Aliens Colonial Marines PC - up first a trailer 6/1/11

[Buatha]

Apparently, there are already some mods to make the game look a little better. I went with the DirectX 10 mod and it does help out a bit.

Graphical Mods

[naednek]

man it's like they didn't ship it in dx10 or better. that's night and day. And the funny thing is the E3 demo looked like those screenshots.

[triggercut]

Hello,


A staff member has replied to your question:

Hello John,

Thank you for contacting Steam Support.

As with most software products, we do not offer refunds or exchanges on games, DLC or in-game items purchased on our website or through the Steam Client.

In other words, suck it.

Given my Steam Library, you'd think they'd at least offer a one-time return given I've never asked for one since its inception with Half-Life 2.

You are not a special flower, sad as that might be to realize.

[Buatha]

Yeah, I know. I guess I was hoping for the 'first time mulligan' purchase since I've never asked for a refund on anything from Steam.

But, like anything else with millions of subscribers, I don't see how you can really be concerned with customer service anyway.

[hepcat]

I happen to think you ARE a special flower, Buatha.

...although I would say naednek is more like a vine.

[GreenGoo]

You are not a special flower, sad as that might be to realize.

Every customer used to be a special flower.

If we're just going to be treated as cattle, that will at least help us in our future buying decisions, if not generate new interest in customer advocacy and potential lobbying for new customer protection laws.

As far as returns and exchanges go, electronically delivered product is the least expensive transaction type to implement such a policy on. They don't want to, and that's their perogative, but we may see some movement if Steam gets an actual competitor.

As for myself personally, I have always been a buyer beware guy with regard to software, so I just eat the cost if I buy something that turns out to be a dud. that doesn't mean everyone needs to be happy with having that policy forced upon them by the distributor, and they are free to apply whatever pressure they feel the need to apply.

Software has always been an exception to standard consumer protection laws, and I never understood why. Other that the difficulty in proving or disproving a case. Just because something is hard doesn't mean consumers shouldn't receive any protection.

From a philosophical standpoint, people need to decide if they are there for the benefit of the corporation, or if the corporation is there for their benefit. Which is the cart and which is the horse? If we want a balance then we have to be vigilant to ensure it doesn't swing too far in one direction.

I don't think asking for a refund on a single piece of crap after years of being a good little customer is asking too much.

[Paingod]

I watched a 20 minute rant on how we're basically doing this to ourselves and how the 'degeneration' of the gaming market is being driven by what people are allowing to happen. His point, essentially, is that we - as consumers - should be refusing to cough up for a pre-order under any circumstance except a dire need. Companies teasing us into pre-ordering by offering special skins and a special gun are just duping consumers. The consumer gets no real value for their pre-order and stands to lose their investment if the game turns out to be a lemon.

I stopped pre-ordering as a general rule years ago. The last two games I pre-ordered were Spore and XCOM. It takes a special kind of game with a ton of transparent marketing for me to drop $50 on it before it hits the shelves. With XCOM I even opted to pony up extra for the love of the series.

I'm not trying to be all "NyaNyaNya - you wasted your money" ... I'm just another jaded consumer who won't ante up unless the odds are overwhelmingly in my favor. Dammit, I wanted this game to be awesome and was looking forward to jumping on the bandwagon after release. I was very excited about Aliens: CM - but there wasn't enough content for me to see in order to trigger the purchase reflex; just the one heavily scripted demo reel. I was planning to buy it once the reviews rolled out and declared it awesome.

[IceBear]

I don't either. I know that piracy concerns have always been the main issue for not accepting returns on pc games, but Steam should allow returns. If someone is constantly returning software maybe they have the right to suspect piracy and refuse returns. Guess proving it is the problem so we all get painted with the same brush. Like Greengoo when I pick up a dud I accept it as a cost of the hobby and try to be more careful in the future. Also it gives me a frame of reference to see how a good game is good

[Buatha]

I stopped pre-ordering as a general rule years ago.

Other than 2012, I didn't normally pre-order, but c'mon, man! Stardock, Kerberos, and now Gearbox. Stardock and Kerberos alone had my respect for supporting their games well beyond release. Gearbox? How could the people that created the awesome-ness of Borderlands 1/2 NOT make a good Aliens shooter?

Just for a tangential customer service story, my wife and I hit an overdraft on our joint checking since we both put money into it for paying the mortgage and bills (no fighting on personal purchases FTW!). However, she forgot to move her funds before our bills hit and we went over by $80 or so. When I called the bank, they were like, "Oh, I see you've never overdrafted. We'll waive that fee for you!" as we had no history of such behavior. I guess I expected the same from Steam.

[Buatha]

Well, it was going okay, but then the stupid-ness started with the story.

Spoiler:

So, me and this mentally-challenged Marine walk into the hangar bay and see our guys being assaulted by Aliens. A few were crawling over the drop-ship on their way to attack the Marines. What does our idiot companion do? Why, he tosses a grenade onto the drop-ship to kill them. Yeah. I'd have shot him right there if I could, but AI companions are immune.

This causes the hangar doors to lock and requires a bypass which takes some time...hence creating a need to defend our position. After narrowly surviving the firefight (I'm playing on Ultimate Badass difficulty in reverence to Hudson), we get back to the umbilical. We start to cross back over when the chest-burster decides to get out of Private Moron...who then decides to pull out a grenade as he's dying and blows open the umbilical. A fellow Marine and I barely escape BACK to the Sulaco...aaaannnnddd we lose the flight recorder in space.

The attacking Aliens are very much like L4D zombies, and I have to say, it's fairly frenetic and fun...less so by myself...like L4D. Other than stupid Marines, the story is interesting enough and seems to imply that Weyland-Yutani brought the Sulaco back to LV-426 to continue studying the Aliens since it is remarked that computers/lab equipment look like "W-Y tech" and not standard Marine fare. It would make sense that the Alien Queen could have laid a few more eggs than just the ones we saw at the beggining of Aliens 3. It would look like W-Y decided to keep it secret and use the Sulaco as a lab...purely speculation on my part at this point.

[Buatha]

While researching further into WTF happened with A:CM and Gearbox, I ran into this interesting tidbit:

http://www.gatheryourparty.com/articles ... -of-flesh/" target="_blank

Seems like the art direction of Borderlands may not have been quite so original after all.

[Teggy]

I sort of reject the idea that pre-ordering is worthless. In some cases it absolutely is, but if I get an extra game and DLC with my game (in the case of Tomb Raider for example), isn't there actual monetary value associated with preordering the game? There is also value in getting to pre-load a game if that is meaningful to you, as well as release-day delivery.

The publisher has to offer enough value to make it worthwhile, but there are plenty of cases pre-ordering offers benefits.

There also tends to be enough preview material to get an idea if a game is going to be good. There's already hours of gameplay and behind the scenes material for Tomb Raider online - outside of that 10 minute demo, I don't think the same existed for Aliens. I know the lack of buzz was one of the reasons I held off on Aliens.

[Buatha]

I'm not saying it's worthless per se, but there is little that can be done on Steam. If I had pre-ordered at a store, I wouldn't have had to purchase it (unless things have changed at b&m stores)...maybe losing a $5 holding fee if they still do that nowadays. With Steam, I hadn't even "activated" the game via installation which I assume Steam knows as it has to unlock the key or maybe do the online activation.

[Daehawk]

So after all this time and all the cool screenshots this game is not worth it?? As I was leaving a friend;s house he happens to mention "Hey I just got Colonial Marines" to which I begged to play a bit. I only had time for about 5 or 6 min but what I saw of the first area seemed cool. No aiming or anything which felt old school but it looked good and moved well. Is it worse than AvP 2? that's my benchmark for a cool Aliens game. AvP 2 was perfect.

I was going to have to wait anyways because of money but maybe by then fans will have patched it up, made it look cool, and improved it enough to warrant a sales price?

[Daehawk]

Forgot to add......if you are like me and use mouse 2 to aim down the sights...dont....unlike 98% of others shooters where that works, here it launches a grenade. So you WILL blow yourself to shit a lot. My friend said he couldn't count the times he did that.

[Giles Habibula]

Forgot to add......if you are like me and use mouse 2 to aim down the sights...dont....unlike 98% of others shooters where that works, here it launches a grenade. So you WILL blow yourself to shit a lot. My friend said he couldn't count the times he did that.

That key can't be remapped?

[Daehawk]

I was at home when I posted that. he says it can be remapped. When I was playing it was the mouse 2 button. So guess thats ok.

[Zarni]

I stopped pre-ordering last year after getting burned on Duke Nukem (terrible game) and Far Cry 3 (didn't work for several months until ATI updated their damn driver).

I hate it that some of you pre-ordered and wasted the money. One day, someone with the clever attorney is going to fix this no refund on software crap.

In the mean time, I will NEVER pre-order any more software. ever! Especially when I saw Far Cry 3 go on sale within weeks after release.

I might make an exception for Notch's new game when it goes beta... but that is the only one. 0x10c

Zarni

[Grifman]

Destructoid has accused Randy Pitchford of setting up fake Twitter accounts to praise Gearbox and Aliens: Colonial Marines:

http://www.destructoid.com/randy-pitchf ... 5943.phtml" target="_blank

A number of Twitter accounts, which were only set up recently and seem spectacularly preoccupied with Gearbox and Gearbox products, are lavishing Pitchford with praise for Colonial Marines, and they are now the only people worthy of his time. Anybody with criticism -- not just the insults and threats he mentioned last time -- is to be ignored or outright blocked.

Even if you like Aliens: Colonial Marines, it's undeniable something went wrong with its development, and Gearbox needs to tell people why they allowed customers to keep believing the game looked much better than it actually did. For Pitchford to refuse to talk for a week, then do nothing but publicly lap up praise for his gigantic, Facehugger-shaped shit, is absolutely astounding.

[KDH]

Not sure if anybody cares ..

Sega blames Gearbox for mismanaging Aliens: Colonial Marines marketing

Gearbox Software studio head Randy Pitchford did "whatever the fuck he likes" when it came to the marketing and promotion of Aliens: Colonial Marines, according to documents filed this week in the class-action lawsuit claiming the game was falsely advertised at trade shows.

sorry for teh necro

[Turtle]

Yeah, he seems like the type to pull that sort of thing. I was at the gearbox panel at PAX and the guy is charismatic, but he could also be charismatic enough to believe his own lies.

He's nice enough when doing the Borderlands stuff. But the reality of this situation is they took Sega's money for ACM, mislead then gave a crap product to them and players, then ran to make millions with Borderlands 2.

It's likely they didn't get much money to make ACM though, but that's no excuse to bail on the project. ACM could have been every bit as successful as Borderlands, but I guess the fact that the studio wouldn't see much from that success, and BL2 was raking in the money, and was their own IP was worth it.

What Sega has been doing with Alien Isolation is looking good, and that's from hands on at PAX, so let's hope Sega gives it the proper time and budget, and Creative Assembly is up to the task of branching out from cookie cutter total war games.

[Max Peck]

The biggest BUG in the game is just one letter long

Inside your games config file (My Document\My Games\Aliens Colonial Marines\PecanGame\Config\PecanEngine.ini) is the following line of code :

ClassRemapping=PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachXenoToTether -> PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachPawnToTeather

Im sure you'll notice the spelling mistake

ClassRemapping=PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachXenoToTether -> PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachPawnToTether

If you fix it to look like the above and then play the game, the difference is pretty crazy!

Why is this line important? There are two reasons :
1) AttachXenoToTether doesn't do anything. Its basically empty or stripped
2) AttachPawnToTether does ALOT. It controls tactical position adjustment, patrolling and target zoning

When a Xeno is spawned, it is attached to a zone tether. This zone tells the Xeno what area is its fighting space and where different exits are. In Combat, a Xeno will be forced to switch to a new tether (such as one behind you) so as to flank, or disperse so they aren't so grouped up etc. (*disclaimer* this is inferred opinion, I cant see the actual code only bits)

Whenever the game tried to do this, nothing happened. Now it does!

One result of the promo work we did with SEGA was that I ended up getting flown to Gearbox to do Motion Capture work for the game - their first try MoCapping the Smartgun didn't work out so well and they needed my rig. While I was there, I got to meet the devs, playtest development builds, give feedback, etc. Believe me when I say, from firsthand experience, that what I saw in development (pre-Timegate) was much closer to the E3 demos than what actually ended up shipping.

For years, I have been trying to understand the difference between what I saw and what shipped. This. Explains. So. Damn. Much.

[GreenGoo]

Saw this. Meant to post it, but was too lazy/busy/whatever.

Hilarious though.

[Daehawk]

Other than allow the alien to move around better now would this help a crappy game?

[GreenGoo]

How would a game with brain dead ai be improved by a functional ai?

Is that your question?

[Daehawk]

Just movement was affected it said.

[GreenGoo]

Not exactly. Decisions based on geographical location relative to the player are also impacted. So not just movement but also decision trees open up when the game knows the monster's position and awareness to the player.

[Daehawk]

Oh I thought it was some simple walking route thing where it patrolled in an area but that was broken. Makes a big difference if it had to do with awareness and everything else.

[GreenGoo]

Oh I thought it was some simple walking route thing where it patrolled in an area but that was broken. Makes a big difference if it had to do with awareness and everything else.

There is a whole bunch of stuff that goes into this sort of thing. A lot of it is implied by the naming conventions of variables in the config file, and much of it is confirmed empirically by making the changes then examining how the ai behaves before and after.

I actually haven't read it fully so it's the deaf leading the blind in our case, but the little I skimmed was enough to convince me.

It's possible that it isn't as a big a fix as implied and that it is just confirmation bias and wishful thinking, but I don't think so.

[killbot737]

I used to work on an app where extremely important variables, classes and functions were (partially) named "threshhold". Drove me nuts. I never did rename everything out of fear of breaking the thing. Luckily that code has been retired. It always did its job, though, unlike breakdancing xenomorphs.

[Daehawk]

I dont understand why Gearbox left it broken with a simple fix if thats all it was. I mean they got shit on bad in the press with reviews and such and they never once thought something was broken? Surely the way it played was not how they intended it. I dont get that part above all else said and done.

[GreenGoo]

There's probably a reason we are just hearing about this now. Any guesses?

[Grifman]

I dont understand why Gearbox left it broken with a simple fix if thats all it was. I mean they got shit on bad in the press with reviews and such and they never once thought something was broken? Surely the way it played was not how they intended it. I dont get that part above all else said and done.

You have to know about something in order to fix it.