Aliens: Colonial Marines
- Thread starter Sean Hebein
- Start date
Funny thing... I'm actually working on a game like that as a personal project. The whole "APC command chair" aspect and everything... (Though it's set in a completely separate universe... and it's gonna be very stylized, old-school and simplistic visually because there's no way 2-3 people can do big-budget graphics.)
allosaur176
Sr Member
I seen an interview with a dev that said the processor exploded upwards rathed than outwards hence why the compound is still intact
Jedi2016
Sr Member
I think RTS would be interesting, too. Whenever I play Zerg in SC2, I think how cool it would be if these were Aliens instead. You could still do three races if you threw the Engineers/Jockeys in there.
As for CM.. at this point, I'm just glad I didn't pay full price for it. And I haven't even played it yet.. maybe it won't be quite as bad as they're saying. You should see the reaction over at NeoGAF, though.. they're tearing this game to pieces like a Queen tears up a Bishop droid.
They are coming up with some seriously funny stuff, though... Aliens: Colonial Marines Review - YouTube
Yarko
Well-Known Member
I have finally played it for PC. Graphics still look OLD (Doom 3 quality). The game itself is rubbish I think... but it's really really fun rubbish! It's like, I don't know... eating at mcdonalds, if you get my point. Rather low quality, but makes you want to keep coming back. . Having to switch from the pulse rifle to the motion tracker if you want to know if you are being flanked by aliens is a very interesting thing. Despite the really stupid Alien AI, they are still a threat because you can hardly tell where they are coming from, they mix with the surroundings and you only see stuff moving here and there, just like the first encounter with the Aliens in the movie. Multiplayer is fun too, and the Alien gameplay really forces you to be sneaky, which can be frustrating at first, but I'm sure will become interesting once you get used to the controls and the sets of skills.
I'm not impressed by the game, but I'm very happy to have it. Totally worth it for Aliens fans despite its many, many flaws. It really simulates the intense and chaotic battles of the movie!
I'm not impressed by the game, but I'm very happy to have it. Totally worth it for Aliens fans despite its many, many flaws. It really simulates the intense and chaotic battles of the movie!
Lord Boron
Sr Member
I'll wait for the 19.99 price tag. Shouldn't take long.
I played the first level tonight and it isn't the most demanding game graphically but it's not bad by any means. Graphics feel a little dated but not terribly bad either. So far I am having fun and that's what counts, right?
Dr Feeley Good
Active Member
Just picked my copy up, will be on it later when I get in from work !
El Duderino
Sr Member
I seen it was rated a 4.5 / 10 on IGN, it won't be long before an insane price drop. I'm glad I didn't pre-order now.
I generally don't like to jump on "game bashing bandwagons" because I know how hard game developers work on even the crappiest games and gaming fans can, at their worst, be some of the most entitled-feeling people on the planet. No one sets out to make a bad game and I've never heard a developer "not care" about their craft- I would say that almost each and every one wants to put their best out there for the world to see. The end result is more often than not a result of really bad production management, (incompetent) PR-driven design and over-inflated ego-heavy visions of "leads" on a project.
However, that said, the ball certainly looks dropped.
Aliens: Colonial Marines Critic Reviews for PC - Metacritic
However, that said, the ball certainly looks dropped.
Aliens: Colonial Marines Critic Reviews for PC - Metacritic
Solo4114
Master Member
Never been much of an RTS fan, myself. I prefer to have the time to consider my moves.
I worked on two of the most well-respected RTS titles of the last decade and I kinda don't see the Alien franchise working within a large-scale game of the genre like SC. It would completely devalue the danger of the individual Aliens (mush as ACM seems to have done as well). Maybe something a little more like Dawn of War, where the perspective is a little closer and you can keep the tension high by focusing on fewer fighting units. (Which is coincidentally the type of Aliens game I was almost involved with- the tech demo that was done even had an APC you could control- you could even manually aim/shoot the cannon.) Still glad it never came about though. Whatever the end result, I'm certain that my love for the universe would have been tainted.
TEEDA
New Member
The problem is that this game was on development for almost 5 or 6 years already ? And even Gearbox didn't make it 100 % developement priority. If i reckon they just worked, at least part of their team on the multiplayer and they handed the game to another developper team whose last game was Section 8.
They were praising the game a lot but failed to the expectations of the many journalists and now that the game is released, the fans themselves.
Even Duke Nukem which also was ghosted for few years seems to have more treat....:unsure
After a certain point, time will actually start to work against you when developing a game. Trends change, graphics become dated (either technically OR esthetically) and once you've lived and breathed a project for so long you start second-guessing all the decisions you were confident and certain about previously. Then you go back and try to "fix" things that may not need fixing, until one day a new Lead gets hired who wants to put his own personal stamp on things even though they may not align with what is already there...
It all goes downhill from there. No, short focused development cycles are the way to go i.m.o. If you make a mistake, fix it in the next game instead.
Solo4114
Master Member
Actually, I'd think Dawn of War 2 or something like a real-time but "pause-to-issue-orders" version of Jagged Alliance or whathaveyou would be better. Smaller scale (platoon or squad level combat) tactical combat.
There was a WH40K game YEARS ago called Space Hulk which did this. It wasn't great graphics, and the controls were a bit irritating, but in theory it could've been really cool. It basically played out exactly like this and you could view stuff either from a first-person perspective or top-down perspective (not isometric -- truly top-down). The trouble was, you could pause to issue orders but had a timer before the pause ran out, which I found irritating. That should've been an option or something.
I think with modern graphics and design concepts, a game like that could work really well, particularly in the Aliens universe (seeing as how 40K basically ripped that concept off).
Yeah, that's what kept Duke Nukem Forever in vaporware category for so long. They took too long and each time they got close to release, the industry took another leap forward and they had to go back to the drawing board. I actually don't blame Gearbox for the awful state of DNF (or so I heard, anyway -- I never shelled out the cash to play it).
I also think Gearbox has the ability to produce good games. They do Borderlands and did a great job with the Ghostbusters game. But it may be that the Aliens game took a back seat in development (certainly to Borderlands), or was handed off to them in lousy state or whatever.
Again, with a licensed property like Aliens, I think the degree of difficulty is a LOT higher in making a good game with both solid SP and MP. I dunno why, but licensed games always seem to turn out poorly and I can't help but think it has to do with budgetary issues. Like, the producers fronting the cash say "Here's your budget," but it's not enough to do a real AAA title like the franchise deserves. The producers, however, are of the opinion that they don't NEED to give you a good budget because the license will sell itself. So, you get yet another lackluster movie tie-in game or side-story within the universe which really just apes what you saw in the movie or the last game or whatever.
Like, think of it this way. If they made another Aliens game, anyone think they'd ever do it in environments which look different from what you saw in Alien and Aliens? Like, say, stick it on the ground in an open world, rather than tunnels and caves and whatnot? It'll always look like the Hadley's Hope colony, or the Nostromo, or the cargo bay of the Sulaco, or whatever. that's the trap of licensed properties -- you actually have kind of limited creativity. You HAVE to make the game reminiscent of the property on which it's based, and I tend to think that really limits designers' ability to think creatively.
TEEDA
New Member
There are still great Alien games already released ages ago. i m thinking about AVP the original and the sequel which were great ones. but when it comes to Aliens, maybe there is one developer who could 've made the game as people expected. I think of ID software and their iconic and legendary Doom.
There are good licensed franchise which were great like the transformers games ( war for cybertron ) and X:men wolverine which also was great. not awesome but great.
DNF was just a series of mock-up, gearbox just mixed what has already been workd on and just copied and paste to try to release the game on a scheduled date after thet took over it.
I agree with making a sandbox title or an open world game based on Alien, but I think fans wants fidelity to the franchise and most of the movies took place in spaceships...But with some liberty they could of course make something interesting.
Gearbox just officially said on their forum that timegate studios took over all the game. While gearbox only focused on some elements of the MP.
In which case the designers would probably say to themselves "Hey, since we're not abiding to anything that makes our game reminiscent to the property and it's going to be different in almost every way, why not develop our own game and create our own intellectual property?"
Because with direction like that, you wouldn't have to pay any licensing fees to the studio, abide by the studios' dictations on what needs to be in the game and if the game ends up being successful, the developers get all the praise instead of the property.
I actually played that Space Hulk game on my Commodore Amiga. Back then, the graphics were actually pretty good. The pause function was actually something that ADDED to the game to me. I gave a sense of tension to managing the four terminator marines- if you took too long to decide you got eaten by the genestealers. (It's also a mechanic taken directly from the board game- you get a little hourglass with it that the marine player has to use...) There was also an even older Space Hulk game on the Amiga that was completely turn-based and isometric but i can't remember what it's called. I actually recall each player somehow playing OPPOSING space marine squads in it.
DKF wasn't THAT bad. it just wasn't spectacular in any way. And I myself don't really care about cutting-edge graphics- there too much anxiety in trying to keep the gaming rig up to date all the time.
Ghostbusters was actually msde by Terminal Reality (of NOCTURNE fame)
Honestly, licensed IP is poison. With the exception of GB and the two recent Batman games as well as Goldeneye (which I never played) and the old X-wing/Tie Fighter and Star Trek Judgement Rites games I'm hard pressed to recall any real good licensed games. the main issues are:
Time:
Games based on movies "must" come out in conjunction with them to capitalize on the hype. This means not enough time to make a GOOD game.
IP Control:
Certain properties are so strictly controlled that you can't do anything creative with them at all. You can't kill main characters, you can't do what you want in the game world. The licensee has to have approval ALL the way... it's just impossible to work with a lot of the time. Also, sometimes you just have to face the fact that what makes a good movie doesn't always translate into a good game.
Fan base:
Honestly, as much as we here argue about accuracy of props, idealized vs true-to-life... there is no way to keep all gamers happy. Add to that the fanatic fervor that fans of things like Aliens can display and you're running right towards a wall. You can be THE biggest fan of something in the world and get to make a game out of it and when you do, you WILL get slammed by OTHER fans because you did this or that wrong. There's just no way to win.
I've had the "if they only had focused on THIS"-argument with myself on occasion as well but I finally decided that it wouldn't matter. Some things are just doomed to failure no matter how well your intentions.
Still AvP2 was pretty good... and genuinely scary!
Similar threads
