Question about Colonial Marines

[Iwata]

So... I went back and played Colonial Marines, and I feel like I have to ask a question.

Please don't hate me, but... why is this game so universally reviled?

I played it on the PS3, and well, I actually had fun! I mean, it's nothing to write home about, but it kept my attention for as long as it lasted.

And I saw no bugs or glitches of any kind, which I know was one of the key points aimed against it.

I liked it so much, in fact, that I bought the DLC for it. And the multiplayer is a LOT of fun with friends.

Now, I understand that the game was disappointing. I'm old enough to remember when the game was announced for the Jaguar. And the Alien movies are my favourite films of all time (except A:R. Fuck that thing).

So... why the OMG WORST THING EVER reaction?

And yes, this is an honest question.

Be gentle.

 

[kris40k]

Stuff like this


There are other numerous sources for bugs that people ran into, and as shown above the AI was not very ... I.

 

[baddude1337]

Because the game was previewed and touted as looking like this:


It was one of the biggest marketing cons of gaming, that's why it's so reviled.

Colonial Marines was also a game that had been in development for a long time, in it's early days it was a PS2 squad based shooter, so there were naturally high expectations after such a long wait.

When you get right down to it, and disregard all the false pre-release marketing and bugs that have now been patched out (and god, this game was practically unplayable at launch), it's average. Alien AI is still dumb, friendly AI even dumber, illogical and unlikeable characters and a nonsensical plot. The graphics are very dated, especially on consoles, though PC doesn't improve the overall look by much.

It's not so bad if you got it for like £3, the horde mode especially can be fun with friends, but ultimately it is nowhere near the game we were expecting to get, and made the community realize you should absolutely NOT trust Gearbox and Randy Pitchford ever.

I will saw the look of the new weapons were pretty neat, and fit in well with the rest of the universe, but that's one of the few good things I can say about it.

 

[Hawki]

Having played it, I've never got the hate either. Did it live up to expectations? No. Is it a bad game? Personally, I wouldn't say so. At the least, it hardly deserves all the hate it's got IMO.

 

[silver wolf009]

So... I went back and played Colonial Marines, and I feel like I have to ask a question.

Please don't hate me, but... why is this game so universally reviled?

I played it on the PS3, and well, I actually had fun! I mean, it's nothing to write home about, but it kept my attention for as long as it lasted.

And I saw no bugs or glitches of any kind, which I know was one of the key points aimed against it.

I liked it so much, in fact, that I bought the DLC for it. And the multiplayer is a LOT of fun with friends.

Now, I understand that the game was disappointing. I'm old enough to remember when the game was announced for the Jaguar. And the Alien movies are my favourite films of all time (except A:R. Fuck that thing).

So... why the OMG WORST THING EVER reaction?

And yes, this is an honest question.

Be gentle.

It's despised by gamers, because they flat out lied to us with misleading demos, false claims, and general tomfoolery to end up delivering a truly and offensively blazeh game.

It's despised by Alien fans, because it's canon, yes, it's canon, yes, "It was just some other guy" IS ACTUALLY FREAKING CANON OH MY GOD WHY.

 

[zumbledum]

So... why the OMG WORST THING EVER reaction?

I actually quite liked it myself , i played it through to completion , an achievement few games inspire in me.

i think the really big problem was the adverts were bullshots the "vertical slice" turned out to be a complete out of game fabrication. a lot of promised features were simply missing or not working and for good reason a lot of people felt lied to. it became the mascot for a anti marketing crusade that didnt blow itself out till watchdogs. and it kept on giving , rumors that the budget got spent on borderlands 2 , and aliens got farmed out to some lesser studio, with both sides getting involved in blaming the other.

a host of videos sprang up showing the AI doing stupid things , and you know how the internet likes to get over things in a timely fashion to start with , well this steady drip of fuel to the fire just kept the hate going.

 

[silver wolf009]

So... I went back and played Colonial Marines, and I feel like I have to ask a question.

Please don't hate me, but... why is this game so universally reviled?

I played it on the PS3, and well, I actually had fun! I mean, it's nothing to write home about, but it kept my attention for as long as it lasted.

And I saw no bugs or glitches of any kind, which I know was one of the key points aimed against it.

I liked it so much, in fact, that I bought the DLC for it. And the multiplayer is a LOT of fun with friends.

Now, I understand that the game was disappointing. I'm old enough to remember when the game was announced for the Jaguar. And the Alien movies are my favourite films of all time (except A:R. Fuck that thing).

So... why the OMG WORST THING EVER reaction?

And yes, this is an honest question.

Be gentle.

It's despised by gamers, because they flat out lied to us with misleading demos, false claims, and general tomfoolery to end up delivering a truly and offensively blazeh game.

It's despised by Alien fans, because it's canon, yes, it's canon, yes, "It was just some other guy" IS ACTUALLY FREAKING CANON OH MY GOD WHY.

Considering that the new Aliens sequel is flatout pretending Alien 3 (which fuck the haters, was actually a good Alien movie) and Resurrection. It'll probably blatantly ignore this too. Alien canon is as fucking skewed as comic book canon now.

Even if it does, it doesn't change how truly stupid what they pulled was, and is, and forever shall be. I mean it's like a spanish novella, where actors just up and leave without warning.

 

[TheDominusIgnis]

Firstly I want to apologize if I make little sense, I just woke up and saw this discussion and wanted to contribute sooner rather than later.
Now I respect your opinion on the game, to me even stuff as bad as Bubsy 3D on the playstation has to have someone who thought it was cool, despite the common opinions of those who played it. (Including myself)
I also have the game myself on PS3, and I admittedly haven't finished it, but that was mostly due to the fact that for me the game was horrible and not worth my time, and I'm not even an Aliens fan so its not like I was expecting much from the game. One memorable part for me was when there was a bunch of Aliens that I needed to fight and instead of going in and getting swarmed by them I went back to the entrance, went through the door and let them come over and killed them that way. That and a part early on when an AI Teammate is trying to unlock a door so you have to fight off Aliens and I was barely able to see them until they were basically up close because for me they so easily blended in with the environment which more often than not caused me frustration as I looked for it, turn and then turn back to find it right in my face killing me.
To be honest the AI imo is also very poor, and the harder difficulty just seems to make them take more bullets and deal more damage if they get to you, rather than necessarily making them smarter.
Now like I said I haven't finished it, so maybe the game gets a lot better if I sunk some more time into it, but for me personally there are a lot more first person shooters for that generation that I feel are better deserving of my time.
Either way, I'm glad you're enjoying it

 

[baddude1337]

Did you actually play through the game? As in experience the whole story? Because it was pretty enjoyable for an Aliens title. It even had some sequences that were way more enjoyable than some of the things in the film, and I fucking love the film.

I've personally played through it twice, including the story DLC. The story is absolutely awful, Weyland-Yutani make little sense, no idea why the colony, although damaged, is relatively unscathed after a nuclear blast, and Hicks is alive because reasons (really, he had a canon death in 3, they could have picked ANY other marine whose fate was dubious).

Most of the gameplay set pieces are undercooked too. The power loader boss battle is crappy feeling and looks eh, the whole stealth bit with boilers was hilarious because of their AI and lack of collision detection, and the ending boss is awful and anti climatic, to name just a few

For what it's worth, the DLC campaign is a pretty decent romp (at least until the end, where there is a bit of a difficulty spike), although it also has a pretty dumb story (the scientist you play as betrays WY, and is proficient in weapons, because reasons?).

I will give credit to the story DLC though, it's explanation of why Hicks is still alive had me laughing for ages.

Overall it's a half decent action game for a low price, but it shouldn't hard to see why it got so much hate due to all the reasons already stated. You have to realize at launch, for full price, nobody could even imagine how far removed the game was from the previews shown, and was in far, far worse state than it is now with all the bugs and performance issues.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

I enjoyed it too but damn was it an easy game, even on the hardest setting. The Aliens were pathetically weak and the AI was really easy to confuse. I don't understand the hate but i also didn't understand the hype either...just another bog standard first person shooter with some film nasties bolted on to make dumb people empty their wallets without thinking.

 

[silver wolf009]

So... I went back and played Colonial Marines, and I feel like I have to ask a question.

Please don't hate me, but... why is this game so universally reviled?

I played it on the PS3, and well, I actually had fun! I mean, it's nothing to write home about, but it kept my attention for as long as it lasted.

And I saw no bugs or glitches of any kind, which I know was one of the key points aimed against it.

I liked it so much, in fact, that I bought the DLC for it. And the multiplayer is a LOT of fun with friends.

Now, I understand that the game was disappointing. I'm old enough to remember when the game was announced for the Jaguar. And the Alien movies are my favourite films of all time (except A:R. Fuck that thing).

So... why the OMG WORST THING EVER reaction?

And yes, this is an honest question.

Be gentle.

It's despised by gamers, because they flat out lied to us with misleading demos, false claims, and general tomfoolery to end up delivering a truly and offensively blazeh game.

It's despised by Alien fans, because it's canon, yes, it's canon, yes, "It was just some other guy" IS ACTUALLY FREAKING CANON OH MY GOD WHY.

Considering that the new Aliens sequel is flatout pretending Alien 3 (which fuck the haters, was actually a good Alien movie) and Resurrection. It'll probably blatantly ignore this too. Alien canon is as fucking skewed as comic book canon now.

Even if it does, it doesn't change how truly stupid what they pulled was, and is, and forever shall be. I mean it's like a spanish novella, where actors just up and leave without warning.

Did you actually play through the game? As in experience the whole story? Because it was pretty enjoyable for an Aliens title. It even had some sequences that were way more enjoyable than some of the things in the film, and I fucking love the film.

I have played the game, yes. The actual story itself is, to quote Yahtzee, that one Aliens story. Nothing wrong with that, and while there are some juicy tidbits like the film's weapons, Bishop's lower half, etc., the truly amazing low it hits with that one DLC cutscene was so far down the chart, that it tanked the entire game for me.

So it went from bog standard if not completely poorly done, to who thought this was a good idea?

 

[Iwata]

Well, the impression I'm getting is that a few people actually enjoyed the game.

I don't know. Now that the storm has blown over, maybe we can all just look back and see that the game itself - not the media storm around it - is actually not THAT bad...

 

[CritialGaming]

While we're at it. I loved Duke Nukem Forever. It was honestly the best mainstream shooter to come out that year. The humor was crude but as a fan of Family Guy and South Park, I thought it was funny. The environments and situations were far more varied than that year's Call of Duty. Sure the two weapon limit sucked, but I blame Halo for that.

 

[SweetShark]

Because most of the people who play videogames, play only the well-known AAA and Casual Easy games.
Only few people play other kind of games, like Indie games or even GreenLight games.

With that in mind this specific Alien game cause of the negative publicity, get the most hate.
There are WORST, FAR WORST games than Alien CM, but because it is a famous title AND it is base from a well-known movie.....it is natural something like this to happen.