Zero Punctuation: Aliens: Colonial Marines

[Vigormortis]

I thought that was just an accepted fact in the gaming world by now. You know, like "Final Fantasy games drag on for too long", "Call of Duty is racist", and "BioWare games have good writing".

I suppose after the hype around the stage demo for this, and back with the pre-rendered trailer for Dead Island we've moved to a point where playable demos soon are the only way to make gamers trust your product. So perhaps something good came out of all this after all.

Lots of superfluous, pointless, drawn-out dialog and narration do not equate to "good writing". Not that all Bioware games suffer from that, of course, but not all Bioware games have "good writing".

That, and Call of Duty games weren't always inherently "racist". Their gradual homogenization into a simple, straight-forward, mass-marketed product turned them into that. It's the classic "us versus them" mentality that appeals to the games current demographic.


But anyway, that pointless debate aside (sorry, couldn't resist for some reason. something's wrong with me.), I hope, like you, that something good comes of this mess. I highly doubt it but perhaps gamers AND developers/publishers will both learn that customer loyalty is earned through good products and services, and not demanded as payment for goods rendered.

Sorry but here, I am peed off out of princible. If Yathzee reveals such a huge part of the plot (and pretty big twist in the canon), then yes, I expect a freaking spoiler warning. It doesn't matter how good or bad the game is - it is still wrong to do.

Insultingly awful game aside, I agree with you here. However...

Hardly their game - they just did about 10% of it as the game when they got it was more or less finished. You can't blame them for that.

This I can't agree with.

We most certainly CAN blame them for how awful this game is. They knew what they had. They were more than well aware of the state of the final product. Yet, they greenlit it's release, they charged full price, and they used a misleading ad campaign.

More over, they not only lied to us all about the quality of the thing (demo controversy anyone?), but they didn't even attempt to fix it. They simply did some legal finagling to retain the license (as did Sega, who are just as much to blame in this) and pawned the game off on another development team.

In short, we can, and should, blame Gearbox for this obnoxious tripe. It's their fault the game saw the light of day in it's current state. Just as it was their fault Duke Nukem Forever released in such an awful state.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Pre-ordering in it's current form is absolute shit because companies seem to think it's ok to put an insignificant cosmetic in and say " that's enough reason to give us $60 ahead of time for no reason right?

Pre-ordering in an age of digital distribution is highly questionable to begin with, just as a matter of practicality.
I'm amazed at how many people miss that.

The sad truth of the matter is that somebody, at some point, is going to have to take the plunge to review the game.
As noted before, NDAs exist, and can cut critics off at the knees in terms of timeliness.

As for the "Blame Game"...

 

[LordMonty]

This is a bad game to say exactly where the hugging aliens upset me the most is hard to say... pleased i didn't waste coin on this, my poor flat mate on the other hand got the collector's ed sadly.

 

[RedDeadFred]

1. I hope this crushes Gearbox, they have no integrity.

The following is a massive amount of sarcasm:

Ya lets just make a whole bunch of people lose their jobs because of decisions made that are way above them! Who cares if they need the job to feed their families, their bosses lied to us!

Businesses should fall and rise with their products. Otherwise the consumer always gets fucked. If a business is untrustworthy and does shitty things like BLATENTLY FALSE ADVERTISEMENT in the form of a demo than it should cripple them.

While I agree that they should definitely lose money and maybe even get fined (wishful thinking probably) over their business practice, to condemn their entire company to death would be a major overreaction and just plain barbaric. And quite honestly, people wouldn't be getting screwed over if they didn't pre-order and actually took time to research the product they are buying. I mean, you can't honestly say that Gearbox has a track record worthy of pre-order trusting (Duke Nukem!?). When you pre-order, you are gambling your money and sometimes you lose. Is it fair? No, of course not but that doesn't mean people shouldn't realize the risk.

 

[WolvenSpectre]

I haven't played the game but I get a kick out of this glitch

http://youtu.be/UGX2WE4QUw8?t=2m7s

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Am I the only one who thinks, that the bar in video game industry is now so low, that we allow such atrocities to be released?

Yes.

Such atrocities have always been released. It's the fact that the bar has been raised that this game has been so widely denounced. Check out any gaming generation, and you'll find games as bad or worse than this.

 

[Hutzpah Chicken]

We should nuke this game from orbit. It's the only way to make sure nobody plays it.

I feel like the aliens should just be ported into Garry's Mod. That would make the game much more enjoyable.

 

[Inuprince]

Thank you for the MASSIVE Spoiler-warning in the middle of the review about Hicks. Oh, wait. THERE WAS NONE!

You are welcome.
Unless you actually paid for this thing, in which case... You had it coming.

Sorry but here, I am peed off out of princible. If Yathzee reveals such a huge part of the plot (and pretty big twist in the canon), then yes, I expect a freaking spoiler warning. It doesn't matter how good or bad the game is - it is still wrong to do.

You do realize this game is not part of the cannon, right? FOX distanciate themselves as far as they could of this turd (who can blame them?) even before it was revealed to be that bad. In fact, it is exactly the point Yatzhee makes: that by bringing back a character that was established to be dead in Alien 3, they reduced the story of A:CM to the level of fan fiction, where they can retell the cannon to include the characters they like...

One bad game ?
Have you allready forgotten THE DUKE ?

Hardly their game - they just did about 10% of it as the game when they got it was more or less finished. You can't blame them for that.

Which is exactly what they are doing to justify this game. Blame TimeGate and Sega about the status of the game...

Do you see a pattern there? Because it makes me doubt the excuses they give to Duke Nukem. It seems the blame game is the best game Pitchford knows how to play...

1 - No, it is canon. Deal with it. Was stated a billion times and was even a selling point.
2 - No, DNF was an entirely different. They were never even related to it until they decided to purchase what was done (a game about 90%) so it could finally get released after 14 years of waiting and it about to die.

You know what, screw this game, and screw this being canon. The people at Fox are either idiots for allowing this piece of bull**** to be canon, or they weren't in on it, just lied to by Gearbox. Or maybe some Gearbox employee's uncle is a Fox executive, and the guy begged him to help, so maybe they can get more pre-orders, and first day buys out of fans, before word of mouth gets around what a disaster the whole thing is. I don't even care for the gameplay which was sown together by a billion different studios, I am talking about the story, which Gearbox was praising and talking about everyone there being HUGE ALIENS FANS.

Retconning Hicks's death out of Alien 3??? Even if they gave a perfectly reasonable explenation and detailed look, at how all this happened, it still wouldn't make much sense...but to shrug it off, with "it was some other guy" and "long story". Seriously that's quite a big insult, from these big fans, and really why Hicks?
Couldn't they make Hudson survive somehow, he was also a beloved character, he was a real badass, and that could have probably been easily explained in just sentences, if that's all what Gearbox is capable of - like how he was dragged down, ( he could have had scars on his face from the Alien that grabbed him ) and before becoming a host, he managed to escape and find a well closed area where he was safe from the explosion, - since apperantly Gearbox succesfully downplay's the threat in their favourite film with the whole place blowing up in a few hours scenario, since it seems it didn't do that much damage to the colony. The countdown voice at the end of the movie should have said: "No rush Ripley, this won't be such a big bang, as Bishop said it would be, please stop hammering the elevator buttons."

I really don't get why they need to mess with the continuity of a movie series that is more than 20 years old, and I still don't get why Fox would consider such a terrible story to be canon...

To me this is not canon, to me the Alien movies are the first three movies, which create a great trilogy, which was centered around a great female hero character, who in the end gives her life, to save humanity from this alien menace once and for all. I have no need for Aliens Resurrection either, thank you ...
I know a lot of people dislike Alien 3, but for some of us like me and Jim Sterling, it is our favourite Alien movie, we acknowledge the deaths of Hicks and Newt as a tragic event, but it fits into theme of Alien 3, with Ripley ending up basicly on her own, in the worst situation she has ever been in.

Speaking for my self, Gearbox has not retconned the tragedy at the beginning in the third movie, I personally will not take into consideration, the lame story of one of the biggest failures in recent video game history.

Perhaps Yahtzee was right, and sequels should not be created by fans, because they are too in love with the subject matter and will just screw it up, while trying to pay homage.
In the past, I rejected this idea, because I always thought, hey who better than fans to continue what they love and cherish and ... well thanks for proving me wrong Gearbox.

 

[mike1921]

1. I hope this crushes Gearbox, they have no integrity.

The following is a massive amount of sarcasm:

Ya lets just make a whole bunch of people lose their jobs because of decisions made that are way above them! Who cares if they need the job to feed their families, their bosses lied to us!

Businesses should fall and rise with their products. Otherwise the consumer always gets fucked. If a business is untrustworthy and does shitty things like BLATENTLY FALSE ADVERTISEMENT in the form of a demo than it should cripple them.

While I agree that they should definitely lose money and maybe even get fined (wishful thinking probably) over their business practice, to condemn their entire company to death would be a major overreaction and just plain barbaric. And quite honestly, people wouldn't be getting screwed over if they didn't pre-order and actually took time to research the product they are buying. I mean, you can't honestly say that Gearbox has a track record worthy of pre-order trusting (Duke Nukem!?). When you pre-order, you are gambling your money and sometimes you lose. Is it fair? No, of course not but that doesn't mean people shouldn't realize the risk.

Losing money past a certain point is the death of the company.

I've said it before that you need to treat pre ordering as an investment and decide on risk vs reward, and that A:CM is incredibly high risk for the incredibly petty reward. I don't honestly see it as unfair either that there's a risk. You are , by preordering, deciding that you are convinced that the game is good enough for you to not wait for reviews to give them your money for whatever reward they're giving you.

Although in the case of Colonial Marines: Anyone who preordered the game should be god damn entitled to a full refund after that fucking demo faking false advertisement.

 

[Norix596]

Guess a Fire Emblem Awakening Review isn't in the cards - there are too many big releases in a clump- he still needs to work through Revengence and Laura Croft Returns

 

[-Dragmire-]

Now, I shouldn't really involve myself in this but...

Sorry but here, I am peed off out of princible. If Yathzee reveals such a huge part of the plot (and pretty big twist in the canon), then yes, I expect a freaking spoiler warning. It doesn't matter how good or bad the game is - it is still wrong to do.

Insultingly awful game aside, I agree with you here. However...

Hardly their game - they just did about 10% of it as the game when they got it was more or less finished. You can't blame them for that.

This I can't agree with.

We most certainly CAN blame them for how awful this game is. They knew what they had. They were more than well aware of the state of the final product. Yet, they greenlit it's release, they charged full price, and they used a misleading ad campaign.

I don't think any of the developers did the ad campaign. Sounds like the publisher side of things.

I do agree though, that blame should fall heaviest on the shoulders of the last people to work on the game before release. Having to go over layers of preexisting code must have been a ***** to deal with though, then again, they said it was done...

 

[Mr C]

1. I hope this crushes Gearbox, they have no integrity.
2. I hope this ends people preordering games, it just encourages assholes like Gearbox to make cash grab games.
3. I hope Yahtzee starts to review good games, constantly reviewing bad games is cute and funny but its like shooting fish in a barrel.

You've got your wish with your second point. I will NEVER preorder again. This fiasco has scarred the whole industry. I will always wait for the verdict to come in. I trusted those monkeys at Gearbox, Pitchford is a c**t - that is not a satirical tweet.

ACM burned me so badly I wouldn't even preorder Half Life 3 if it was announced, had a vertical slice demo I could play and preorders came with a blowjob from Anne Hathaway.

ON TOPIC - my worst glitch happened just before the first powerloader section. I knew what the game wanted me to do, but it wouldn't let me get in the bloody thing. After 5 minutes of searching the room I realised Dickface O'Neal was absent. Of course you need him to spout some bullshit before you can enter the vehicle. The dumb shit was in the last room running on the spot like the stupid twat he is. I suppose that is an example of the game showing "It is all driven by highly sophisticated artificial intelligence" (Pitchford, 2012). I wonder which developer he's based on or if he represents the whole of Gearbox.

 

[Darth_Payn]

Watching this video, I have to wonder... Does Yantzee watch any of Jim Sterling's stuff? Like, he's been going on about the Alien franchise and this game in particular for a few weeks now, so I find it weird that Yantzee would not only not mention this in his video, but called out all Alien fans by saying everything after Aliens was crap.

I think it's general consensus that everything after Aliens sucks; even Ridley Scott discounts everything after Aliens as non-canon (except Prometheus, because that was a prequel). A lot of calls for "Yahtzee should eviscerate Colonial Marines" were made in the comments for Jim's videos talking about Aliens. Although Yahtzee isn't above taking the occasional jab at fellow Escapist contributors (ex: MovieBob).

 

[Mr C]

I say give Rebellion another shot at making another Aliens or AV game seeing as how AVP 2010 plays and looks better than the trash that is ACM.

And also Sega sue Gearbox into the ground.

Here is what they had to do to make this game good:

Take AvP 2010, remove the Predators 'and Weyland Yutani synthetics' all together AND change the title
Give the Marines Iron Sights
And there you go, you have a solid Aliens game.

FIXED

Captcha: take wrong turns - I preordered the bloody thing, what more do you want!

 

[Cid Silverwing]

I love how the arabic text at the end is just a bunch of arabic letters strung together without even being properly attached to make words. That pretty much sums up this game.

I was thinking he threw some random sentence into Google Translate for that like he did with the Russian female colleague-person. Bilingual bonus ftw.

 

[randomsix]

I love to be a party pooper, but that's not how arabic script goes together.

 

[TheRussian]

All I took away from this is that we need a Blues Brothers game.

You are in luck, for there is a Blues Brothers game!
I have no idea how to imbed BlipTV, so here's a link:
http://blip.tv/nostalgiacritic/blues-brothers-snes-volume-2-dvd-exclusive-6359462

 

[Vault101]

I tell you, I am shocked by the dogged attachment to brand recognition that the current market hold onto white-knuckled. But I am depressed at how right it is for developers and publishers to do it. I actually watched the review of the new Tomb Raider based on brand recognition alone and I never played the original games. Seriously. It's just sad when even someone like me who points out this failing in others also has that same failing. Human nature is shit, apparently.

what the fuck are you rambling on about?

a game that captrued what was good about Aliens could have been really good, true the franchise feels tired but again the potential was there

a reboot of tombraider while uneccicary might make for a good reimagining of the charachter AND get us a female lead (somthing I'm always wanting)

oh and Ive only ever seen the extended cut of Aliens and it was awsome

 

[scorptatious]

Am I the only one who thinks, that the bar in video game industry is now so low, that we allow such atrocities to be released?

Yes.

Such atrocities have always been released. It's the fact that the bar has been raised that this game has been so widely denounced. Check out any gaming generation, and you'll find games as bad or worse than this.

Agreed.

Anyone remember Action 52? 52 broken games for the mere price of 199 U.S. dollars. What a deal!

 

[Sheo_Dagana]

I'm not sure if it counts as a glitch, but there was a scene where some Weyland-Yutani soldiers were running down a hallway towards me, like they were trying to get off the exploding ship. I watched them run through a door, which closed behind them. I walked up to a nearby window to look outside and see where they went... turns out there WAS no corridoor, hallway, or anything.

...Where did they go? Narnia?