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Remind me of the criticisms of Aliens Colonial Marines?

Tizoc

Tizoc

Member
Been some time since I've heard mention of this game, until the recent mod reveal.
I'm trying to remember its primary criticisms, so correct me if I've missed any-
1- Obv. Gearbox promised and showed various ideas in their promotional and exhibition videos of the game but the final product was nothing what they promised. Were there any 'Footage shown are not representitive of final product' disclaimers on them by any chance?
2- The overall game is a traditional generic cover shooty bang without any impressive enemy AI worth speaking of
 
N

NinjaCoachZ

Member
Wasn't it rumoured they embezzled funds from Sega (for this game) and 3D Realms (for Duke Nukem Forever) to make Borderlands? Has that been debunked or anything, because I remember hearing there was some weird behind-the-scenes stuff.

Also 3 years after release, Randy Pitchford repeatedly denies and refuses to acknowledge the criticisms of the game
 
B

BigDug13

Member
Things that existed in the demos did not exist in the final game. Meaning the demo was built just to be a demo. Bait and switch.

Massive downgrade in technical look and performance from demos. Another bait and switch.

A game about aliens spent more of its time having you face off against other marines with shitty AI.

Lots of glitches. Outsourced from Gearbox to third party devs so Gearbox could keep working on BL2.

Was bad enough for the publisher to take legal action against Gearbox.
 
T

Triggerhappytel

Member
For me it was merely mediocre game, but the thing I hated more than anything else was the awful plot and storytelling. As a huge fan of Aliens (as I'm sure many of us are) I felt insulted that a) the Nostromo was back in orbit around LV-426 (I don't think they even try to answer why), and b) they tried to explain that Hicks hadn't died and it was, in fact, a doppelgänger who had died in the escape shuttle with Ripley and then cremated on the prison planet.

EDIT - also, a lot of the hate of this game is built up around Randy Pitchford being an arse. Read this topic for a summary of the sort of stubborn denial shit he comes out with.
 
H

hoserx

Member
I walked into wal mart a few months after release and saw 10 retail copies of it for PC on the shelf.......... all priced at $1.00. I bought them all.

I actually played the game, too..... it was a relatively entertaining romp. It was quite shallow, but the guns were fun.
 
B

BiggNife

Member
pje122 said:
Why so many ACM threads today?
Click to expand...

Because there's a mod announced that completely overhauls the game to make it good

Tizoc said:
Been some time since I've heard mention of this game, until the recent mod reveal.
I'm trying to remember its primary criticisms, so correct me if I've missed any-
1- Obv. Gearbox promised and showed various ideas in their promotional and exhibition videos of the game but the final product was nothing what they promised. Were there any 'Footage shown are not representitive of final product' disclaimers on them by any chance?
2- The overall game is a traditional generic cover shooty bang without any impressive enemy AI worth speaking of
Click to expand...

There were a few issues:

  • Gearbox did very little on the game. For like 95% of development they made it look like they were making it themselves, when in fact it was outsourced to two B-tier devs (Timegate and Demiurge). A lot of people felt deceived by this. A whistleblower claimed that Gearbox was using their Aliens budget to help production on the Borderlands series but I don't think this was ever proven.
  • Gameplay was super bland and generic.
  • The story is a joke and actively retcons Aliens canon for fanservice.
  • As you said, the visuals in the pre-release builds looked way better. Granted, downgrades are a very normal thing, but the downgrade was very significant and it was kind of icing on the cake on top of everything else. Also it is worth noting that Sega has tentatively agreed to settle a class action lawsuit for 1.25 million dollars because of claims that the trade show demos did not represent the full product.
 
MrCunningham

MrCunningham

Member
Randy Pitchford showed off pre rendered footage of the game at multiple E3's and tried to pass it off as real gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fHv4wQJfSY

The final game looked nothing like this.

He's a magician, you know?

1- Obv. Gearbox promised and showed various ideas in their promotional and exhibition videos of the game but the final product was nothing what they promised. Were there any 'Footage shown are not representitive of final product' disclaimers on them by any chance?
Click to expand...

Nope, Randy pretty much promoted the pre-recorded stuff as actually in game footage. He never once said it was a work in progress, which actually resulted in a class action lawsuit where SEGA had to pay out $1.25 million dollars to people who bought the game: http://www.polygon.com/2015/5/28/86...es-lawsuit-loses-class-status-gearbox-dropped

What's even worse is that Randy managed to opt out of the lawsuit by putting the blame directly on SEGA for their agreement to release the game as it was. Ofcourse, SEGA accused Gearbox of embezzling the development money for Aliens: Colonial Marines into the Boarderlands series and sending them a broken dud as the final game.
 
Tizoc

Tizoc

Member
Thanks for the info, was unaware of the glitches and bugs it had.
I do recall reading about how GB putting all their effort into BLands 2's dlc though.
 
H

Hektor

Member
It fucking sucked in literally every aspect.

The AI was virtually nonexistent, the story was awful, cheesy and was insultingly stupid at times, the final boss was literally 4 buttons to push, the gunplay was mediocre, the graphics were bad and the game recycled lots of content in a 6 hour campaign.
 
A

Aaron D.

Member
1WVSjfV.gif
 
Stitch

Stitch

Gold Member
I gave up when that stupid Xeno Crusher got stuck in a wall and couldn't be killed anymore.
 
Jawmuncher

Jawmuncher

Member
I thought it was a decent "budget" shooter. But that's not how it was marketed at all, so a lot of the complaint's came from that. Most people who didn't bother until it was in the bargain bin didn't mind it so much.
Was still fucked of Gearbox to announce it and then funnel money off of it for Borderlands 2 and just get another company to push something out to hit a deadline though.
 
B

BiggNife

Member
cyberheater said:
People who post this don't understand what part of the game that's from. That was one of the better sections and the aliens actions makes sense in that context.
Click to expand...

Personally I know the context but that doesn't make that alien animation any less goofy looking.
 
M

m360

Member
Tizoc said:
1- Obv. Gearbox promised and showed various ideas in their promotional and exhibition videos of the game but the final product was nothing what they promised. Were there any 'Footage shown are not representitive of final product' disclaimers on them by any chance?
Click to expand...

I were at the E3 2011 presentation of ACM where Randy himself presented the game to us. And what they showed look not stunning but pretty great. The dynamic lighting, the rain effects and the overall mood were really nice. Even the AI of the Aliens seemed quite ... intelligent.

But nearly all of this did not end up in the final game. Even on PC with settings maxed the game looked like rubbish compared to the E3 demo.

Did anyone mention that "Footage shown are not representitive of final product" ... yeah of course. At every press presentation someone tells you "that's all work in progress". But I remember that a collegue asked after the demo if this look and feel represents the console version or PC? And randy said that this demo is what they aim for on Xbox 360 and PC. And that the PC version could look a tiny bit better ... but not that much.
 
M

Metzhara

Member
The Good:
Interesting concepts for pickups and collectibles: Weapons were from drops of famous characters, dogtags, and lore adding recordings.

The Bad:
Game design was atrocious with uninspired paths, character lacking encounters, and constant back and forth style movement through environment.
Dialog was throw away material from Bulletstorm, uninspired verbal garbage that stood terrible on its own but wasn't helped any by the terrible story.
Shitty retcon... no spoilers here. If you played you know what's up.

The Ugly:
AI was just really a hot mess. The most notable is the "blind aliens" who, quite frankly, walked like they were looking for a toilet.
Behind the scenes shenanigans dealing with money, swindling, and other normally uninteresting business practices when made outside of a game's release.
Swapping of a great looking Demo with what was delivered.
The game was BUGGY and I don't mean xenomorphs.

Really the only thing I liked was the cool pickups. That idea was sound and solid. The MP was passable but felt highly unbalanced though I had an admittedly brief experience with it.
 
Raptomex

Raptomex

Member
I actually just played through it for the first time recently. The story is forgettable, the voice acting is eh (Beihn did a better job in Blood Dragon), the "boss fights" suck. The Xenos are not represented well IMO. The gameplay itself is just very generic.

On the positive side, it looks and sounds like Aliens. The fan service is nice. I don't think it was as horrible as people made it out to be and I also never saw the original pre-release stuff back in the day. I didn't notice any serious technical problems either. I did play it on PC. But to rate the game a 3/10 seems a little extreme. I'd probably give it a 6/10 from what I played. I think if it didn't have the Aliens coat of paint people would have received it better. Maybe it had more issues at release.

I don't care what anyone says, it's still better than Alien 3. Fuck that movie, I hate it.
 
S

ShadowSwordmaster

Banned
Metzhara said:
The Good:
Interesting concepts for pickups and collectibles: Weapons were from drops of famous characters, dogtags, and lore adding recordings.

The Bad:
Game design was atrocious with uninspired paths, character lacking encounters, and constant back and forth style movement through environment.
Dialog was throw away material from Bulletstorm, uninspired verbal garbage that stood terrible on its own but wasn't helped any by the terrible story.
Shitty retcon... no spoilers here. If you played you know what's up.

The Ugly:
AI was just really a hot mess. The most notable is the "blind aliens" who, quite frankly, walked like they were looking for a toilet.
Behind the scenes shenanigans dealing with money, swindling, and other normally uninteresting business practices when made outside of a game's release.
Swapping of a great looking Demo with what was delivered.
The game was BUGGY and I don't mean xenomorphs.

Really the only thing I liked was the cool pickups. That idea was sound and solid. The MP was passable but felt highly unbalanced though I had an admittedly brief experience with it.
Click to expand...
This post nails it.
 
W

Water

Member
It's not that uncommon for an early demo to appear a ton better than what the devs are able to cram into the final result, and also normal that the devs don't actively come out and detail what has been cut. Also not uncommon for a release to be an unfun and ugly mess of bugs.

What really elevates this one to special status is that Pitchford and Gearbox lied their ass off. He went on in detail about how they are huge Alien fans and want to do this project right - not just the normal level of PR-speak but actually bragging about it. And then the actual development was almost completely farmed out and very little resources put on it. So they showed something that even then they must have known was impossible with the meager resources they were putting in. Even after the product was out and truth was obvious, there has been nothing from Pitchford but insistence that the product is great. Lying strategically when it can boost sales is one thing. Pride about things you know are bullshit (product quality, enthusiasm level of a team that isn't even making the product) is sociopath material.
 
J

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
NinjaCoachZ said:
Wasn't it rumoured they embezzled funds from Sega (for this game) and 3D Realms (for Duke Nukem Forever) to make Borderlands? Has that been debunked or anything, because I remember hearing there was some weird behind-the-scenes stuff.

Also 3 years after release, Randy Pitchford repeatedly denies and refuses to acknowledge the criticisms of the game
Click to expand...

3D Realms didn't pay Gearbox a dime for DNF. What happened is that 3DR burnt through all of its own money after ~four years of development, at which point it partnered with Gathering of Developers, which was eventually absorbed into Take-Two, which in turn resulted in publishing rights transferring to 2K, and TT got sick of waiting for the bloody thing to release so it ripped the project out of 3DR's hands and asked Gearbox to stitch together something resembling a game from what 3DR had to show after more than a decade of development time.
 
S

Sojgat

Member
Game ran like shit on last gen consoles. Textures for some areas just never loaded.

It was kind of amazing how bad it was for a AAA release with a big marketing push behind it.

Randy is such a con artist.
 
S

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
MrCunningham said:
Nope, Randy pretty much promoted the pre-recorded stuff as actually in game footage. He never once said it was a work in progress, which actually resulted in a class action lawsuit where SEGA had to pay out $1.25 million dollars to people who bought the game: http://www.polygon.com/2015/5/28/86...es-lawsuit-loses-class-status-gearbox-dropped
Click to expand...

What you said is not supported by what the article says; the article suggests the suit had been on track for a settlement offer of $1.25 million (i.e. peanuts) to the class, but that the class was decertified and the lawsuit proceeded as 2 individual people suing Sega.

The suit against Gearbox was dropped with prejudice because the plaintiffs expected to lose and didn't want to be on the hook for legal fees.

In other words, you linked an article that basically suggests the suit is overblown and has little to no merit.
 
R

RexNovis

Banned
It was a buggy glitch ridden mess that was sold off promotional content that completely misrepresented the final product. It was proven after the fact that the development was farmed out to another studio despite Randy Pitchford talking about how they were devleoping the game with so much love and passion for the franchise. Basically it was a giant lie that spat in the faces of anyone who was a fan of the Alien franchise.
 
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