backlash over nothing with ACM yet other games from certain devs are allowed to continue certain questionable practises.