Aliens: Colonial Marines

[max_cady]

I read that entire Reddit article... wow... This is an even bigger story than the actual game!

I've been seeing a lot of comparisons between the E3 demo and the actual game and wow... The demo was apparentely just one very long scripted scene because the differences between the two versions are just baffling.

[ROJM]

This game has spent years in the Hype Machine, with Gearbox talking it up at every opportunity, with Sega talking it up, with 20th Century Fox approving the script and with the promise of this basically being a sequel to Aliens. It was incredibly hyped and anticipated. Nobody expected (well, I didn't, anyway) a bad game to be the result.

And as a Sega fan it's disheartening because with Sega's packaged goods future to focus on only 4 franchises going forward, (  ) it sucks that they don't seem to mind releasing a bad game.

So? There's plenty of games i could mention that's been overly hyped for years but they never got the reaction like this game is getting. Is there a scandal about development? It sounds like something is going on, yes. But i think people are going overboard here because of who is involved and the main fire sems to be directed at Sega. I've seen it all too many times before when zealots who think they are game journalists try to take cheap shots at Sega in order to mess up the chances of any of their big games selling. I'm not suprised by whats happening but im suprised that some people in this forum are buying into the bullshit storm that the media are creating. But will this game do badly? There's enough casuals and Alien fans that will buy the game anyway even if the FPS and general gamers won't.

[semmie]

So? There's plenty of games i could mention that's been overly hyped for years but they never got the reaction like this game is getting. Is there a scandal about development? It sounds like something is going on, yes. But i think people are going overboard here because of who is involved and the main fire sems to be directed at Sega. I've seen it all too many times before when zealots who think they are game journalists try to take cheap shots at Sega in order to mess up the chances of any of their big games selling. I'm not suprised by whats happening but im suprised that some people in this forum are buying into the bullshit storm that the media are creating. But will this game do badly? There's enough casuals and Alien fans that will buy the game anyway even if the FPS and general gamers won't.

basically its an agenda of the media to fuck up sega which is not fair cause its gearbox. but technically spoken it is actually segas fault since it is a sega game. but thats technically. sega should abandon these punk asses

and about the sails. surely the game will do fucking fine just like lord of the rings or star wars. cause it has a permanent fan base. plus the average gamer. not all of us follow the media and the storys behind. even i was shocked by the demo ala final version comparison

[max_cady]

Yeah, there's probably a lot of unjustified outrage over this matter, but Gearbox's Randy Pitchord has been no stranger to controversy, he championed Duke Nukem Forever and nearly pulled an Eidos with that game. Aliens: Colonial Marines is a little more dramatic.

Nobody expected Duke Nukem Forever even half as good, because at that point, the game was simply a joke to the entire industry. Gearbox made a lot of noise about that game, but really their involvement was minimal, since they had 3 smaller devs doing the grunt work, they didn't bother with cleaning up most of the issues, they went in with the average programmer mentality which is: release now, fix later.

Aliens: Colonial Marines on the other hand, wasn't the case, Gearbox seemed to take advantage of SEGA's leniency for other purposes, especially with Borderlands 2.

When a game that took 6 years to make is worse than a game that took about 18 months to produce, people are going to start asking questions...

[ROJM]

Yeah, there's probably a lot of unjustified outrage over this matter, but Gearbox's Randy Pitchord has been no stranger to controversy, he championed Duke Nukem Forever and nearly pulled an Eidos with that game. Aliens: Colonial Marines is a little more dramatic.

Nobody expected Duke Nukem Forever even half as good, because at that point, the game was simply a joke to the entire industry. Gearbox made a lot of noise about that game, but really their involvement was minimal, since they had 3 smaller devs doing the grunt work, they didn't bother with cleaning up most of the issues, they went in with the average programmer mentality which is: release now, fix later.

Aliens: Colonial Marines on the other hand, wasn't the case, Gearbox seemed to take advantage of SEGA's leniency for other purposes, especially with Borderlands 2.

When a game that took 6 years to make is worse than a game that took about 18 months to produce, people are going to start asking questions...

Yes, whatever went wrong went wrong around 2009 when all the ALIENS games Sega was doing got canned/put on hold with a slew of other titles. Then Sega decided to go along with the development with ACM and cancelled ALIENS RPG/CRUCIBLE which was probably the better game. Its obvious that GBX decided to do Borderlands instead while the whole ALIENS buisness was sorted out. But once it did get sorted they didn't seem to treat the game as a priority and focused on other titles instead. That's what im reading into all this. In that Sega and GBX are to blame. But like i said the way these guys are flipping the outrage? come on...

[MadeManG74]

But i think people are going overboard here because of who is involved and the main fire sems to be directed at Sega. I've seen it all too many times before when zealots who think they are game journalists try to take cheap shots at Sega in order to mess up the chances of any of their big games selling. I'm not suprised by whats happening but im suprised that some people in this forum are buying into the bullshit storm that the media are creating. But will this game do badly? There's enough casuals and Alien fans that will buy the game anyway even if the FPS and general gamers won't.

basically its an agenda of the media to fuck up sega

It's a shit game. DEAL WITH IT.

There is no secret agenda by the media to destroy Sega, they released a terrible fucking game and nobody likes it. The End.

Besides most of the criticism I've seen is aimed at Gearbox, not Sega.

[semmie]

It's a shit game. DEAL WITH IT.

There is no secret agenda by the media to destroy Sega, they released a terrible fucking game and nobody likes it. The End.

Besides most of the criticism I've seen is aimed at Gearbox, not Sega.

man cant u seperate the chaos of the mobs insde? and the actual biz outside?
the game itself is freaking good and average is well deserved.
but it makes u dissapointed when the ignorance is detested by seeying the demo.

bro sega made man dont get mad bro lol
seriously its a cool game
i gotta ask did u even play it cuz u were the one asking advise ye know.
play and judge thats the fairest u can do. im fine with the game(seperating the chaos in between)
but im dissapointed now that i know it ws better before

[Ben]

why was the demo more pixelshaded. why did it have more details on the ground and walls,
why were the aliens in the demo aggresive?
why was the final version darker themed? cause then they wont have to add details.

my opinion changed based on the comparison of demo and the final
seriously an eye opener. somewhere i wishe i never saw the comparison. ignorance sometimes is an adventage.

Well that's kinda the thing, dude. What was shown in that demo is what people expect from a AAA title, which is what this game was supposed to be. There is nothing in that demo that couldn't have been done on the PC (or hell even maybe even the Wii U) but it's clear beyond anything that the game we wound up was a shell of whatever it was supposed to be.

basically its an agenda of the media to fuck up sega which is not fair cause its gearbox. but technically spoken it is actually segas fault since it is a sega game. but thats technically. sega should abandon these punk asses

Actually I really don't think the media has been picking on Sega much at all. Most people seem to believe that it's not (at least for the most part) Sega's fault; I haven't read anything that suggests otherwise. People are slamming the game because we knew what it could have been and what it was hyped up to be. Sega's marketing for the title was actually excellent,  (for a change) so it got a LOT of attention. Unfortunately, that's all the more reason why Quality Control is so important for "big games." (And that's where I'm personally disappointed in Sega for not realizing this.) This game was hyped up the ass and they released a bad game. Word's going to spread incredibly quickly because so many eyes were on it.

[crackdude]

The problem is that they actually tried to fool us. They showed us one game and delivered another. That's fucked up.

Had they set up the launch to be market as a solid fun game instead of THE BEST ALIENS EVER SO REAL IT FEELS LIKE YOU'RE IN THE MOVIE GUIZE the media and fans would be much more complacent.

[max_cady]

In this particular case, Gearbox seems to be taking most of the flack...

[Radrappy]

The idea of an anti sega media agenda is hilarious.  The truth is that sega needs no help in the destruction of their own reputation.  The irrelevency and consumer apathy they face today is entirely their own doing.  A competent publisher wouldnt let a stinker like this stay in development for 6 whole years.  Gearbox is certainly slimey but the whole thing reeks of bad management on Sega's part as well.

[Chaosmaster8753]

But i think people are going overboard here because of who is involved and the main fire sems to be directed at Sega.

1. SEGA is not the only publisher that gets called out whenever major controversies like this occur in a major game.
2. Being that they published the game, doesn't SEGA deserve SOME kind of blame for how poorly handled the development has been?

I've seen it all too many times before when zealots who think they are game journalists try to take cheap shots at Sega in order to mess up the chances of any of their big games selling.

What was the last major SEGA game to get controversy on a scale like this game?

I'm not suprised by whats happening but im suprised that some people in this forum are buying into the bullshit storm that the media are creating.

Isn't most of this storm stemming from actual PR, the game itself, stories from supposed developers about the games development, etc?

A competent publisher wouldnt let a stinker like this stay in development for 6 whole years.  Gearbox is certainly slimey but the whole thing reeks of bad management on Sega's part as well.

This.

[Aki-at]

There is bias against SEGA in the general media.

Is the backlash against Aliens part of this? No, Aliens is just a frankly terrible game.

[Chaosmaster8753]

How bad of a hype/PR disaster would you guys say this game has been compared to Sonic 06? Because I'm somewhat reminded of it in some ways...

[max_cady]

Sonic '06 was developed internally so obviously SEGA gets most the flack on that situation.

But nothing changes the fact that those games, Sonic '06 and Aliens: CM (and the whole slew of Marvel titles) are garbage.

Aliens: CM is a slightly different situation, Gearbox was the developer and SEGA was the publisher. That is not to say that SEGA isn't at fault, they are. Trust, but verify... Both come out looking bad, but since Gearbox had the responsibility to develop the best possible title, they should and are taking quite a beating around the Internet.

Now, if it is indeed true that Gearbox was using SEGA's funds for A:CM on their other projects and trying to get the game made for cheap by outsourcing the game development to another dev, I'll have more sympahty for the publisher itself.

Oddly enough, I think if SEGA had dealt directly with TimeGate Studios for the development of A:CM, the game would've probably been much better, since from what I hear, Gearbox was calling the shots on TimeGate Studios and Nerve Software.