Jimquisition: A-LIE-ns: Colonial Marines

[RJ 17]

Wow, the game was so bad that Jim actually did a "Special Edition" just to express his distaste for it.

I'm probably just trying to force myself, but I at least found the game moderately enjoyable. But then again, I'm a huge fan of the series. I've heard some say that's even more of a reason to feel insulted by this, but by "big fan" I simply mean I love the movies and have liked every Aliens and/or Predator game I've played, yet I'm just ignorant enough of the full scope of the lore that the "Big Canon-Destroying Twist" didn't strike me as a huge mistake.

That said, I won't deny that I'm disappointed in it for the very reason this video exists: it was nothing like what was shown to us. The AI in particular doesn't leave much to be desired, it leaves EVERYTHING to be desired. This game suffered the same fate as Duke Nukem Forever in that it spent almost the same amount of time in developement hell. It never stood a chance of living up to how awesome and amazing it was supposed to be. At least with Duke, there's the flimsy argument of "Well, it IS a Duke Nukem game, just what WERE you expecting?" But in this case, there are examples of genuinely good aliens-based games (AvP2 for the PC standing out as the gold-star example in my book).

But I preordered it which means I bought it. I've completed the campaign but haven't touched the multiplayer yet, I hear that aspect of it is actually pretty good (and the aspect that Gearbox actually worked on while Time Gate did the campaign).

 

[Therumancer]

So, basically... False advertising? Isn't that against the law in the US of A?

Yes, but the issue is one where you have to ask who will bring the case. We've been down this path before. Take say "Mass Effect 3" for example, when you get past the details of the ending, there is a bottom line where we have tons of solid information and promises saying specifically that is not the kind of ending we'd get, combined with an App showing that behind the scenes they had no intention of keeping those promises. Love it, hate it, or feel the whole situation is overblown... the bottom line is EA/Bioware very clearly and directly lied to people, they promised things they did not deliver on, and were shown to have had no intention of delivering on. I believe there was an attempt to bring this to court, but like most things it fell apart, and I don't think it was ever heard in court, or if it was it probably wasn't represented properly.

See, a big part of the problem is that all of the big lawyers that know enough to fight entertainment companies like this, work for those companies, or at least get paid a small fee to create a "conflict of interests" and prevent them from representing another side. A common tactic for big business, you ensure none of the guys that can seriously hurt you or play the game will ever be able to. Lawyers are in business so they are typically more than happy to take the money. You run into this whenever you want to fight big businesses all the time. For example when I was screwed by my employer, it took an act of congress to even find a lawyer who COULD represent me, and thousands of dollars later he just wasn't able to practically force them to face me off of the Reservation (ie under state/federal law) where I would have won, since he just didn't have the connections and knowhow to work the process. I was badly screwed, and 100% right, but the game was basically loaded against me from the beginning.

The gaming industry also got wise to this a while back, and you might notice they have started writing things into EULAs about people using their products giving up the right to engage in class action suits and/or other coordinated legal action. Meaning you have to pay for your own lawyer and go after them as an individual, as opposed to getting say 5000 angry people together, pooling resources and then being able to potentially finannce and maintain a legal effort against a big business assuming they could find someone with the right expertise to make it possible. How this applies in the case of Gearbox I do not know, but it seems to be an issue, and I remember reading about it (even on The Escapist if I remember) when we first started seeing the trend appear.

That's the problem with big business, the safeguards that exist against them are not practical to use. They haven't done anything illegal by simply making it nearly impossible for you to pursue legal action against them.

At the end of the day any person POed about losing $50 on a video game to the point of wanting to go after a video game company, probably doesn't have any clue of how to contact an expert in the right kind of law, never mind find a lawyer who is enough of an expert to pursue a case like this the right way, from the right angles, with the right precedents to have a chance. Assuming he could find someone, how the hell does he pay that person in what is liable to be a long case? When a business has tons of money, and you operate out of pocket, a common strategy is just to engage in delaying tactics to draw things out and render you unable to sustain your own lawyer/legal team. Then of course by drawing out the process they run up their own legal bills, which in of themselves become a deterrant because then the guy gets stuck with them if they lose. At this level the guy could be gambling his entire future livelyhood on the fact that someone lied to him and cost him a personal stake of like $50.

This isn't exactly expertly written, but it's a general breakdown of why it being illegal doesn't matter. Breaking the law doesn't much matter if you can't afford justice. In theory you could convince the state to pursue it as a criminal matter, but at the end of the day the state probably isn't going to want to use it's resources over something as trivial as a video game producer, they are liable to suggest the civil court system to you anyway. The state can choose when and when not to pursue charges.... which is also incidently why so many businesses pursue govermental contacts and finance politicians. It's high corruption, but if the governor or DA owes you a favor, it doesn't much matter if your wrong or not if the state just chooses not to pursue the case and decides to never accept there being enough evidence even when there is. Sure that's high corruption, and can ruin careers, but only if you can prove that's going on and of course find someone who cares enough about corruption over a business issue to care. If it's something like a video game, the odds of some CNN reporter or whatever with the juice to pull this off deciding to champion your corruption story are slim, because at the end of the day you personally only got screwed out of $50 no matter how big the issue was overall.

I'll also say it's not just an American issue, at the end of the day pretty much every major nation's legal system is corrupt in the same basic ways. It's why the crusading lawyers and cops and such are so popular in the civilized world as fantasy characters... it's escapism from how screwed up the system really tends to be. It's nice to see a fantasy story where the evil corperations take a beating at the hands of some lawyer that (lulz) doesn't care about money, or some DA who (lulz) doesn't care about his political career. UK Crime Dramas, Japan's "Pheonix Wright" games... all kind of tap into the same frustration on some level I think.

At any rate I'm rambling the point is that while it sucks, chances are this is illegal in pretty much every civilized nation they sold it in, but at the same time it's unlikely it could ever be pursued in any of those nations in a practical sense. All of which is why I talk about the fantasy of gamers standing up to the companies by you know, costing them money, and just not buying their products, while ramping up the toxic behavior and letting no supporting voice go unopposed. That's crazy fantasy, but the sad thing is that rallying gamers (which is like herding cats) is more plausible than you know... having the problem handled legally because they did something like fraud... heck the legal system is so messed up that there are probably arguements that could be made now that despite lying and trying to pass off their game as something other than it was, it wasn't actually fraud, and that somehow it was all legitimate to screw people... because the legal system is just that far gone when it comes to this kind of thing.

 

[Jimothy Sterling]

Jim, why was Rebellion's AvP so... mediocre? I am only just going through it (Picked it up for $5.00) and so far it seems fun. The Marine campaign, while short so far, is actually tense and frightening. Does something happen later in the game that ruins it?

Also, I have to agree wholeheartedly with Aliens: Colonial Marines. I bought the Collector's Edition, only to return it that day after playing a friend's copy at his house. We both beat the game in under 8 hours. That shouldn't happen.

Here's my old review of AvP. I have a kind of weird fondness for it, but it had too many issues for me to simply ignore: http://www.destructoid.com/review-aliens-vs-predator-164318.phtml

 

[Imp_Emissary]

Spoiler: There is so not a facehugger in here. Please open....

I'll start right off the bat by saying I don't know when this demo was made, but surely a game that has been in development for seven years will have some content cut from it that was at some point meant to be included? Fair enough if this demo is six months old then there is no excuse for it, but if this demo is older than that and is showing a sequence that was going to be in the game but then got cut after the demo was made, well, is it that bad?

Incidentally Jim, Facehuggers only twitch if it's love at first sight. Maybe this one just didn't feel your vibe.

Spoiler: Really there are no facehuggers in these. Open them. NOW.

Well my grouchy friend, it's not really so much that they removed the specific part where you "go do whatever", but rather (from what Jim has said in the viedo) it's more about the bigger "long term" things. Like the lack of detail in levels, the aliens not attacking smartly, the aliens not being introduced in such cool ways, and the little things like the facehuggers trying to say " HI!" It's more about removing those things, and not so much about just not having the same levels as in the demo.

That's what I think is more of what the issue is.
May you have a nice day.

Spoiler: See. I said there were no facehuggers. :)....Don't open this one...

I told you...

I see where you're coming from, but it just doesn't sit right with me. The lack of detail in levels - well that's just a case of scaling a PC release to a console release isn't it (and I say that as a console owner, to forestall PC Masterace comments). Aliens not attacking smartly? Jim cites aliens not exiting and then re-entering vents to flank players as a feature that has been removed, but I saw evidence of this as early as the tutorial mission, not to mention through future levels. Aliens not getting the dramatic reveal they deserve ... fair do's, A:CM is pretty much guilty as charged on this point. At the end of the day a video game is much like a film in it's development, which is to say you'll always end up with a section on the bonus disc labelled 'deleted scenes'. I'm not saying A:CM is fault free (far from it in truth) but I am surprised by how quickly people have been to condemn a game whose only real 'crime' - and I use the term very loosely - is being average.

Anyhow I realise you weren't really wanting a back-and-forth but I felt the need to clarify my initial post. May you yourself have a good evening. *doffs cap*

Not much of an Alien fan, so I can't really say much about the quality(or lack there of) of the game(especially because I have not played the game).

I was just saying that Jim's argument was more about all the little(or big depending on how you look at it) things that were taken away from the game rather than some parts(levels I guess you could say).

As for people being mad at the game even though it's just "average"? Well, this is Aliens, and that bit of fiction has a very big/passionate fanbase. So, you could say the okay, or good enough is just not "adequate".

Also, don't be sorry about giving me a response! For someone with Grouchy in their name you have been very polite. Thank you for that, and the returned wish of a good time.

 

[Therumancer]

Jesus. I thought people were blowing how bad the game was out of proportion by comparing it to Duke Nukem, but Christ if this true Gearbox really dropped the ball.

To be honest, it isn't ALL Gearbox's fault. Most of the game was developed out of studio, while the demo itself was developed in-house, at least from what I have heard.

If it is 100% true, then I wish Gearbox would have kept the entire thing in-house as it might have been a good game, otherwise. We have a few Gearbox employee's on the escapist. I wish they could go into more detail about this.

To be honest, I think this is part of the problem, even we the fans like to try and play "pass the buck" especially when it comes to a favorite developer. We actualyl wind up manufacturing excuses for the things we should be attacking.

To my way of thinking there should be no justification for Gearbox, their name is involved, as are those of others. Everyone involved should be facing the fires of boundless rage. Naming others involved should not be done to excuse or reduce blame on one or more participants, but to build the fire higher, and simply draw more people into it.

In short what we really need is an Inquisition (more than just a Jimquisition), angry fans running around the industry roasting, burning, and money depriving anyone even remotely involved. You don't let the witch go because someone suggests that little timmy's stomach ache might have come from eating too many apples as opposed to the evil eye, you throw the guy who runs the orchard onto the pyre too.... or simply, anyone even remotely associated with kind of thing needs to be made into a target. We as gamers need to take "well technically I didn't have much to do with that" or "I'm just a developer, it was all marketing" as feeble excuses... sort of like a Nazi camp guard saying "I didn't kill any Jews, I just stood outside the door, I was just following orders", we should give no mercy. Or to use another extreme example... pretend it's Warhammer 40k and we're about to declare Exterminatus on the companies involved.

This might not be nice, or fair, and to some might even undermine my arguement, but understand that playing "pass the buck" is an old corperate tool that survives because people let it work. Blame gets passed around until people get bored waiting for it to rest, and eventually some elected scapegoat gets slammed, and the guys who are really responsible get away with it as the trend continues and nothing changes... as a result, you need to hold everyone, even those remotely involved, responsible, and not take any dodges or pleas of innocence about who did what seriously. The game says "Gearbox", they are responsible, if they passed part of it off to someone else, they are also responsible, Sega allowed all of this to happen, they are responsible, the pizza guy fed them during their lunch breaks providing substinance while they perpetuated their deception.... umm, okay well maybe there does have to be a limit... but still not much of one.

 

[Best of the 3]

This reminds me of the same issue but for Far Cry 3's demo. I saw the gameplay scene compared to the demo, and yes, some of it was spruced up. Some people were placed in different places (and added), the areas looked nicer in the demo. However it's countered by the fact that Far Cry 3 will have had a whole world to explore, giving you probably multiple chances to play similar experiences, or little moments, in different areas. Whereas the demo had to show as much as it could in a small area and so had a reason to include stuff that wouldn't have been in that area of the finish game.

ACM on the other hand is a linear game. You're going to have to go through the moments which are shown in the demo and do them in almost exactly the same way. The approaches to the gameplay were never going to be as varied as say open world games which to me is what makes this all the more shocking.

Also on a side note, I heard this single player was outsourced and produced by someone else, not Gearbox. Can anyone confirm or deny that? I'd be interested to know for sure.

I wasn't terribly interested in this game from the start. More so to do with the Aliens IP. I was just never that into them. But I think it's a massive shame what this game has turned out to be and disheartening for my view on Gearbox, which had picked up after playing Borderlands 2. I hope it doesn't happen with any other titles by Gearbox, or any other developer/publisher that I am looking forward to in the near future. I'm looking at you Rome 2 Total War and Bioshock Infinite and.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go argue with my dad whether he should buy this game or not.

 

[Groenteman]

And here is why I dont pre-order games.

This demo realy takes the cake though. Im guessing the vast majourity of that all was scripted, with the intent of making it happen naturaly once the game finished. Except they never got around to making a decent AI or animations.

The enviroments are just weird though. It was work allready done, which they later reduced for... what reason?

 

[Ulquiorra4sama]

Well hey, look on the bright side.

At least Gearbox have now managed to blow a massive hole in Jesse Scehll's "Demos hurt sales" theory.

 

[BloodRed Pixel]

So,... they HAD a (near) perfect and intense game with intelligent AI and CUT IT ALL OUT!

 

[Canadamus Prime]

You have to wonder why they'd go to all the trouble to produce a demo that was better than the finished product. Also wouldn't this qualify as false advertising?

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

OK...

But WHAT ABOUT THE MULTIPLAYER? Is it half-way decent? I've already asked this in a similar thread but everyone's apparently still too busy crying about the campaign. Yes, it's crap. Didn't happen. Sorry. Let's move on now, shall we?

This game was supposed to be all about the single-player; homages to the movies and being a "true sequel" to Cameron's film, something that they so ecstatically advertised. That is what the market wanted, that is what it was marketed on.

The fact that they dropped the ball so hard on that is worth every second of analysis, criticism and complaint it gets.

You have AVP. You don't need this one. Enough games go to shit because they crowbar-in multiplayer.

 

[Naqel]

snip

You make a lot of valid points, and the entire situation is more than fishy.
But honestly, while half the video is the valid points: missing features, different mechanics, level of polish... then the other half is you saying "this dosen't happen" about a scene/story element/plot detail.

It kinda takes away from the overall point of the video whenever you mention something that's a legitimate demo practice alongside all the actual bullshit that Gearbox pulled off here.

Then again, I might just be nitpicking, because I actually like when a demo has a dedicated sequence, instead of plot spoilers.

 

[dragongit]

I haven't seen game controversy this bad since the WarZ

 

[TWEWER]

It says it right at the beginning: "Work in progress." That means everything is subject to change.

You know what else was a fake scripted demo? The E3 Halo 2 demo. Evey smart developer makes scripted trailers, but that doesn't mean that the games themselves will be bad. Do you really not have anything better to do than make this masturbatory video?

 

[Johnny Impact]

Ouch. Glad I didn't preorder.

I was honestly looking forward to this. I was envisioning a Versus mode a la Left 4 Dead: a small team of marines who only get one life each, versus an unending horde of vanilla xenos, liberally spiced with respawning, player-controlled special aliens.

Who is responsible and how soon can s/he be sacked?

 

[Lord_Jaroh]

It says it right at the beginning: "Work in progress." That means everything is subject to change.

You know what else was a fake scripted demo? The E3 Halo 2 demo. Evey smart developer makes scripted trailers, but that doesn't mean that the games themselves will be bad. Do you really not have anything better to do than make this masturbatory video?

No, every stupid developer makes scripted trailers. Smart developers promise something and actually deliver it. This demo was a lie from start to finish, and the game was shit. It would be nice if the developers were held accountable. I'd like to see everyone return their game to Gearbox and demand a refund. See what happens.