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hardcore_gamer

Aliens: Colonial Marines is out.....and it sucks.

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I have a shit client that is a national company that has 7 bosses to tell me what to do. Sometimes one boss contradicts the other boss. My manager tells me don't ask who to listen to, just do it and charge them again when they ask you to change it. In a way he's right.

There are other times where I've thought wow this is shit or wow this is a blatant lie. But we aren't in charge of content :-) Sure enough one of the other bosses steps up and says .... that statement is a lawsuit waiting to happen, go and change it.

If it happens within our company though I'll usually point out wow that's crap or someone sure is lazy. Then people respect me for not letting things slide. But clients aren't within the company :-)

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ps3 is a bottleneck

Last I checked Killzone 2 and 3 looked pretty amazing, and the game runs smooth. Are the Killzone 2 and 3 graphics considered last gen now?

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I don't know much about Killzone, other than that at least one of those games had that whole debacle with the laggy response.

Anyway. Killzone 2 and 3 were designed exclusively for the PS3. That makes a lot of difference. The cell processor of PS3 isn't necessarily weak. But it's a pain to develop for. From what I understand it shares memory for all the cores creating a bottle neck with the memory management.

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kristus said:

I don't know much about Killzone, other than that at least one of those games had that whole debacle with the laggy response.

Anyway. Killzone 2 and 3 were designed exclusively for the PS3. That makes a lot of difference. The cell processor of PS3 isn't necessarily weak. But it's a pain to develop for. From what I understand it shares memory for all the cores creating a bottle neck with the memory management.


I've heard something about the sharing as well. You've worded it better than I could have. And yeah PS3 exclusives always seem to get the upper hand, which is why I'd look at games like Skyrim.

As for laggy response, that could be attributed to a number of things, including letting a UK player onto a US server where their ping is 200+. If there was rubber banding, that's usually a server issue.

What's done is done with Aliens. We'll get one in another decade and people will wonder what went wrong with that one too.

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kristus said:

No. Afaik it had laggy responce in Single player.


Perhaps that's when Killzone feels the bottleneck.

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Satyr000 said:

AVP 2000: Classic is five bucks on Steam. Grab a copy and look up some of the enhancement mods for it. AVP 2010 was good, but AVP 2000 is the better of the two. Especially when you compare the Marine campaigns of the two.


I think I might have that in my Steam library already. I'll have to look for it. If not, I'll buy it and check it out. Thanks. :)

Aside from enhancement mods, are there any extra campaigns or single player maps for it?

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I would like they should make these Aliens games more like System Shock type game.

Shooty but with horror and ship\environment free to explore. I saw Angry Joe video of this new Aliens game, that man he is very upset.

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geo said:

Ha! You're right I was off... they'd make around $5 million - $10 million not 1 million. Didn't check how many zeros I had. They'll probably make $20 million on the life of the game. Now I don't feel as bad for Sega. But I still see this as a giant loss for them.... like all of their games.

Well, if you're going to feel bad about any of the companies involved then it should be Sega. Six or so years ago Gearbox goes around signing a contract for this game, then they create Borderlands and suddenly have zero interest of working on anything else, regardless of any binding legal contracts that they had made. Maybe Sega should have terminated the contract and got an other studio to work on the game, but without knowing the termination clauses of the contract that's not something too easy to speculate on.

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Huh, what else to await from modern shooter which Colonial Marines actually is? You're right, the answer is: nothing special. And that's the worst.

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Jodwin said:

Well, if you're going to feel bad about any of the companies involved then it should be Sega. Six or so years ago Gearbox goes around signing a contract for this game, then they create Borderlands and suddenly have zero interest of working on anything else, regardless of any binding legal contracts that they had made. Maybe Sega should have terminated the contract and got an other studio to work on the game, but without knowing the termination clauses of the contract that's not something too easy to speculate on.


Yeah Borderlands is like... who wants to work when you won the lottery? They sold 2 million copies in 5 months. Gearbox's cut would probably be $30 - $40 million of the $120 million it generated (a lot of hands in the cookie jar when making a game). It didn't sell the extra 3 million until the game hit $20.

The game wasn't released until 2009 when Gearbox signed a deal with Sega for ACM in 2006.

Borderlands had its first meh trailer out at the end of 2007. I know when I get contracted to work for the Aliens franchise I'd want to make a fresh IP instead.

Gearbox started out by making Half Life expansion packs (just like TimeGate made FEAR expansions). I still remember a puzzle in one of the expansions that had a valve... and a gear box.

Ha and Gearbox was supposed to do a game for the crime drama Heat. Anyone remember that 3 hour movie? Wonder what happened to that one. So they were working on 3 games at once. Well I guess that's doable for a company with 180 employees (more or less I'm just judging off of wikipedia).

Then they went on to complete an original game in 2005 Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30 (the game did around 1 million sales?). Just like TimeGate made what was it again? Section 8? Interesting formula. Make an expansion, then make your own game :-)

Watching a review of Brothers in Arms... a game from last gen consoles the review points out the NPCs look you in the eye. Yet ACM doesn't. Weird. From watching the review the makers of Brothers in Arms is clearly the right choice to do an Aliens game. You need to work as a team, you can get taken down by 2 good shots (ACM you can withstand a lot of punishment).

http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/6ybl78/brothers-in-arms--road-to-hill-30-brothers-in-arms---gt-review

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The face huggers were about the size of frogs. Yet on your face they were giant.

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That's perspective for you. Things that are close, look like they are bigger than things that are far away.

Or like SNL put it in their parody of ICP's Miracles videos. Are kids small, or just far away?

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Something weird I noticed: Soldier of Fortune 3 on the PS3, at one time ran at least pretty smooth most of the time, as far as I remember. After a certain system update many months ago, the game was suddenly at unplayable framerate a lot of the time. I don't know if anybody else noticed this. Did this happen with other games?

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kristus said:

That's perspective for you. Things that are close, look like they are bigger than things that are far away.

Or like SNL put it in their parody of ICP's Miracles videos. Are kids small, or just far away?


This is true things that seem far away would be smaller. The face huggers when they're off of you are really small. Maybe oh the size of the player's foot.

According to this side by side PS3 has a worse frame rate than X-Box >> http://www.lensoftruth.com/heads-up-aliens-colonial-marines-screenshot-comparison-and-analysis/2/
XBox has higher FPS but screen tearing.

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geo said:

This is true things that seem far away would be smaller. The face huggers when they're off of you are really small. Maybe oh the size of the player's foot.

That is how large it SHOULD be mind you.


It has higher FPS, but PS3 seem to be locked at 30fps according to the article. Also the PS3 version is notably better looking. Still got a lot of screen tearing, but not as much as Xbox with got as much as 50% torn frames.

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I was meaning legs and all... not the body. How can it wrap around a face if it is the size of a foot legs and all. I'll need to find a screen shot. I mean a foot as in 5 toes.

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I'm playing the PS3 version (redbox). Trophies galore. Glitches galore. Clipping glitches like being able to throw a face hugger off you through a wall. Closing doors on NPCs to see them half in and half out of the door. Having my NPC friend run in slow motion... hilarious. I reload my weapon as I'm cutting the door so it goes into the ammor reload animation and the timer for the door cutting. Then goes into the door cutting.

The game seems harder on the soldier difficulty, probably because of the accuracy of the analog sticks.

I managed to miss a lot of key moments in the game because they let me fall so far behind.

There was one soldier I was shooting... yet he wouldn't go down no matter how many bullets I put into him. Then he killed me and the camera zoomed out. That's when an object appeared between he and I that was invisible to me yet still obstructing my bullets. This object / laptop was far away from me so there's no reason for it to become invisible.

Since I'm not insta killing everyone I can see the enemy AI does have intelligence, which is strange, because it sure didn't playing the PC. Soldiers will do blind fire and so on. Aliens will still bum rush you after their animations are over. Friendly AI still ends up shooting at walls.

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Sorry to keep bumping this but HOLY SHIT I just beat the game and what an insulting non ending. But then I notice the $30 season pack of DLC. So that makes me think THE GAME ISN'T EVEN FINISHED. I thought oh maybe I need to beat it on a higher difficulty to get more levels. Nope.

There is a better way to handle the lead into $30 DLC. In fact you can just end it satisfyingly and if DLC comes out to continue the product... then you can have it start where the satisfying ending left off instead of ending with what looked to be the start of DLC. This is terrible way to say ha ha we got your $60 but now we need $30 more.

Then toward the end of the credits it says 'Are you still reading?' Then it goes through all of the brief personal thank you letters from GearBox before it goes into the TimeGate Studios credits.

In these credits there are concept arts and other things that would lead me to believe Time Gate did the game.

There were 12+ people with Quality Assurance.

Then it goes into the Nerve Studio people... with the coders, designers and art people....

Then into the Demiurge Studios art people... and design people and engineers. Oh and they have their own set of 10 quality assurance people.

Then it goes into the Shadows in Darkness animators.... and artists and level designers.

Finally it has another studio with a slew of testers... like 30 is my guess... and 2 Quality Assurance people.

There were 2 giant questions that they just answered with 'oh we're not gonna tell you' When they can be easily explained. Hicks killed someone and stuffed them into his cryo tube. Why did he need to say 'I'm not gonna tell you.' The final boss battle was so meh and undangerous. It was all set up to be some big game of cat and mouse but in the end I was able to just run right through the queen. RIGHT THROUGH THE QUEEN.

Again this is just a big fuck you of an incomplete game that people will have to pay $90+ for (if new with season pass). Fuck off Gearbox, glad I rented my copy.

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Unless the DLC replaces the entire game with something better, I'll pass.

I forced myself to play all the way through it, simply because I'm such a big Alien fan - maybe not enough of a fan to stop playing and disown this game, though. It's a mess, and it only got worse as it went along. I couldn't even recommend it as a rental.

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geo said:

In these credits there are concept arts and other things that would lead me to believe Time Gate did the game.


Too bad only ~15% of what they did remained in the game.

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*chants resurrect* (aliens resurrection)

Aliens Colonial Marines DLC / expansion pack is out. I'm surprised it didn't take a year. It hasn't been on Steam's homepage. I would comment that its because nothing can make it past the wall of QuakeCon / Rise of the Triad / Payday 2 Beta.... but then again this DLC has been out 2 weeks and I haven't seen it without digging for it.

The full game is $20 the DLC is $10.

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Have there been any mods that improve the graphics and AI significantly/ expand the length of gameplay? If so, perhaps it might be worth a go.

Food for thought: it would be awesome, if some of these modding virtuosos, could take out the Alien character models from A:CMs, and implant them into a superior modern FPS. It's about time, alien aficionados get a game, with the integrity it deserves.

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It looks like there was also another map pack with levels from other movies.

I know there were tweaks and bug fixes after the first few weeks. PS3 had a patch too.

Probably not the graphics.

Turns out there was a patch to coincide with the expansion pack >>

General
• Adjusted melee encounter animations
• Various AI Improvements
o Adjusted Xeno behavior to only allow for tail attacks when they’re on ceilings
o Fixed an issue that could cause Xenos to walk upright on ceilings
o Adjusted Lurker AI to retreat a bit after a close encounter
o Fixed a bug where AI marines would occasionally default pose if incapacitated from a melee encounter
o Fixed a bug where AI would still be targetable by Xenos while incapacitated
• Changed the close encounter lighting to fade out instead of abruptly turning off
• Addressed an issue where player weapons would possibly continue to fire during melee encounters
• Adjusted the dissolve effect for Xeno head pieces and particles in Bug Hunt and multiplayer
• Adjusted the attack angle for the Xeno tail stab to prevent stretching
• Addressed an issue where Xeno gore effects would occasionally play twice
• Addressed an issue with the ‘Eat This!’ achievement from not being unlocked when using the double-barreled flush gun
• Addressed a rare crash bug when using interactive objects
• Addressed an issue where the motion tracker ping would play when you didn’t have a motion tracker available
• Addressed an issue where some particles would not appear when the World Detail slider was set to the minimum. NOTE: This may require some users to re-configure the World Detail slider (under Settings -> Video ) to ensure the setting is applied properly.

Campaign
• Adjusted “Recruit” difficulty to be easier. (Other difficulty options have not changed)

Versus
• Adjusted a broken Extermination Point in Excavation
• Addressed an issue in Extermination where the last two Extermination Points used would sometimes immediately reactivate
• Addressed an issue that wouldn’t let you select spectator cameras when joining games in progress

>>>

I call bullshit on having Recruit to be easier. It was too easy on harder difficulties and that was on a PS3 for me.

Anyway, that was the latest patch. There have been others previously.

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geo said:

It looks like there was also another map pack with levels from other movies.

I know there were tweaks and bug fixes after the first few weeks. PS3 had a patch too.

Probably not the graphics.

Turns out there was a patch to coincide with the expansion pack >>

General
• Adjusted melee encounter animations
• Various AI Improvements
o Adjusted Xeno behavior to only allow for tail attacks when they’re on ceilings
o Fixed an issue that could cause Xenos to walk upright on ceilings
o Adjusted Lurker AI to retreat a bit after a close encounter
o Fixed a bug where AI marines would occasionally default pose if incapacitated from a melee encounter
o Fixed a bug where AI would still be targetable by Xenos while incapacitated
• Changed the close encounter lighting to fade out instead of abruptly turning off
• Addressed an issue where player weapons would possibly continue to fire during melee encounters
• Adjusted the dissolve effect for Xeno head pieces and particles in Bug Hunt and multiplayer
• Adjusted the attack angle for the Xeno tail stab to prevent stretching
• Addressed an issue where Xeno gore effects would occasionally play twice
• Addressed an issue with the ‘Eat This!’ achievement from not being unlocked when using the double-barreled flush gun
• Addressed a rare crash bug when using interactive objects
• Addressed an issue where the motion tracker ping would play when you didn’t have a motion tracker available
• Addressed an issue where some particles would not appear when the World Detail slider was set to the minimum. NOTE: This may require some users to re-configure the World Detail slider (under Settings -> Video ) to ensure the setting is applied properly.

Campaign
• Adjusted “Recruit” difficulty to be easier. (Other difficulty options have not changed)

Versus
• Adjusted a broken Extermination Point in Excavation
• Addressed an issue in Extermination where the last two Extermination Points used would sometimes immediately reactivate
• Addressed an issue that wouldn’t let you select spectator cameras when joining games in progress

>>>

I call bullshit on having Recruit to be easier. It was too easy on harder difficulties and that was on a PS3 for me.

Anyway, that was the latest patch. There have been others previously.


I recall when Civilization V initially came out, it was probably the worst incarnation of it in the series; it was super-watered down, and linear. But now, after three years of updates and expansions, it is probably the best of all five. With this in mind, I do leave room for games to redeem themselves over time. Perhaps I'll look into it.

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so the DLC deals with explaining the super shaky premice of ACM. they probably should've started with that part.

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My Steam friends that play Civ V told me the new expansion fixed a lot of issues, but it cost them $30 for what should have been free.

Oh yeah it could redeem itself with graphics or whatever else, but honestly.... why bother? It would cost the studio money to implement great graphics and better gameplay, but why? Just to redeem themselves? I guess it looks better for them as a company if they fix things though. But then you'd have to have a marketing campaign to get people to play the game again with the super new graphics. Just save it all for the sequel and have a free demo so people can see the quality if not the first hour for free like Playstation does so you play the actual game.

Looks like the new protagonist is a female marine. Kinda surprised there's a new protagonist, but maybe they couldn't get the same voice actor from a 6+ year old project. Maybe you end up taking over or meeting the original protagonist.

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kristus said:

so the DLC deals with explaining the super shaky premice of ACM. they probably should've started with that part.


Yeah there were a lot of unanswered questions in the first that I somewhat defended the game saying they can explain it all in the DLC. But really they pointed out things in the game and just bluntly said we're not gonna answer that. What? Why not? There's the perfect opportunity because someone asked about it in game. It seemed like they're either trying to sell DLC or they didn't have an answer and needed to think about it for when the DLC came out.

I'm still VERY soured at the ending of the game or the non ending. But I guess Resident Evil movies end the same way, spending the last 10 minutes to build up to the next movie.

I'd be less soured if I felt like I had fun playing the game. Or maybe its about the lack of play time. Or maybe its because they started up the DLC story as a cliff hanger instead of just ending it after the extremely weak final battle.

>> edit >> Looking at Steam achievements... http://steamcommunity.com/stats/AliensColonialMarines/achievements/

A lot more people scored the first, second and third achievements than normal games on Steam. Even with Half Life 2. >> http://steamcommunity.com/stats/HL2/achievements

35% of people have even gone through the tutorial level?

But I guess when Aliens has achievements like kill a close range Xenomorph, the only people without that achievement must have either not played the game or not been able to actually play the game. Devs should have achievements for even successfully starting the game to let them know how many people can't even play the game due to whatever issue.

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A lot of people may have bought HL2 without actually playing it though. remember the Orange box? You couldn''t buy Portal for instance at first without buying HL2. And what if you already had HL2? Then you got two and there's no reason to play that copy when you alöready got one.

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