Aliens: Colonial Marines Trailer (SpoofyChop can't make titles)

A redditor who supposedly worked on the project writes:

http://www.reddit.com/r/LV426/comments/18ewf4/a_lot_of_you_are_rightfully_upset_at_the_final/

Sounds like Gearbox put everyone in an impossible situation, and if I was at SEGA I'd still be considering legal action.

Yeah, I'd heard that they had shelved it once before, doesn't surprise me that it got shelved again. Sounds like a definite train wreck.

They had to be told to put in female marines. At the last minute. In an Aliens game.

The Aliens franchise is obviously not one known for its female characters. No wonder they chafed a the order to shoehorn in these out-of-place changes.

This is the worst game I've played in a long time. AvP 2010 was a lot better than this; it at least looked good and had a great Infestation multiplayer mode. Don't even get me started comparing it to AvP 1999 and AvP2 because I'll cry.

I played about 2 hours of the Escape multiplayer last night, which is basically Left 4 Dead, only incompetently done and on maps that are too small and too few. The maps are too cramped for the aliens to use their speed and wall-climbing advantages, the marines take too many hits to go down and there is no feedback even if you do get close enough to hit them. Plus try being a sneaky and fast alien when every corner and pipe in the room is an obstacle.

Not even worth it when it's on sale.

Man, you guys would cry if they ever released the Aliens RPG design docs. JE Sawyer was the design lead, and he had a pretty great story, he had identified a lot of the key elements necessary for Aliens. And yes, it had wimmenz in it.

It is times like these that I wish I had one of those table-flipping gifs.

Angry gamer mobs now hating on Pitchford.

all it takes is one shitty game.

This post ignores all non-Borderlands Gearbox games.

hmm might be true, I didn't play any of the BiA games... I figure DNF wasn't their fault since they really just signed up to finish the game.

Always thought Borderland was kind of overhyped, the guns were cool but the gameplay get stale fast..

Hey, Opposing Force was great. I played Road to Hill 30 but it was so annoying and dull that I didn't finish it.

At least the explosions made up for the lack of a solid protagonist. Never understood why the only character that is in all the movies is this weird love-interest sidechick.

At the end of the day, Sega would first have to sue themselves for incompetent project management. I think ACM is a prime example of just how broken Sega can get internally.

From what a friend that worked at GBX told me, GBX screwing over Sega to put resources on their own titles goes all the way back to BL1

I may have to put the kabosh on future purchases from Gearbox. I don't think I can rationalize giving money to a developer who is willing to fuck over SEGA simply because they have less financial interest in the games success. Does this happen all the time and I just don't hear about it?

the impression I got is that the management there has been uniquely shitty to their partners and ex employees

I can't help that I like the BL games, but I am not a fan of gearbox.

And sometimes their current employees. This hasn't changed my decision to always avoid buying anything from Gearbox.

I think this comment from the Reddit thread linked above addresses the dismay at Pitchford:

Nah fuck em, if they still believed the endless stream of bullshit that comes from that mouth-like PR hose on Pitchford's face they deserve what they get.

Just saw this.
Comparison between the demo and the final version.

it's incredible.

the only thing I can think of that will explain this is that they use PC as a base instead 360 or PS3.. so when they finally tried to port the game to 360 or PS3, they had to cut a lot of stuff.

I've always found Pitchford's boyish enthusiasm to be charming. I never really expected that he would shit on my face like that.

Wow! That is striking.

I've actually heard that the demo Gearbox was pimping was a 100% total fabrication, with virtually nothing in common with the actual singleplayer being developed at TimeGate.

Yes. In general, publishers don't trust developers because developers are always trying to hose publishers. On the other hand, developers don't trust publishers because publishers are always trying to hose developers. Really it's amazing any games get made at all.

(Obviously there are exceptions.)

To be somewhat fair to pitchford, it's sort of like when an actor is stuck doing the rounds of interviews for a movie they know sucks. They still have to be positive about it, they can't say, "Oh shit, this movie sucked to work on, blah blah blah"

Weren't you the guy who thought Kingdoms of Amalur was challenging?

I did some searching and there was a petition started after Gearbox "accidentally" revealed during a live E3 chat with fans that the multiplayer would not have female characters.

Of particular interest is the fact that many of the original cast members of Aliens signed the petition. It ended up at just over 4000 signatures.

Here's a developer diary, for those who want to hear Randy and other Gearbox guys praise their then-upcoming game.

Well, after seeing the demo v full I feel slightly less dumb about my enthusiasm for buying this game. Slightly. I should have paid more attention to what came out later, though, that's for fucking sure, so I could have said "eeehhh let's just cancel this pre-order now shall we?" in time.

I don't actually hate it; I'm actually getting some enjoyment out of it, but it's definitely not a good game (could be, if they did some major patching and fixed the fucking AI and made xenos a lot tougher). Thematically it's doing well, but the game itself is ripped right out of 2006. It's an above average 2006 game being released at full retail price in 2013, and that's bullshit.

There's also more dev teams than I've ever seen in my life listed on the opening credits, it's absolutely absurd. You can feel this game having been passed around like the prom queen.

But when it's down to $15 and hopefully they've patched up the AI (really, that would go a long way, because bad AI is what I think the game's biggest problem is) it'd be worth that probably.

But it's definitely not hard at all (seriously, at all, the only tension is that I'm a giant wuss and get sucked into the theme), and the rare deaths are usually me doing a dumb thing, or the annoyingly overpowered Wei-Yu mercs when they show up.

I also wish I'd noticed Gearbox in the list of 8000 devs who worked on the team so I could have said "Nevermind" from the start.

Also the game is just not fucking finished and it's obvious. The game needed more work, especially the AI and the balancing and basically the biggest crime is just being mostly dull because of it and fuuuuck.

I'm still going to extract my fifty bucks out of this but...well, I wasn't ever going to buy a Gearbox game again anyway, so I'll figure out some other entity to lash out at I guess.

Was I? I don't remember it being particularly challenging, but I didn't really play a ton of it. Whatever. I'm trying to be helpful by giving my honest impressions. I can only speak for myself. If you feel like you can't trust me, that's perfectly fine.

Edit: Feeling the need to defend my honor (for some reason) I checked the Reckoning thread and was unable to find any bitching on my part about the game being challenging.

Ahaha oh Jesus I mean come on guys. This section with the "blind" xenos (I mean really it's established they track 90% by pheramones/heat anyway by previous games which is what makes combat drones dangerous to them) is so bad. First you run from a giant alien, then suddenly stealth, then more running. Like they just decided that they should have a crappy Amnesia tribute in the middle of a game that is, otherwise, about mowing down large numbers of squishy bugs. They even shamble like Amnesia's monsters, I mean come on guys.

While I'll defend the rest of the game (so far) as "not actually as terrible as people are saying" while still not calling it good, that section is inexcusably bad.

It looks looks the WiiU version due out in a few weeks has disappeared from Amazon.

Sega are no commenting right now

His pimping of DNF should have been clear evidence that he's willing to say whatever he needs to in order that you lay down and close your eyes because, trust him, this'll be fun.

You can't believe anything that comes out of Gearbox in terms of PR.

To quote YouTube, "Duke Nukem forever, shame on you. Alines[sic]: Colonial Marines, shame on me."

That is fantastic, Royal Fool!

I wonder if Pitchford will even attempt to address this in any meaningful way. The guy can't reasonably deny that he was knowingly shoveling shit and lying outright when talking about Colonial Marines. What could he possibly say now to make it right?

Probably the same thing those idiots said after DNF. Wait until the price drops, let all the looky-loos buy the game "just to see how bad it is, yukyuk" and then crow about respectable sales figures.

If you remember his "if you plot the review scores of DNF it looked like boobs" comment last time, he'll possibly point to the wide range in user scores on Metacritic and / or about how they made a polarising game that he personally loved.

Well the Metacritic average for both games is about the same, so that makes sense. And by makes sense I mean that he could make the same asinine comment about games that were not at all polarizing.

Well, I've beaten the campaign.

Does anyone else remember which Alien franchise game just ended with a picture of Ripley and the words "It is done"? Thought it was Alien 3 but youtube doesn't bear that out. Maybe the bad ending? I know it's in an ancient issue of EGM (maybe gamepro, pretty sure EGM), but I sadly haven't got those on hand.

I bring that up because that was a better ending than this one. For real. The game itself, above average 2006 game mostly, a few really shitty spots, mostly alright. Definitely not a good game by an means, and I'd give it a slightly generous 4 at this point. Maybe. Maybe. The ending? Fucking two.

We'll see how I feel once the blood stops dripping from my ears, but I doubt that's changing.