Is anyone really THAT surprised about Colonial Space Marines?

[Havik223]

I mean really. We've all seen the commercials. We've all seen the game-play footage that looks dated even by 2004's standards. When I see a commercial with clunky animations and ugly, well... everything. I tend to take that more seriously than a demo released by the company.

Am I the only one who thought this game was going to be crap from the start? There must be others who were turned off by those dated-looking commercials.

 

[shrekfan246]

I love it when people say that these games look dated "even by [Early 2000's] standards", because it shows to me that they don't remember what games looked like back in the early 2000's.

I'll admit, Doom 3 and Quake 4 look pretty good on the PC, but that's because id's engines were the CryEngine of their day before Crytek hit the scene. As "revolutionary" as Half-Life 2 was, the Source engine has had a good many updates since it was released and the game itself kinda looks ugly, flat and polygonal "by today's standard".

Every screenshot and trailer I've seen for the PC version of Aliens: Colonial Marines looks absolutely gorgeous on a technical level. Maybe the console versions look like ass, I don't know. But it certainly doesn't look like some of the crap the PS2 had released.

 

[Nonomori]

I love it when people say that these games look dated "even by [Early 2000's] standards", because it shows to me that they don't remember what games looked like back in the early 2000's.

I always assume they are exaggerating...

And I don't remember seeing any terrible trailer/commercial/demo. Just weak voice acting:

 

[sanquin]

small thing but i do laugh that people talk about things 5+ years ago as virtually ancient history

Considering how fast the technological world advances every year, heck every few months, I don't see why you should laugh. Technology changes faster than the rest of the world world, so when dealing with technology it's only logical to see fewer years ago, as more years ago. "Ancient history" is over the top, but you know what I mean.

 

[Diablo2000]

Not really, I even wasn't going to buy it until the "Top 10 reasons that Aliens Colonial Marines may kick ass" that Angry Joe released few weeks prior the game release, I decided to give a shot and regret ever since I bought the game.

 

[mohit9206]

No i didnt think once this game was gonna turn out as bad as it did. its always difficult to predict how a gane is gonna turn out even by looking at gameplay footage and videos. the trailers were good, the demo(a lie) was awesome so i had no reason to believe this game was gonna bomb. as for graphics, it has never been a factor for me in my decision to buy games. bad graphics are fine as long as other elementa hold up well

 

[GloatingSwine]

Nope.

I mean Gearbox have made basically one good game, Borderlands, and the evidence of the variable quality of the DLC and how they screwed up Borderlands 2 by focusing on exactly all the wrong things to develop demonstrates that that was basically an accident and they have no idea what it means to make a good game.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well I did say shit looks old with the very first outing and that was even the special made demo far better then the game, also knew they gave the entire story away in the trailers.

But with Gearbox big wigs being on camera every week talking about how awesome their project is we really couldn't know they botched it up this bad, or rather that they didn't fucking bother making it.

 

[kickyourass]

I kind of am, I knew it couldn't possibly live up to the massive hype (it would take the intervention of several gods and maybe a human sacrifice for that to happen) but I expected basic competence. It's quite literally impossible for me to care less about graphics so it would need to be much much worse then this to bother me, but I don't think I've ever seen AI this fucked. At least in most games if your AI Partner's blocking your path you can give them a good boot up the ass to get them moving but in this game the bullets go straight through. And I can't remember the last time I've seen enemy AI this woefully stupid, I almost feel bad for shooting them because I feel like I stumbled into some kind of remedial class for Xenomorphs.

Gearbox is a good studio, they've shown that they can do so much better then this, even with Duke Nukem they've got Borderlands, AND the Brothers in Arms series, both of which are awesome. It really would've done them better if they'd just burned the project to the ground and started from scratch, from what I understand the game was in Development Hell for a few years before Gearbox came along. Which really should be a lesson to everyone, don't take on half done projects.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I'm not terribly surprised but it has nothing to do with the "grapics" in the or the commercials. The game was announced in 2008 and they cited they began working on it in 2007. The project changed developers more than once. It went dark, came back, went dark again and finally we were told it was coming out. The project history more than anything was sufficient cause to make me assume it was going to be bad and indeed the final game bears witness to the fundamental problem: the game delivered is not the game they started. It bears all the marks of being torn down and rebuilt on at least one occasion giving rise to my primary criticism that the game simply doesn't know what kind of game it wants to be.

The best moments in that game place you in opposition to a handful of Xenos. The tedious and ultimately unsatisfying shooting sections that form the bulk of the game is clearly an attempt to capture that lucrative (and elusive) call of duty market. And the various gaping holes in the narrative that occur from time to time stink of a project that had major cuts just to get the thing out the door in the hopes of recouping some of what was almost certainly a total cost north of 20 million dollars.

-Edit- To clarify, it has been said by unvetted sources (i.e. neither I nor anyone outside of Gearbox can confirm or deny the information) that significant portions of the game were outsourced to other developers. This is backed by the number of studios credited both during the opening crawl and closing credits.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Nope.

I mean Gearbox have made basically one good game, Borderlands, and the evidence of the variable quality of the DLC and how they screwed up Borderlands 2 by focusing on exactly all the wrong things to develop demonstrates that that was basically an accident and they have no idea what it means to make a good game.

I beg to differ. They made Brother's in Arms which was a fairly strong series. They got their start making the Opposing Force expansion pack to Half-Life and while short it exceeded the original game in many ways. The only truly weak entry in their lineup to date was Duke Nukem, itself a rescue project and one beyond salvaging with any reasonable effort.

The Duke Nukem gambit was, if I were to guess, based on a desire to own the license for one of the great franchises of the early FPS days more than anything and the failure of the game itself simply part of the known cost of acquisition. The project was described as being "basically done" when 3D Realms was shuttered and the turnaround time from acquisition to shipping was brief enough that they'd have time for little more than bug fixing, certification, fabrication and distribution.

That doesn't particularly excuse the failure of Aliens; simply that a single bad game in more than a decade of operation doesn't really set a trend.

 

[Strelok]

I was surprised, but now we know that Duke Nukem: Forever is a creative virus, it destroyed 3D Realms, now Gear Box is infected, and the prognoses is terminal.

 

[piinyouri]

Totally surprised because until I got my last GI issue, I had never ever heard of the game.
From the main article that I skimmed through, it sounded really cool. Basically L4D with Aliens paint on, but hey that's pretty damn awesome.

I'm in authentic amazement that it is this bad.

 

[jollybarracuda]

Yah, I guess you could say my gamer senses were tingling with this one. But i still held out hope, as i've been wrong before, like with Far Cry 3.

 

[hutchy27]

I was expecting it to be bad, I even told my friend that I thought it would turn out really bad but he thought that it would be great. I would of probably got it if it did turn out great when it came down in price a bit but now there's no chance now.