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Aliens: Colonial Marines- Yes, It’s That Bad

Michael Barnes 12 Comments

Aliens Colonial Marines

A copy of Gearbox’s (?) Aliens: Colonial Marines arrived at stately Barnes Manor yesterday. I just had to load it up and give it the same chance I give every other game, despite the fact that it’s received absolutely scathing reviews from every publication except a 9.0 from an EGM reviewer that apparently either has no taste or really is one of those infamous, paid-off journalists. Before we get rolling, let me go ahead and state quite clearly that I am an Aliens fan. When I was four, I had the legendary Kenner Alien toy. When I was 11 years old, I saw Aliens in the theater and as soon as I got home I took my list of favorite movies off the door of my room, crossed off Big Trouble in Little China, and wrote “Aliens” in the #1 spot. So let’s head off those “well, he must not be a fan of the property” claims at the pass.

A few minutes in, and an Aliens fan might be willing to issue a few passes. It’s the pulse rifle. It sounds right. So does the motion tracker. You board the Sulaco, and there’s that aweome dropship. But the creep of crappiness can’t be thwarted. Within ten minutes, you realize that you are playing a very, very bad game. Everything looks ugly as hell. Set designs are cluttered, muddy, and actually kind of difficult to see. The screen tears constantly (on the 360), and I actually found myself wondering if they used the models and animation from the Aliens versus Predator game on the Atari Jaguar. The Xenos are just sad to look at. At one point, one fell out of the ceiling and then ran behind a desk while my squadmate shot at the desk. Remember when that happened in the movies? How about when a marine walked up behind a Xeno just standing there and pretty much tapped it on the shoulder?

The gameplay is barely a consideration- better shooters were designed in the mid-1990s. Earn a new weapon, and it magically appears in your Bag of Holding. Lose your armor bar, and your chest plate pops off. Press and hold X to do a bunch of stuff. I honestly do not believe that at any time anyone playtested this game, and I seriously doubt anyone involved in making this game, whoever they are, actually took the time to vet it before submitting the final code. If they did, they need to be fired immediately and never allowed to work in the games business again.

No pulling punches. The game is an AAA debacle of the highest order, a strata reserved for over-promised, under-delivered games like Duke Nukem (another great Gearbox production) and Daikatana. Yes, I went there. It’s a shameful, sloppy, and intentionally mis-marketed piece of $60 junk that will satisfy no one apart from those unable to discern characteristics of quality or craftsmanship in the consumer products they purchase.

Playing through the first part of the game, I was struck persistently and consistently with the impression that I was playing a game developed over the course of a couple of weeks by garage programmers in a developing country, working with a budget of a twelve pack of Mountain Dew and a wholesale club bag of tortilla chips between them. Yet the brand names “Sega” and “Gearbox” are clearly all over the product.

You don’t have to do much research on the Internet to run into some conflicting reports about this game’s parentage. There are suggestions that Gearbox didn’t design large parts of the game, despite the fact that it is branded as such (presumably to rope in the Borderlands set) and Randy Pitchford has spent the last two years out of the half-decade that it’s been development stumping for it. Timegate Studios, who did the Section 8 games, is co-billed in the start-up screens, and anonymous folks purporting to be Gearbox employees are claiming that it’s as much a Timegate game as a Gearbox one. But then a Sega rep made a plain statement that it’s all Gearbox. Someone is lying to you, the consumer.

Yesterday, reports at Eurogamer and even on IGN have started turning up that the early demos, screenshots, and previews of the game are nothing like the finished product. You can hunt those out and make your own decision on that. But you see the one up top there? The game looks nothing like that. From whhat I’ve seen, Sega, Gearbox, and/or Timegate should be held accountable for fraudulently marketing this game with visuals and even gameplay elements that are substantially downgraded in the retail product. IGN and all of the big ad sites are responsible too, issuing preview after preview, gushing with “this is gonna be great!” enthusiasm to lure you, the consumer into preorders. Within the next couple of weeks, IGN and other such outlets will move on to helping the corporations hype their next big steaming pile, pretending like it all never happened. Disgusting.

It blows my mind that any of the parties involved with making and marketing this game thought they could get away with it. They had to know that this game is garbage. It’s pretty evident that it was rushed to market and carelessly pressed to master with tons of bugs, virtually zero polish, and assets that were not as advertised. Oh, but wait. Massive day one patch. All better, right?

No, because nothing can fix this game at this point and the bad news for Aliens fans aside from the fact that these mountebanks squandered the license is that all of the potential for this to be THE Aliens game is now gone. It’s depressing. Because when you’ve got that pulse rifle and the game’s sickly-looking, hard-to-actually-see Xenos clamber toward you and you hear that sound, you hear what might have been. When you flip up the useless motion detector and hear that distinctive ping, you hear what we SHOULD have gotten from this game. At least they sampled the sounds right.

I almost hate to have written this piece because this game needs to be buried in the desert next to those E.T. cartridges. It really is that bad- and this is coming from the guy that gave Brink a glowing review even though it was released in such a rough state. At least that game had some innovative ideas, frequently compelling gameplay, and a sense that it was made by people that actually give a shit about their product.

Funny to see golden boy developer Gearbox falling so hard on this, another Duke Nukem-class disaster- it’s pretty clear that there’s an A-team and a B-team there. Only one of which works on Borderlands. But hell, for all we know at this stage, a Gearbox employee never touched the code.

At the end of the day, it’s just another bad game. It’ll be mocked and laughed at for a while, then forgotten. Cast off into the Gamestop discount bin with an unceremonious $2.99 sticker on it. Word of advice- at that point, don’t buy the $30 season pass. But what won’t go away is what this game represents- bad development, bad design, and dishonest marketing at the highest levels of the industry. The people involved with making this game and putting it on our shelves, and then asking for our money for it, know exactly what it is that they shipped. They know this is not a game up to standards. This is not a product anyone would stand by. They’re relying on you being too stupid to realize that you’re a sucker before it’s too late and your only recourse is a $12 trade-in credit if you act, like, by Saturday.

I don’t have a cute Aliens quote to go with all of this. Doesn’t deserve it.

Why I Think Borderlands 2 Sucks (But I Like It Anyway!)

Michael Barnes 89 Comments

Borderlands 2 is a terrible game design. It’s boring, tedious, repetitive, and it never actually rewards the player. It’s obviously a successful design because people continue to play and enjoy it. But can you really, honestly say that it’s a great video game?

Hold on angry internet mob, put the pitchforks and torches down and lemme finish. I like both Borderlands 2 and its predecessor quite a lot and I think Gearbox’s latest is an across-the-board improvement. They’re fun, casual games that don’t really require much focused commitment or involvement other than spending a lot of time futzing around with character builds and all those oodles of weapons. Playing with friends is neat because you can shoot the shit while you shoot the bad guys. I’m glad that improvements were made like dropping those restrictive weapon specializations and adding the Badass goals and bonuses, which hugely increases the gameplay- and challenge. But both Borderlands are absolutely terrible designs along a couple of different parameters.

The obvious ones are laid bare just by playing the game for an hour. The story is barely more interesting than the first one and the game world remains oddly barren, lifeless and remote, despite decent character writing that too often mistakes “attempts to generate memes” for “good”. Personally, I’m pretty tired of characters being little more than quest dispensers in any game. That’s an aspect of MMORPGs that has consistently chased me away.

Quests are somewhat improved, a couple of them are a little more thoughtful and I like that some have optional goals. But by and large, it’s the same post-MMORPG find-and-fetch or kill X number of Y kind of affair. It’s still boring as hell to drive way the hell out to a waypoint and trundle around looking for an item you’re supposed to retrieve while shooting a bunch of bad guys that pretty much just run at you.

The gunplay is rudimentary at best outside of picking which shooting implement to use at a given time. Playing a Gunzerker makes the game feel almost like a Serious Sam title. Despite class abilities, extended elemental effects, and more enemy variety than the first game it’s still pretty basic, undynamic shooting action that really isn’t all that much fundamentally different from Doom. Or Castle Wolfenstein 3D.

Further, there are no RPG elements in the game despite claims otherwise. Fiddlefarting over whether to sell Gun A that does X damage and has Y% of this effect or Gun B which does X+1 damage but doesn’t have that effect but another is not role-playing. Nor is shopping for new class abilities with your new XP-purchased skill point. Those things are micromanagement, not role-playing.

More discreetly, Borderlands 2 sucks for the same reasons that the first one did. It’s the same silly, ultimately pointess loot grab where 99 percent of the loot you find is either not as good as what you already have, it’s something to give away to another player, or it’s more or less worthless. Shops are stocked with the same kind of junk with the occasional daily deal there to tempt to you sell off your entire backpack. And don’t get me started on clicking on Pandora’s countless lockers and storage boxes. I don’t consider wandering around and picking up $2 and a pack of sniper rifle bullets over and over again to be gameplay and it’s definitely not great gameplay. I almost grimace when I see a bunch of green lights from a distance. I know I’ll go over there, collect my two dollars and sniper rifle bullets, and move on. Like a Pavlovian dog.

But it’s the leveling and character development that keeps you playing, right? That’s great, but the development curve and sense of progression in the game remains completely screwed up- it’s too long, drawn out, and rewards perseverance and grinding rather than good play and player skill-building. It takes like 10 levels to even unlock your character’s core class ability. Levels are few and far between, it seems, and it feels like you are constantly chasing a game-changing function that never materializes.

In fact, that kind of summarizes a lot of my complaints with how Borderlands 2 is designed. It’s a hamster wheel game. You’re constantly trying to advance or find a great new gun, but when you do either it’s rarely more than a minor, incremental change. I can’t believe they haven’t figured out a way to monetize this endless chase for something slightly better. Maybe Borderlands 3 will have you buy BorderBucks with your credit card to increase the odds of finding a purple weapon. But for now you can pay the entry fee and just keep running and opening boxes between bouts of shooting, blissfully ignoring how empty the game actually is.

Of course, with co-op partners, it doesn’t feel quite so much like that and bear in mind that most of my time with the new game has been solo, although I played through every piece of the first game with a steady group. We didn’t bitch too much about the design. We talked about movies, family, politics, whatever instead. The game was nearly secondary. Focusing on the game as a single-player design reveals things that are still present in co-op- you just don’t pay as much attention to them. You also tend to blissfully ignore how tedious, repetitive, and workmanlike so much of the design is.

Of course, the great art direction and visual panache, coupled with some funny jokes helps to glosses over all of that ugliness and eventually the game bests you. It is addictive. You fall into a kind of a dull-eyed stupor and just enjoy it for what it is- a dumb shooter with a lot of guns, quests, and four very divergent character options. There’s nothing wrong with that for so long as you’re having a good time. The good news is that Borderlands 2 is more fun to play than its predecessor. There’s plenty of activities to do with it and many hours of them at that. But I’m not under the illusion that it is in any way a great or progressive video game design.

Aliens: Colonial Marines Set for February Release

Bill Abner 8 Comments

I’ve heard mixed things about this one based off some press previews. This is a game I want to be good because the setting remains one that I am fascinated with despite the milking of the movie franchise and the way that (almost) every videogame ever made centering on the xenomorphs have turned out.

We’ll now get to find out on February 12th if Gearbox has another Borderlands on its hands or another Duke Nukem. Or maybe another Brothers in Arms…but with Aliens. With all of the delays, one has to wonder…

PR:

SEGA® of America, Inc., SEGA® Europe Ltd., Gearbox Software and Twentieth Century Fox Consumer Products are thrilled to announce that Aliens: Colonial Marines™ will be in stores worldwide on February 12, 2013. As the authentic addition to the ALIENS franchise canon, the game’s stunning visuals and adrenaline pumping action will deliver breathtakingly immersive single, cooperative and competitive multi-player modes. Providing for an innovative asymmetrical competitive multiplayer experience, Aliens: Colonial Marines lets players fight in first person as the ultimate combatants – the United States Colonial Marines, or in third person as the universe’s deadliest killers – the Xenomorphs. Plunging into familiar and new environments from the iconic film franchise, players will have to fight the fear and face the true horrors of the ALIENS universe.

“I am thrilled to announce the definitive launch date for Aliens: Colonial Marines,” said Randy Pitchford, President of Gearbox Software. “Aliens: Colonial Marines is the culmination of a life-time of inspiration from the films and relentless passion and drive from the exceptionally talented development team behind the scenes.”

“We knew this game would be incredible from the moment Gearbox began developing Aliens: Colonial Marines,” said, Gary Knight, Senior Vice President of Marketing for SEGA Europe and SEGA of America. “Now that the title is in its final stretch of development, we can confidently release the exact date that gamers will finally get to experience this blockbuster thrill-ride.”

“SEGA has a proven track record with the ALIENS franchise. ALIENS vs. PREDATOR released by SEGA in 2009 became one of their top-selling titles,” said Gary Rosenfeld, Senior Vice President for New Media for Fox Consumer Products. “We look forward to working with them and bringing an exciting new way for fans to immerse themselves in the ALIENS world.”

In partnership with Twentieth Century Fox Consumer Products and developed by critically acclaimed studio Gearbox Software, Aliens: Colonial Marines will (ship on February 12th.) bring new levels of bone-chilling suspense and adrenaline-filled action to the renowned franchise. Aliens: Colonial Marines begins with an ostensibly abandoned ship, the U.S.S. Sulaco, recovered in orbit around LV-426. Players lead a group of highly trained United States Colonial Marines as they board the deserted craft to uncover the fate of the crew. They will have to fight to survive unspeakable horrors and their own anxieties as they chase down the truth behind a galaxy-spanning deception that places humanity at the mercy of the most murderous and deadly species in the universe. Aliens: Colonial Marines features authentic environments, such as the surface of LV-426 and Hadley’s Hope, weapons inspired by the film series and is designed to provide an exhilarating and engaging new chapter in the ALIENS universe.

Aliens: Colonial Marines will be available in stores across the globe on February 12, 2013 on PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system, Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and Windows PC. A release date for the announced Wii U™ version will be revealed at a later time.