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Aliens: Colonial Marines: Night and Day Differences between preview demo and final publish revealed
spankybus
Member UncommonPosts: 1,367
Hey Mates,
i realize this isn't an mmorpg, but like a fiery train wreck, I can't stop reading about The horrible reviews and fan outrage surrounding Aliens: Colonial Marines by gearbox software.
I saw the demo footage and it looked really good, so I was curious how it could be tanking so badly. Then I saw this video. It illustrates the painfully obvious difference between the demo that got a lot of people excited and the final product that's pissed a lot of players off. Check it out
Game Informer article and Video.
After seeing that, does this seem like a case of bait and switch? Do you think Gearbox should be help liable for the disconnect between their demo and what they actually punished as final? Or are the entitled to make any changes they want between the demo and final release?
I am interested to see what happens here because in the past year, we have had many similar issues. Some of them, like the ending of Mass Effect 3, were extremely high profile. Bioware developers made many promised as to the flexibility of their trilogies many potential endings. But in the end...there were three and frankly they were all pretty much the same. Again, not as advertised.
Should gamers who bought A:CM be able to request a refund on said grounds? Does Gearbox have the right to make such drastic changes between the demo and release...I mean it does usually say somewhere on demos that this is not the final product or product subject to change, etc.
The outcome of this mess may have far-reaching implications to what game gamers are allowed to get away with in so far as disparity between demo and/or WIP material and the final deliverable. Share your opinion!
Frank 'Spankybus' Mignone
www.spankybus.com
-3d Artist & Compositor
-Writer
-Professional Amature
Comments
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
I'd chalk it up to optimizing for harware compatibility.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
Well it would be interesting to see someone bring this to... preferably i guess civil court as this is pretty much uncharted grounds. Where the line is drawn between working product and false advertisment.
But beyond that i could not care less.
This have been a good conversation
Wow! I didn't see that article....amazing. If all of that is true, I bet SEGA wished they would have given another extension.
So, the gist is, the debs knew it sucked and still suckers gamers to pay for the fiasco....just, wow.....man, if that turns MOUT to be true and provable....Gearboz should get raped....they can then go after the other studio...wow, that is so messed up.
Frank 'Spankybus' Mignone
www.spankybus.com
-3d Artist & Compositor
-Writer
-Professional Amature
The demo showed in the article looked pretty good. Dynamic lighting, etc...looked and felt like aliens...the final just looks...lol yea, you said it, looks awful.
Frank 'Spankybus' Mignone
www.spankybus.com
-3d Artist & Compositor
-Writer
-Professional Amature
rpg/mmorg history: Dun Darach>Bloodwych>Bards Tale 1-3>Eye of the beholder > Might and Magic 2,3,5 > FFVII> Baldur's Gate 1, 2 > Planescape Torment >Morrowind > WOW > oblivion > LOTR > Guild Wars (1900hrs elementalist) Vanguard. > GW2(1000 elementalist), Wildstar
Now playing GW2, AOW 3, ESO, LOTR, Elite D
Play for fun. Play to win. Play for perfection. Play with friends. Play in another world. Why do you play?
Thanks for linking that video and articles.
The early preview demo is all I had seen and was interested in getting the game based on that information. Now - now I wont waste a cent on this pathetic cash grab. Im still in shock at just how bad the finished product is.
Gearbox continues to surprise people.
First we have duke nukem fail
And now we have something even worse a game that becomes worse than the demo.
I really dont know what to say about these people they are clearly a bunch of fail developers that they cant deliver.
Only thing i can say **** that gearbox loosers
Yeah, that is a bit of an odd twist.
This deeply disappoints me. This is even more disappointing than the day my mouse hovered over the uninstall button for SWTOR, while I sat teary eyed and wondering how things got to be this bad.
Honestly, this is just misleading and vile. A demo of a game is there to DEMOnstrate the gameplay. I don't care what happens after the demo comes out, but it had better be at least as good as the Demo! How in the world do you justify releasing a gameplay demo of a game that looks nothing like the game!
OP, you don't know how disappointed I was to hear this A:CM fiasco.
I've absolutely loved "Aliens" since I first saw it in the 80's. A chance for a reputable company to do an FPS in the Alien franchise? With Colonial Marines? M41 Pulse Rifles, Motion Detectors, and all the cool stuff? SIGN ME UP!
I was going to preorder this game, but since I was in part of the world where internet access is limited and very, very slow (makes old school 56k dialup look like DSL), I decided to hold off until I returned to the United States.
And boy am I glad I did hold off.
The demo looked great and I was sold. I was set to be going back to the US soon, so I figured I wouldn't be too far behind the other fans from release. But then I came across this thread and did some more snooping, and it's just sad to see this and the franchise take a fall down the flight of stairs and do a faceplant at the bottom. This game had alot of years to develop, and this ship sank as it sailed out of the harbor.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
Playing devil's advocate here... But just how long do you need to develop an FPS? They are not monsters like an MMORPG are. Sega gave 6 YEARS for this game, and already had given many extensions to push the release back further and further. How much more time? I'm all for developers getting ample time to push out a good, quality product. But then we have A:CM.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
As usual everyonoe is over reacting, pretending they are on to the latest "Scam" in the industry. My roomate bought the game, and quite frankly I like what they have done compared to the demo, the fog is still in the game in places, JUST NOT THE SAME PLACE IN THE DEMO. The glass still cracks JUST NOT IN THE SAME PLACE AS THE DEMO. There is still real time lighting that swings in rooms. JUST NOT IN THE SAME PLACE AS THE DEMO. You still cut NPC's out of coccons JUST NOT IN THE SAME PLACE AS THE DEMO. It was a demo guys, they moved allot of those effects and content to other parts of the game.
They removed the blue lighting from some areas, which looks better, instead of everything being uh blue, there is actually colors in those areas. That link your provided is just to morons being morons, and all I see in this thread is people over reacting to a game they have not even played yet.
Currently Playing: ESO and FFXIV
Have played: You name it
If you mention rose tinted glasses, you better be referring to Mitch Hedberg.
Here's a gameplay vid. See for yourself what you are missing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8p39qev7K4
If it was just subtle differences between the demo and the actual game I could see the WIP argument but they don't even look like they were the same game engine. This is clearly not even remotely the same thing that was in the demo. I was thinking about getting this one when it released but now I'm very glad I didn't. I mean Doom 3 had much better lighting effects and that game was what? 10 years ago now? This is pretty much inexcusable. I don't know how Gearbox thought they could release this and not suffer a huge fan backlash.
Bren
while(horse==dead)
{
beat();
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Hm.
Demo looks superior in all ways to final, no way to deny that. Wouldn't agree with bait and switch on this one, though. While definitely looking worse, it still looks like the same game just with fog removed along with lighting and object placement changes.
Beyond that I'm more concerned with how the gameplay looked in both cases (demo and final). It made me think of the AvP released in the early, early 2000s. I had fun with that one, but its gameplay was very basic. This didn't look to be very much more than that, just flashier.
From my understanding of whats going through the rumor mill, the Demo was made by gearbox before they outsourced the campaign development to TimeGate studios, so Gearbox could work on Boarderlands 2 instead. When Gearbox starting getting pressured by Sega, they brought the game back in and tried to do a rushed patch job on what TimeGate made, but it didnt work.
No one is really sure anymore who made what parts of the campaign.
Cash in on Prometheus? Well I guess that explains why this game got so bad reviews, because that movie was horrible.
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