Last week, a good number of press members went hands-on with Aliens: Colonial Marines’ multiplayer, got a fresh look at the single-player campaign and spent some time with the developers. The embargo lifted today and many new materials, interviews and previews went live at numerous gaming websites. Instead of detailing what each article contains, please follow the links from the list linked here to each individual site to read their own impressions on the game. Below you can also find several gameplay videos from today. Alternately, you can download the videos in HQ here and here.
I hope Gearbox and Sega get the message that this game needs an SDK and custom player matches if they really want to see longevity. It's a piss poor business model to force people to buy content half as good as what the community could make. We saw how well avp did with it's dlc. I bought them both, being a hardcore fan, but 9 out of 10 people never did. Imagine how many more sales of the game itself could have occurred with free, unlimited maps? Win win. I don't understand why Sega sabotaged themselves like that---unless they were financially in trouble and needed to make a quick buck. Correct me if I'm wrong, but a quick fix isn't a fix at all.
/end rant
Luckily, my first experience with ALIEN was long before AvP existed.
The press event has got me excited again. A:CM has much potential.
They have all the parts, just no soul to really get the thing going. Reminds me of learning about our favorite xenomorph through AvP, just a really different experience than the old films.
Yeah the article points out something that does make me nervous when thinking about how well this game will sell, especially if placed next to games such as CoD, Resident Evil and Halo. It surprises me to see just how many young adults 16-21 have never seen any of these films, but love CoD and many of the action and horror games that take material from this franchise.
And seeing the glorious history of the AvP mod community, it would be a damn shame if there was no SDK released.
My guess is that only the main player will do it and then the other players will just reappear once it's over.
The game would be better if it only had the sulaco and derelict being investigated as while aliens over-running the sulaco is odd, it lends proof that the alien queen either laid eggs in the drop ship or a few facehuggers hitched a ride on her back and make smore sense than something that was blown up reappearing with just some slight damage. I consider all games to be non-canon because its EU but i would have perhaps viewed A:CM as canon if it was done properly and as realistic as possible because at the end of the day Aliens is sci/fi which means it needs some scientific plausibility and massive nuclear explosions not only destroys things but irradiates them.
My own personal criticism of the game so far is the design of the aliens and their stance. The alien heads are much better that avp 2010's warriors but they still have dog-alien legs and walk on all fours, i understand the need to crawl when in vents on on walls but as human-spawned aliens they should be bipedal. If one were to view pictures of the original alien warrior and drone from the first film you will see it had humanoid legs, only alien 3 and the other films started using those legs which was justified in alien 3 because it was a dog-alien (runner) but the other films were crap which messed things up.
here is the pics again. http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQLYEqg0YPgj7pxwXcdeG-y_EgBEpanXbSFseFTQDdiyrUv48pk and http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRYWlQAWLWUwrtgI3J-sjfz1uvmduPOeaPOvFKM3rEWmFs32-hsVQ and http://www.toyark.com/news/revoltech-toy-news-14/new-photos-alien-warrior-revoltech-3239/ and http://www.monstergalaxy.com/lifesize_alien_figure.php
Notice the human-like legs? these are what human-spawned aliens are supposed to look like.
For a game that is "supposedly" trying to be faithful to aliens and the original, they are doing a poor job so far, whether the gameplay and plot are decent remains to be seen but i ain't holding my breath.
Some of you probably know this by now but in multiplayer, aliens will apparently be played in the third person sadly. while i have no problem with third-person views, A:CM is a FPS and so changing gameplay POV could be disorienting for some players. here is the video that mentions it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG4opj3dMxc#ws
lol
It sure does look authentically like Hadley.
Before it was vapourised...
Thanks for answering questions newbeing and husky!
Brings up some good points about Authenticity and play-ability among younger generations that have never seen the Alien films before.
Man, don't tempt me...I would buy the PC version just to do that. If it gets an SDK.
If Godzilla was there, they better brought us Ghidorah .
Still, at least the Warriors were a major step up from Rebellion's original AVP PC game. lol
f**k yeah. I'd kill to see that.
ゴジラ！！！！！
Because they had the right plugin that never got release and they had also the source of the models as 3ds files.
They haven't release it which is why nobody tried to modify a model unless using the attributes thing as seen in Balistic from Herr_Alien.
Though, there were some POV models made in time such as the single blade in Projam, the Shuriken, etc. but those models required only a few animations and few bones to be code.
And it was already tough work to do
Happily, engine have grown nowadays in a very flexible way and UDK is probably the best for it because no matter what software you use, there are hundreds of plugins to convert files, import nodes, etc.
If A:CM gets a SDK, modable community will have unlimited power over the game and could do everything you want even if it is Godzilla running into Hadley's hope kicking ass.
Why you making fun of the runner, that's because they....well yea never mind they humped the floor, ceilings and walls for over 12 years now XD lol
Because AVP2 .abc models were a pain in the ass.
You had to export it to a very very very old version of 3DS Max and while converting it you would have LOOSE EVERY INFOS such as Bones, rigging stuff, UV MAP etc.
Which in a manner means you had to redo the whole bones & rigging stuff plus 300 animations pose.
But because you would have redo everything and would not have place it at the exact nanometer you would have had to re-code the whole source code to make it works properly plus the attributes.
And by doing so when processing the source code to make the .lot & .dll files you could have had many errors resulting into crash in games.
It is a titan works and nobody succeed because make an entirely new game would have been easier.
People have tried and all noticed they couldn't because this would have need about one full year of works for just changing ONE model.
Completely useless.
Everybody pause this video at 0:15. I rest my case lol.
Seriously though, look at where the xeno's head lines up with the marine's, they are about even. Now factor in that 1. it is clearly farther back in the depth of field than your marine buddy, and 2. it is severely hunched over. I'd imagine it would tower over the marine if it were on the same plane as him and standing up perfectly straight.
EDIT: So, I uh... just realized that the xeno is, uh... standing on something. Haha... yeah.
Although, I still think it's got a nice height advantage over the marine, even if it isn't as substantial as I first thought lol. Sorry aboot that guys! No harm no foul?
Also like to say that the Marine in that pic is O'Neil who is clearly bigger than the other Marines. He is a big guy.
Whoops! My comment was a bit late lol. I was saying that the xenos are not actually smaller than the humans, it was a reply to Spoon who was saying that they were... which, as I said, they are not haha.
i always wondered why no modder tried to correct the pose or make animations similar to the ones in AvP '99. it seems like a logical thing to do.
Also it is not clear but for example the warrior in AVP2 is much taller than a human (if you compare both .abc models from source files you can see that the Alien has at last 30 to 40cm) but weirdly in POV vision of the game it makes you feel that Aliens were small and even sometimes smaller than you. It's an interesting trick to mention.
Even by making alien as accurate to the movies they will seems small due to the POV but they'll cover in the same time a larger area and be easier to shoot.
Probably not, but it's a remote possibility.
https://www.avpgalaxy.net/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fpobierz.pl%2Fdata%2Fgallery%2F1172501835.jpg&hash=812501562cdff8c95bbc0cef57dda85c17a0f5ad
I remember the runners were so damned small, and could do the old superman across open levels. Used to get so many kills as the runner. Mmm...
I would just scale a "bit" up the overall size but not too much as accurate to the movie.
Otherwise we would have big things taking the whole corridors. Too easy target.
it's mostly the abdomens, they shouldn't carve in like if they were anorexic. that's characteristic of the ADI aliens.
Still, it's not really going to effect the experience as long as they act like xenomorphs, for me at least. I just want them to be scary as hell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVkAKknz-F8#ws
It's very obviously a posed shot. It's not literally gameplay in that shot. In game assets, in game environment, posed shot.
If the humans can weld doors in MP, will the aliens be able to tear through "inches of reinforced steel?" Or maybe use their heads as battering rams to break them down?