Aliens Colonial Marines - Sega.

Coolhand

Anyone got this? anyone got this and actually like it? Immense amount of hype, but after reading a bunch of reviews and watching a playthrough all I can do is

Apparently it has not only a ton of glitches and bugs, but dull gameplay, shabby graphics, laughable animation.. Still at least after 7 years of development there's an entire 5 hours of gameplay.

count23

My brother bought the collectors edition, played it with my other brother while I watched. It's graphics are worse then HL2s, and that game is ancient as it is. characters acting stiff, when talking mouths move and nothing else. pathfinding issues, etc...

evil_genius_180

Reminds me of Spaceballs.

Stuff like this is why I never buy games until they've been out for a while and have been reviewed. I've been burned a few times in the past by horrible games, so I'm cautious.

Coolhand

Yeah, happens all too frequently - I clearly remember waiting patiently for Driver 3 on the ps2, a much hyped title that ended up being launched early. Awesome, I thought, until i played it. A Buggy, unfinished mess - knowing the game was going to get panned in forthcoming magazine reviews, the crafty publishers launched it a week early!

Of course some reviewers are complete sell outs. Driver 3 for example got 9/10 reviews in two official magazines despite being unfinished, near unplayable rubbish, same thing happens today with some large gaming websites, and happens all the time.:( At least here, pretty much everyone seems in agreement its a bit of a stinker.

Watch out for paid PR types 'astroturfing' and bigging up a game in comments sections, these guys are full of tricks.;)

Nadesico, oops, was that a pre-order? does he feel ripped off or what?

evil_genius_180

I played Driver 3 a bit, but not enough to really notice how bad it was. Since I borrowed it, I wasn't too worried about how bad it was. It didn't do much for me, though, so I never bothered buying it.

This is the last game I pre-ordered:

Star Wars The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes

It seemed so cool, play as Anakin and Obi-Wan during the Clone Wars. What I got was a frustrating mess. It's a 3D game that has a static camera, you can't always see what you're doing and have to do things like blind jumps. I spent more time redoing jumps because I couldn't see where I was going than I did anything else. Add horrible controls to the mix and you have a frustrating mess. After a while, I gave up trying to play it because of the frustration. Games are supposed to be fun, not stressful. Plus, it takes forever to load on the PS2 and the movies look jerky, like they're too much for the PS2's video processor. Judging from the star ratings on Amazon, it's not any better on any of the other systems.

After that crap, I started getting more cautious with games. Even if it's something from an established franchise, I'll still wait for it to be out and for others to try and review it. (guinea pigs )

I saw where there was a Colonial Marines game out but I haven't really checked it out yet. After seeing that video and what else you guys have said about it, I'll pass.

Coolhand

Well, its no Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, I still have my copy of D3, and masochistically played through the entire thing. I guess it was ok if you were just tooling around in a car for a bit.. a slow car. the fast cars were all capped with a top speed that felt no more than about 80mph. anyway, once you try playing through the game, or get out of a car.. eh, it all falls apart. its actually possible to produce a bug (quite frequently) that means you can't actually complete the game, on a format you can't even patch or update, that's unforgivable.

On foot, it had the same types of camera and control issues that plagued many 3d, third person games of that era, no surprise that the clone wars had the same issues, there are some good star wars games but always be highly suspicious of franchise tie-ins - they're guaranteed sales just by adding the name so why try and actually make it good?

evil_genius_180

That sounds really dreadful. Unfortunately, due to the high number of games that are made on a yearly basis, for every good game out there, there are 5 really bad ones.

Coolhand

I appreciate your optimism:D

Coolhand

getting back onto Aliens: Colon...oscopy (see my clever word play there) the below link shows the original demo released last year, which looked really great and exciting, but the final thing is clearly nothing like it. The disappointment and anger is clearly detectable in the reviewers voice-over! (his pulse rifle is slung but he uses some harsh language in there)

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/6832-A-LIE-ns-Colonial-Marines

Also, Kotaku sums up the scores conveniently here, see if you can tell which review site was bought off by Sega. *cough*EGM

edit - just reading the EGM review http://www.egmnow.com/articles/reviews/egm-review-aliens-colonial-marines/ I'm almost 100% certain those are absolutely not screenshots from any released version. I think the reviewer was probably basing his analysis on how many lovely gifts and VIP trips to the studio he was given rather than actually playing the game. 9 out of 10? really? Brandon Justice - stupid name, massive sell out.

Here's his bio

Brandon Justice

Brandon Justice spent the last 17 years in the game industry wearing hats as an annoying retail weasel, an overly opinionated journalist, and game-development ninja—until he got tired of the all the caviar and groupies, returning to the ring as a rowdy, rambling writer in 2010 for EGM Media. Follow him on Twitter @jokeontheworld. Meet the rest of the crew.

Yup, typical of the 'former industry' journalist whos basically now a paid shill to help shift games for his old insider buddies.

count23

Anyone else notice how Gearbox is 2 for 2 on promises to release good games and not delivering? DNF and now ACM.

I played the ACM demo at EBExpo (Australia's E3 attempt) last year, and it was substantially superior to the crap i saw last week.

evil_genius_180

I was reading some of the comments on the Brandon Justice's "review." I'd say pretty much everybody agrees with your assessment of things, Coolhand.

Coolhand

Nadesico wrote: »

Anyone else notice how Gearbox is 2 for 2 on promises to release good games and not delivering? DNF and now ACM.

I played the ACM demo at EBExpo (Australia's E3 attempt) last year, and it was substantially superior to the crap i saw last week.

Oh, thats interesting, was this the version as shown in that escapist magazine demo?http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/6832-A-LIE-ns-Colonial-Marines
i'd thought this was an unplayable peice of pre-set animation.. but perhaps not? If so i'd guess this was running on a powerful pc, and the entire project had to be scaled back / optimised to meet the constraints of console power (And not optimised very well)?

Eg, i wish i was offering any particular insight but yeah it happens all the time, industry insiders getting into positions to give favourable reviews to former clients for money, VIP trips to E3, etc.

This is another incident from last year: http://wosland.podgamer.com/the-players-and-the-game/ the villain of the piece, Lauren Wainwright, former square enix employee who while working as a reviewer only reviewed square enix games and gave them all good marks, even if they were turd.

but this is what you get, because games journalism makes no money from their actual readership - because everything is given away for free these days - so the only way these sites make money is by selling out to publishers... While they might be accurate about some titles, the titles produced by their sponsors will always be treated to nice reviews. Journalists have even been sacked for writing truthful reviews for some of these places.

*edit* where is the comments section for Mr Justice's review?

*edit 2, http://www.egmnow.com/articles/news/supposed-gearbox-dev-dishes-about-aliens-colonial-marines-issues/ some insight perhaps, if anyone cares. I've worked for Timegate, they suck;)