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Offline GamerMan316

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Re: Aliens: Colonial Marines
« Reply #90 on: February 12, 2013, 07:30:44 AM »
Reviews Round Up

2.5/10 for the PC version at Destructoid!

3/10 at VideoGamer

3/10 at Eurogamer

4.5/10 at Gamespot

4.5/10 at IGN

6/10 at OXM

6.2/10 at CVG

and with all the crap scores above (CVG & OXM excluded) Gamingbolt give an 8.5/10!


Offline GamerMan316

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Re: Aliens: Colonial Marines
« Reply #91 on: February 12, 2013, 07:53:08 AM »
Kotaku don't approve either!


Offline GamerMan316

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Re: Aliens: Colonial Marines
« Reply #92 on: February 12, 2013, 08:52:49 AM »
Aliens: Colonial Marines Receives Critical Savaging – Mired In Controversy

For fans of the Alien movies, Gearbox’s long-awaited gaming ‘sequel’ to action-packed classic Aliens was seen as a potential must-buy. But now, as Hudson might say, it sadly appears to be more a case of “Game Over”.



The initial flood of review scores and articles that have greeted the title’s launch today have been overwhelmingly negative, with criticisms of the game’s repetitive nature, unimaginative design and troublesome mechanics rife.

IGN have bemoaned its “bog standard run ‘n’ gun action”, CVG say it’s a textbook example of “how to waste a great licence”, and the Telegraph dismiss it as “not just a poor Aliens experience, but a poor game”.

Even more damningly, Eurogamer handed it an abysmal 3 out of 10 and called it: “one of the most glitchy mainstream releases of this hardware generation”. To add to the sense of indignation, the site also reports on worrying claims that primary development on the title was outsourced to another developer altogether, with Gearbox only responsible for the multiplayer component.

Further controversy has also now arisen after Jim Sterling of Destructoid, who awarded the game a scathing 2.5 out of 10, took to Twitter to proclaim: “That good looking demo of Colonial Marines they kept showing at events? Not part of the game. It was entirely contrived, and basically a lie.”

We’ll bring you more on those claims, and any response from Gearbox or publisher SEGA, as the story develops.


Offline Jaynestown

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Re: Aliens: Colonial Marines
« Reply #93 on: February 12, 2013, 02:09:08 PM »
Graphics aren't brilliant, and it's f***ing hard playing as an alien but...

I LIKE IT! :D

Can't see it being more than a month's worth of gameplay though, perhaps the "Horde" mode should have come with the main game!


Thank god for the new Tomb Raider, helped me de-stress after a tough week! More of the same please

Offline GamerMan316

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Re: Aliens: Colonial Marines
« Reply #94 on: February 12, 2013, 03:10:44 PM »
Graphics aren't brilliant, and it's f***ing hard playing as an alien but...

I LIKE IT! :D

Can't see it being more than a month's worth of gameplay though, perhaps the "Horde" mode should have come with the main game!

It's probably already on the disc!


Offline Jaynestown

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Re: Aliens: Colonial Marines
« Reply #95 on: February 12, 2013, 05:41:18 PM »
Almost certainly!


Thank god for the new Tomb Raider, helped me de-stress after a tough week! More of the same please

Offline nCogNeato

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Re: Aliens: Colonial Marines
« Reply #96 on: February 13, 2013, 03:19:59 PM »
Ouch.  I still want to play it for myself, but damn.

Some people may not agree, but this really tarnishes my opinion of Gearbox.  They've hit gold with the Borderlands games, but both attempts at expanding their brand (Duke Nukem & Aliens) have been D.O.A.

It also bothers me how much focus they put on hyping both Duke Nukem & Aliens when the games were obviously not what they were portraying them to be.  If Gearbox's next non-Borderlands game isn't a hit, I'm afraid Gearbox may not be trusted with anything except Borderlands.   :-\

Offline zerosum

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Re: Aliens: Colonial Marines
« Reply #97 on: February 13, 2013, 04:10:20 PM »
Ouch.  I still want to play it for myself, but damn.

Some people may not agree, but this really tarnishes my opinion of Gearbox.  They've hit gold with the Borderlands games, but both attempts at expanding their brand (Duke Nukem & Aliens) have been D.O.A.

It also bothers me how much focus they put on hyping both Duke Nukem & Aliens when the games were obviously not what they were portraying them to be.  If Gearbox's next non-Borderlands game isn't a hit, I'm afraid Gearbox may not be trusted with anything except Borderlands.   :-\

I'll try to make up my mind after playing the game, but "Damn" is right. It's true, the group at Gearbox are excellent at over-hype - maybe too good and maybe that's a bad route with some of their projects.

I didn't "hate" Duke Nukem, but it definitely didn't live up to the hype, especially with the development baggage that game had.

The claim that the "good looking demo of Colonial Marines they kept showing at events? Not part of the game. It was entirely contrived, and basically a lie.” Is pretty damning, if anything, from an ethical business perspective.

I wouldn't say Gearbox is on my sh*t-list, Borderlands 2 was damn awesome, but maybe they're spread too thin with the amount of effort they put into BL2 and that's part of the problem? I'm not sure, but they're definitely walking over thin ice, especially if their next release is received with similar claims.


UPDATE: Some behind the scenes stuff with regards to the production - Source:[Kotaku]

Quote
According to one person familiar with the project who spoke to Kotaku under condition of anonymity, Gearbox outsourced the bulk of Colonial Marines (codenamed Pecan) to a studio called TimeGate, most recently responsible for the shooter Section 8 and its sequel.
 
This comes on the heels of a massive Reddit post that's been making the rounds today from someone claiming to work at Gearbox. Although we can't confirm that the Reddit post is credible, everything we've heard from our source matches up.
 
The Redditor said TimeGate left the single-player campaign in "a pretty horrid state," and that last September after Borderlands 2 shipped, Gearbox was unhappy with what TimeGate had left them. Sega was already upset with Gearbox for asking for multiple extensions since the project launched in 2006, so Gearbox had to buckle down and release a game they knew wasn't going to be very good, the Redditor said.
 
The post on Reddit matches what our source has told us, but there's more. When TimeGate took over the project, our source said, they threw out most of what Gearbox had done beforehand. All of the art and design that Gearbox had produced during the previous four years was gone.
 
So from 2010 until late last year, while Gearbox was working on Borderlands 2 (internally codenamed "Willow 2"), TimeGate handled the bulk of development on Aliens. A small team at Gearbox helped out with multiplayer work, as explained by both our source and the Redditor, but TimeGate built the single-player campaign.
 
In late 2012, when Gearbox saw what TimeGate had done, most of their developers weren't interested in taking the game back, our source said. Gearbox's team was upset that their work had been thrown out, and they didn't want this to be a repeat of Duke Nukem Forever, a game that took over a decade to develop until it was finally finished by Gearbox and released in mid-2011 to tepid response.

But Gearbox had to finish the game, and according to our source, they had to throw out much of TimeGate's work and start from scratch. This lines up with what the Redditor claims:
 
Campaign didn't make much sense, the boss fights weren't implemented, PS3 was way over memory, etcetcetc. GBX was pretty unhappy with TG's work, and some of Campaign maps were just completely redesigned from scratch. There were some last minute feature requests, most notably female marines, and the general consensus among GBX devs was that there was no way this game was going to be good by ship. There just wasn't enough time.
 
Considering that SEGA was pretty close to taking legal action against GBX, asking for an extension wasn't an option, and so Pecan crash-landed through certification and shipping. Features that were planned were oversimplified, or shoved in (a good example of this are challenges, which are in an incredibly illogical order). Issues that didn't cause 100% blockers were generally ignored, with the exception of absolutely horrible problems. This isn't because GBX didn't care, mind you. At a certain point, they couldn't risk changing ANYTHING that might cause them to fail certification or break some other system. And so, the product you see is what you get.


People at Gearbox knew the bad reviews were coming, our source said. They knew that the game wasn't good.
 
We've reached out to Gearbox, but they would not comment on the record. However, in a recent interview with IGN, Gearbox head Randy Pitchford said that TimeGate handled development "probably about 20 or 25 percent of the total time," and that "if you take preproduction out of it, their effort's probably equivalent to ours. Now, it's not fair to take preproduction out of it, but that says a lot about how much horsepower those guys put into it."
 
Pitchford's statements also seem to match up with what we've heard.
 
We reached out to TimeGate this afternoon, but they have yet to get back to us. We'll continue to update as we hear more.


« Last Edit: February 13, 2013, 05:51:43 PM by zerosum »

Offline nCogNeato

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Re: Aliens: Colonial Marines
« Reply #98 on: February 13, 2013, 11:26:22 PM »
UPDATE: Some behind the scenes stuff with regards to the production - Source:[Kotaku]

For f*ck sakes.  No wonder the game is getting such bad reviews.  Looks like you were right about Gearbox stretching itself too thin.  It sounds like they took a calculated business risk and it backfired.  If this doesn't serve as a wakeup call for Gearbox to prioritize quality for future games, they will deservedly lose the respect of the gaming industry.



Offline GamerMan316

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Offline Jaynestown

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Re: Aliens: Colonial Marines
« Reply #100 on: February 17, 2013, 02:56:59 PM »
Well, I really don't care what people think, I'm really enjoying it :)


Thank god for the new Tomb Raider, helped me de-stress after a tough week! More of the same please

Offline zerosum

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Re: Aliens: Colonial Marines
« Reply #101 on: February 17, 2013, 09:35:25 PM »
For those not wanting to leave home [BTW - There are updates to this towards the end that may alter the outcome of this part of the story]: Source:[DSOG]

Quote
Aliens: Colonial Marines will be the title that will surpass Duke Nukem Forever. Yes, it wasn’t under development for as much time as 3D Realms’ FPS was, however it turned out to be just as bad as Duke’s latest adventures. And ironically, it will keep us busy for a long time. A tester of Aliens: Colonial Marines has started an AMA on Reddit and according to the moderators of the sub-reddit /r/Games, this is a valid tester of Aliens: Colonial Marines. In other words, no, this is not someone trolling or someone faking information just for the heck of it.
 
According to the tester, SEGA was well aware that the game sucked when they were promoting and when they were about to release it. Not only that, but the tester claims that Gearbox used the money they got for Aliens: Colonial Marines on Borderlands 2. It’s really awkward hearing such things, and we are really wondering whether Gearbox and SEGA will respond to those accusations.

The tester has also revealed that the E3 demo was never part of the actual game and what was showcased was not from Unreal Engine 3. The tester admits that the final game has a similar mission but it’s not as exciting as the one featured in the press demo.
 
As for the WiiU version, the tester had this to say:
 
“Oh wow. Yes okay. I was hoping someone would ask this. I have played the WiiU version. The one that is supposedly the best of all of them? It is not. It is the worst. It is a bit of a joke. The WiiU is basically the same game as the console version but with framerate issues, worse texture loading, and horrendously misguided minigames thrown in. You get a ‘scanner’ to scan enemies and get bonus points that aid your harming them. When you cut open doors (which happens a lot in the game) you have a game where you have to keep the heat ‘optimal’. They just add frustration, and take away even more from the fun. We don’t know if it will come out, Sega are conisdering canceling it, but right now its still going.”
 
The tester has also confirmed that Gearbox was mainly responsible for this whole mess and not TimeGate Studios, something that has been confirmed by SEGA too.
 
In other news, this tester is currently working on the Aliens game that is being developed by Creative Assembly. The tester claims that that game looks amazing – very dark and very slow paced (in a good way). “The textures and lighting look really really good” said the tester and continued: “I’ve seen it running on a PC. The PS4 devkit looks like a computer. It looks as good rif not better running as any super high end pc. We did not have those controllers, but they look like what was promised.”
 
Last but not least, the tester claimed that both SEGA and Gearbox lied to everyone about Aliens: Colonial Marines and that no amount of money would fix this mess we call Aliens: Colonial Marines. Ouch.
 
[UPDATE]
 
The tester has deleted his Reddit account. This was either in order to avoid getting sued by SEGA and Gearbox or because there was something ‘wrong’ with it. Moderators verified this user’s claims, so for now we can take their word on this. We’ll be sure to update the story as soon as we get new information about it. The aforementioned comments were made by “soetester” (Sega of Europe Tester). There is a high change that someone from Gearbox or SEGA managed to identify him based on something that he said. Those interested can read the full AMA [here].
 
[UPDATE2]
 
According to /r/Games moderator ‘nothis’:
 
“Guy just deleted everything. He sent as good confirmation as one could expect on the internet. Maybe just a troll or tomorrow we’ll learn how “reddit was gamed by the investigative uber journalist” and why we shouldn’t trust any sources ever. Or he got cold feet after revisiting his contract with Gearbox.”
 
This whole thing is currently fishy, so we’d suggest to take everything you just read with a grain of salt.

« Last Edit: February 17, 2013, 10:06:32 PM by zerosum »

Offline nCogNeato

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Re: Aliens: Colonial Marines
« Reply #102 on: February 18, 2013, 11:46:29 AM »
Well, I really don't care what people think, I'm really enjoying it :)

After all is said & done, that's really all that matters.  If you buy something for entertainment, and that thing provides entertainment =/+ the cost, it's done its job.   

To this day, I think Bulletwitch was one of the best entertainment-to-cost ratios I've ever had.  8)

Offline GamerMan316

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Re: Aliens: Colonial Marines
« Reply #103 on: February 18, 2013, 01:56:24 PM »


Offline nCogNeato

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Re: Aliens: Colonial Marines
« Reply #104 on: February 18, 2013, 02:58:38 PM »
UK Number 1

http://www.gamesradar.com/uk-chart-aliens-colonial-marines-debuts-no1/

Nice.  Now the beancounters will greenlight a sequel, which will hopefully get the development it deserves. 

 

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