Jared gets a little bit long and ranty about the poor state of Aliens: Colonial Marines.
| Aliens Colonial Marines Extended Thoughts/Rage | |
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| Upload Date | February 24th 2013 |
| Series | Extended Thoughts
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| Link | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEE2ZHo8jyI
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Synopsis[]
Jared shows the box of Aliens: Colonial Marines, and throws it away! He didn't play the game until much later and he wishes he didn't. He was excited for the game when it was first announced six years ago. What happened to it? The game is an absolute lie.
Jared went to several preview events where Aliens: Colonial Marines were shown. Jared gave it a low score, not because it doesn't work and is broken, but what it is is really bad.
The single player mode has terrible AI. The aliens - which should have been a threat - take 20 bullets and are dead. They became trivialized grunts. All of the aliens jump to one place in front of the player, and eventually the player can kill them all. Even if they get to the player, they swipe at the player before jumping back and wait to be shot! The concept of the aliens is that they can come from everywhere, but in the game they can always be seen coming. The motion tracker isn't ever needed. They don't come from behind or underneath the player. The game becomes a boring first person shooter. The humans with guns is just a stupid concept.
The game has segments of health to regenerate to. Jared did kind of like this, as well as finding armor. Jared had a lot of armor on at once when he was playing.
The multiplayer isn't anything special either. Players play as marines or aliens, and switch after each round. In single player, Jared used the motion tracker to find the objective, as he got lost a lot. It was more useful in multiplayer to find opponents and team mates. Both sides get XP and the aliens get different kinds of attacks. The draw of this game was to be able to play as the aliens - and it sucks. The concept is cool, and plays a little like Left 4 Dead.
The crawling along the walls mechanic barely works. The alien just flips around and then gets shot by the marines because of the terrible controls.
Jared is reminded of the previews. The cutscenes are terrible, and the speech looks like an original XBox game. The game is bland and terrible, and is very boring. All the areas look the same. Jared saw Aliens before it came out, at E3, two PAX events and the Borderlands 2 Community Day. At all of the events, Jared was bought into a room, and single player was shown, and the footage was way better than what was in the actual game.
Randy Pitchford was really excited about the "next gen" dynamic lighting in the game, and it looks cool in the demos. There was none of that in the final game. It looked pixelated and lazy. At every preview event, no one played the single player events. They always had the multiplayer on show. Jared asked one of the guys what will keep players playing, and he said that the multiplayer will be the big draw.
Jared was only allowed to play as the marines at all of the events, and never the aliens and then force everyone out. At the fourth event, Jared asked a Gearbox employee why don't they show the aliens, and the explanation was that there was a big learning curve. That was a lie, they are not hard to play as. Playing as the aliens just sucks. The people playing as the aliens never tried to do anything tricky. Jared thinks that they didn't let anyone play as the aliens because it sucks.
The survival mode was alright, and Jared liked it more. Jared wants to talk about the rest of the lies. The biggest one that stood out was how bad the story was. At the Gearbox Community event, at the panel, the writer was proud about what he wrote. Randy said that his writing made Alien 3 make more sense. None of that made it into the game! Jared doesn't understand what they were talking about. Jared thinks that what he wrote wasn't put into the game, or he's lying, or he's a pretentious asshole. Jared gives him the benefit of the doubt, and goes with the first option.
The game completely dismisses a plot hole that was in the film. He was also proud of the character Bella. She was attacked by a face hugger. She's going to die. The writer was talking about the character, saying that the concept was like a mother having a miscarriage and losing her child. It sounded convincing at the time. There was no attachment to the character at all in the game. Jared describes how they should have made the character, and he didn't care about saving Bella at all.
The final boss is an alien queen, and to beat her, four buttons need to be pressed (which is easy). The ending has no closure. The campaign was only about five hours. The game sucks and is really bad, and a lie. The game isn't even worth renting. Jared talks about the smart gun. You get the smart gun for five minutes, and there is no point to it.
The power loader is awkwardly flailing and was frustrating. The sound was terrible. Some cutscenes are missing! The explosions sound muffled, and a long way away. The game functions, and is just bad. Jared apologizes for his long rant. He compares the multiplayer co-op to New Super Mario Bros, where the characters are bumping each other around. Jared wonders what happened to Gearbox.
Notes[]
- For unknown reasons this video is currently no longer available to view on YouTube .