Aliens: Colonial Marines (PC/360/PS3/WiiU)

[Harry]

I don't believe it. Only the blind kid from Dumb & Dumber could give this game a 9/10.

"Pretty alien, pretty alien."

Infact Harry & Lloyd's lines in this video aren't too far from the quality of the game. Replace Petie with Aliens: Colon Marines.

If you want to listen to the real song:

[sj33]

It reminds me of when the Official PS Magazine gave the Phantom Menace game a 9/10 when everybody, their dog and the dogs puppies gave it 3/10. Totally not suspicious in the slightest.

[Harry]

I remember that game, I never spent long enough on it to give it a damnding score though. This game is honestly awful and I can honestly tell you mofo's to stay the **** away. In all of God's mercy, please stay away from this vile piece of ****. For the love of him.

[nonny]

Sounds like the best thing you can do is ignore this game exists and instead watch Alien/Aliens back to back in HD a controller in your hand.

[Harry]

That sounds awesome. I wish I had them still, my mate's got my entire terabyte of HD movies backed up on his disk.

[Kit]

One of the devs (assuming from Timegate) shedding some light on why it turned out to be in such a state:

A lot of you are (rightfully upset at the final product that is A:CM. Maybe I can shed some light as to how it got the way it is.

First off, due to me breaking NDA, I can't provide any proof that I'm not just talking out of my ass. But I figure you'd be interested in hearing what I have to say regardless. I've been on the project for around a year and a half, so some of the following are things I've heard from more senior guys.

Pecan (the internal codename for ACM) has a pretty long history. SEGA, GBX and 20th Century FOX came to an agreement to produce an Aliens game around 6 years ago, after which SEGA almost immediately announced it, long before Pecan had even started production. The game has been in active development in the past, only to be shelved in favor of another project (Borderlands, Duke, etc), and each time it was resumed it would undergo a major content overhaul.


SEGA, naturally, wasn't super pleased about the delays, but GBX got away with it for a long time and the contract between SEGA and GBX kept getting augmented to push the projected release further and further back. The last time it was resumed, GBX outsourced a good portion of the game to outside companies. Initially, the plan was for TimeGate to take the majority of campaign, GBX would take MP, Demiurge and Nerve would handle DLC and various other focused tasks. This decision was made mostly so that most of the developers at GBX could continue working on Borderlands 2, while a small group of LDs, coders and designers dealt with Pecan.


Somehow the schedules for Pecan and Borderlands 2 managed to line up and GBX realized that there was no ****ing way they could cert and ship two titles at the same time. Additionally, campaign (which was being developed by TimeGate) was extremely far behind, even as Pecan's Beta deadline got closer and closer. In April or May (can't remember which), Pecan was supposed to hit beta, but GBX instead came to an agreement with SEGA that they would push the release date back one more time, buying GBX around 9 mos extension.


About 5 of those 9 months went to shipping BL2. In that time, TimeGate managed to scrap together 85% of the campaign, but once Borderlands 2 shipped and GBX turned its attention to Pecan, it became pretty apparent that what had been made was in a pretty horrid state. 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.


Beyond gameplay, the story has been raised as an issue several times. I can't really comment without feeling bad beyond saying that the script was approved by 20th Century FOX, and that the rush to throw a playable product together came at the cost of the story. Campaign does a pretty bad job of explaining a lot of the questions raised at the start of the game, and so hopefully there will be DLC to flesh that out a bit better.

http://www.reddit.com/r/LV426/commen..._at_the_final/

[Wools]

If that's true, it speaks volumes towards the regard that Gearbox treated Aliens.

Does not sound like TimeGates fault, it was purely down to Gearbox. It would be interesting to know the thoughts and motivations behind these actions.

[fishbowlhead]

If that's true, it speaks volumes towards the regard that Gearbox treated Aliens.

Does not sound like TimeGates fault, it was purely down to Gearbox. It would be interesting to know the thoughts and motivations behind these actions.

Probably a simple case of can we develop this along with our other games, right that's a no, ok outsource it. Once a game is handled like that its unlikely to ever recover.

[jim g]

What a way to treat an IP like Aliens, utterly disgraceful

[MisterBubbles]

Gearbox was more interested in borderlands as they knew that was a sure fire hit and probably thought they could as little resources into ACM.

[Brad]

Gearbox' fault. If I tried to subcontract my work out to some idiot that doesn't know what he's doing then that's my fault.

Thinking of tweeting Brandon Justice for a game score price list. From those who have played the 360 version - is it possible that he didn't notice the problems the game has and really did get a 9/10 experience from it?

[originalbadboy]

Gearbox' fault. If I tried to subcontract my work out to some idiot that doesn't know what he's doing then that's my fault.

Yep .. Findus has made the same mistake by the looks of it.

[Guts]

Yep .. Findus has made the same mistake by the looks of it.

Isn't horse meat a much finer delicacy than regular, boring old beef?

[MisterBubbles]

The plot thickens though, http://www.computerandvideogames.com...timegate-sega/

[fishbowlhead]

Isn't horse meat a much finer delicacy than regular, boring old beef?

Yup, much higher in protien and iorn. Sorry for going off topic there.