Fan Reviews

Started by ikarop, Feb 07, 2013, 03:27:34 PM

Author
Fan Reviews (Read 218,815 times)

SiL

SiL

#300
I think I've only got it on Soldier, but considering how inaccurate every weapon is and how many Aliens you get swarmed by, there should be some struggle.

The shooting feels like playing Borderlands before you level up your weapon proficiency ... even with upgrades. I can't tell if I've hit anything half the time unless I'm right next to it.

Space Sweeper

Space Sweeper

#301
I just watched a full 1080p walkthrough of the campaign, and have not yet played the game myself. These are my thoughts on what can be seen and what has made itself apparent, having played or not.




At one point in the campaign, a Marine can be seen through glass in an incredibly small boxed room that serves seemingly no purpose. He's screaming things as he shoots into a dark vent over and over where aliens are presumably trying to advance on him from. You're supposed to cut the door to get him out, but it's clear that you can keep watching him through the glass do this forever on a loop. All of the elements are there to make it a summation of the campaign. Confining, repetitive, and obnoxious.

This is the Duke Nukem Forever Gearbox and not the Borderlands Gearbox, to be certain. The game design is outdated, the gameplay is a headache of repetition as you gun down a plethora of Aliens and (what seems to be even more) Weyland Yutani mercenaries, press buttons, and move on to the next 'wink wink' setpiece. And man are they utterly unspectacular. While the aesthetic is better than most games, and follows closely to that of Aliens, the actual spaces are dull playgrounds, like a gravel 'sandbox'. It comes down to uninspired, linear fan service that is magically cramped close together.

The plot is next to non-existent. Luckily, there are some bearable characters (aside from Cruz' unbearable macho-man voice and godawful lines) with likeable personalities and well done voice-acting work. The writing isn't anything special, but most of anything amusing comes from the in-game banter. As for the story, the claim that it will make you feel that Alien³ is better because of it is utterly self-indulgent and not true in the slightest bit...

Spoiler
All it does is salvage Hicks and give a reason for the Sulacco going into high-alert and ejecting the EEV, never once mentioning the egg on-board or how Ripley was impregnated. The worst part is Hicks never explaining but supposedly knowing why there was a body in his place. When asked whose body it is, he simply responds "that's a longer story". Are you-- are you f**king kidding me? The one thing left from validating his presence in the game aside from being fan-wank and that's what we get? "That's a longer story"? f**k off. That is truly terrible writing.
[close]

Atmosphere is something I thought the game would actually have going for it, but after the first 10 or so minutes of actual gameplay and once the hordes of brainless xenos come in, with the Call of Duty-Experience™ Weyland-Yutani mercs very soon after, it goes straight out the window. Everything around the player, from the environments to the aliens themselves just become novelty items and the authenticity that the game was so heavily hyped upon (thank you, Gearbox PR department) is nothing more than a nudge and a wink. Any AvP game did it better... and those had Predators for god's sake.

I'll try not to dwell on the graphics for too long, but technically in general, the game is less-than remarkable. The character models and ani... er, animations (if that's what they can truly be called) are last-gen, and that is no hyperbole. It shows how long the game has been in development for in the worst way, and without the excuse of a studio switch like Duke Nukem Forever had. If a facial expression ever changed, it was a slight furrow of the brow and nothing more. On top of that, the eyes barely blinked, the mouths seldom moved, and everybody looked as though they were lacking an entire texture layer. From a distance, some of the lighting looks pretty and helps with the mood of some of the lower-maintenance scenes, but it's just a distraction from what it looks like when you move slightly closer. The sound design is the best part of the presentation with everything hitting the right beats, the score most of all, but after a while, like the rest of the game, it all drones on and recycles itself to headache inducing levels.

The AI are below sub-par (save from the sometimes cunning and oddly competent Lurker), particularly friendlies, doing next to nothing at all aside from shooting what is directly in their line of sight. They're useless, and the enemies aren't much better. The Wey-Yu mercs will pull the standard duck and cover or stand out in the open and shout 'come, sweet death' as your gunfire reigns down upon them. At least your teammates blocking doorways isn't an issue, seeing as you can clip right through them at any time as if you were f**king Casper the Friendly Ghost. Really, at no point in development, did nobody look at the fact that you could walk straight through your allies and think "this is kind of awful"? Who am I kidding, they've got the a million other un-assessed basic problems on their hands already. These are basic contemporary game design expectations, so please, apologists, think before you forgive this kind of miserable offering.

I figure I'll wrap it up pretty quickly here, seeing as this is slipping into TL;DR territory, if I haven't reached that point already. I may get some flack for writing this before playing the game myself, but after watching it the whole way through for 6+ hours, what more can be said for the game's campaign? I'm still holding out hope that much more attention has been put into the multiplayer and playing it with friends will hold up nicely (as it did with AvP 2010... though even that, for all of its backtracking, had a better Marine campaign than this). This has been a troubling 6-year stretch blunder of a game, and it seems to just ride the backs of a slew of other games that have come out in that time... most notably Call of Duty and Battlefield series. With nothing but Alien and repeat mercs, that formula can't fly in the Alien universe, and this is exhibit-A of why not.

As somebody who has gone along for the full arc of this game's hype, even at times playing the optimist, I can honestly and objectively say that this is certainly not the sequel to Aliens we 'always wanted'.

Enenra

Enenra

#302
I was so excited for this game. SO hopeful. Duke Nukem territory huh? Fantastic. I even skipped out on registering for a school dance because I figured this is what I'd want to be doing on my Friday. Don't I feel retarded.

Hopefully I'll still have fun with the game, even if it is a another buttcheeks quality rendition of a once great franchise.

UDA

UDA

#303
I've started a couple of threads recently, and I intend for this to be my last. In the other threads I tried not to get to the point of just utterly insulting the developers, but now that's I've seen the game beginning to end, I can't help but say I am actually kind of offended.  I know that's probably taking it a bit far, but I don't bother much with games these days, and when I do it's usually something that I'm already invested and interested in. I think most of the real Aliens fans are the ones who were alive to see at least the third movie in theatres, and that's the perspective I'm taking.

First off, this game was in development for a long time, scrapped, and reworked, and this is what they make. This wouldn't be a huge point with me, but I'm an avid hater of mindless shooter games, such as Call of Duty. I asked a friend to sit through a walk through with me, and around the fourth part he mentioned that this was a "clone of Call of Duty." Granted, with aliens. I'm not asking for the most intelligent game out there with this one, nor was I expecting it, but to Have Hicks alive and not really explain how or why (the body that was on the EEV is still a mystery, as far as I know), is a flat out slap in the face to the efforts of those who made Alien 3 (which was trouble from the beginning, but released by the perseverance of Fincher. For a young guy he had alot on his plate).

Also, he mentioned that the graphics were "Practically last Gen" which I agree with. There's alot of pixillation when you look at certain lights, or when you actually bother to study the surroundings. this was even brought up in a walk through of the game I watched later. For as long as this was in development, you'd think minor matters such as lights and glare would be honed in and polished off, it doesn't feel that way.

What was an amazing concept of no HUD at all has turned into "Badass mode" This to me is gimmicky. They might as well have added the motion tracker to the HUD (which, by the way, having to switch over to use it like it was done so in the film feels gimmicky). I believe anyone could beat this game without it and not miss it. Not that it was pertinent in the previous games, but at least then it wasn't a conscious effort to remind you that 'this is a game'.

The welding tool could have been used better. cutting open a hand-ful of doors, sealing others at key points in the game is kind of a turn off. The previous build always gave me the impression that the welding tool was more essential and offered more freedom. Don't want an alien sneaking up behind you? Weld the door. Need to hold a position against the aliens, weld the vents and doors shut. I could have just assumed to much, but as linear as this game is, we could have foregone the welding tool entirely, and it's just another cheap, near meaningless game mechanic. I was hoping ACM, because it's centered around the marines, would give the player more options and use out of these iconic pieces of equipment.

And the AA guns? What shooter game doesn't have those? Again, falling back on readily available mechanics to prolong the time spent playing the game. I had hoped for something more imaginative. The corridor shooter vibe of this game is possibly the second biggest turn off, after the "Canon" Story which infringes upon the canon of Aliens Resurrection (in matters of cannon, always go with the first media base, in this case the films, and then what established the facts firsts, in this case Aliens Resurrection, which i'm not much a fan of).

It's because of these things, and more that I've lost my drive to play this game. I don't like being the "Hater" but in this case, I think it's justified. Go look at my other posts and threads, I've given Gearbox as much benefit of the doubt as I reasonably could, as I know many others in this forum have. Gearbox called this cannon and authentic, and I just don't feel it, hear it or see it. The atmosphere might be similar, the guns might sound the game, but the story with Hicks, the massive amount of weyland yutani commandos, and the often silly Alien A.I. that we've seen in some of the walk throughs, I won't try to defend the developer anymore.

Enough of my rant for now, how about yours?



WinterActual

WinterActual

#304
Quote from: SiL on Feb 10, 2013, 06:51:34 AM
I think I've only got it on Soldier, but considering how inaccurate every weapon is and how many Aliens you get swarmed by, there should be some struggle.

The shooting feels like playing Borderlands before you level up your weapon proficiency ... even with upgrades. I can't tell if I've hit anything half the time unless I'm right next to it.
Just like every GBX game since BL. Why they can't do the shooting like in BiA? It was fine there.

Jango1201

Jango1201

#305
I have no rant. I'm an alien fan for 20 years now and a casual gamer. I've played 1/2 the game and I love it so far. It has some fault but nothing that makes me feel insulted. I believe they really tried and would love to see someone do better (minus a graphics arguement).

Darkness

Darkness

#306
Quote from: Vertigo on Feb 10, 2013, 12:40:01 AM
Quote from: Darkness on Feb 09, 2013, 09:09:46 PMThe game isn't scary but I don't think the series ever can be.

Really? All of the AvP games can be exceptionally scary in my opinion.

Perhaps when they first came out. But nowadays, we've seen the creatures that many times, they're just not scary any more.

Quote from: Kalawaki on Feb 10, 2013, 12:55:47 AM
Quote from: Darkness on Feb 09, 2013, 09:09:46 PM
The motion tracker should also be part of the HUD, not tucked away.
I disagree entirely. It was a seperate device in the film that the marines had to holister their weapons and hold out in front of them, it was never a part of their HUD. I prefer it this way, it adds more gameplay. "Should I keep my weapon ready, or sneak a quick glance at the tracker since it's pinging?"

I get that it's a separate thing in the movies but you'll barely use it in singleplayer because of that. Apart from the first encounter with an alien, you never need it because there's always so many of them around you. I think if it was on screen, it would add to the tension a bit more hearing the beeps all the time.

SiL

SiL

#307
Knowing what they're like isn't why it's not scary; the game just isn't well done. Any enemy can be scary so long as it poses a threat and the game makes you fear for your character's wellbeing. That just did not happen here. When you dread the human enemies in an Aliens game more than the Aliens, you dun gone f**ked up.

Salt The Fries

Salt The Fries

#308
Usually I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to games, I can get past unpolished games, because I try to see good sides in everything. Hell, I enjoyed Alone in the Dark from 2008...But come Tuesday, if it really turns out to be as bad as so many people already suggested - I might not account for my actions on Gearbox forums and I would never STOP.


Quote from: SiL on Feb 10, 2013, 09:12:03 AM
Knowing what they're like isn't why it's not scary; the game just isn't well done. Any enemy can be scary so long as it poses a threat and the game makes you fear for your character's wellbeing. That just did not happen here. When you dread the human enemies in an Aliens game more than the Aliens, you dun gone f**ked up.
So, still Alien: Resurrection remains the infinitely superior game, right?

SiL

SiL

#309
Compared to this, God yes. That game was great and the Aliens were pants-shitting in all their low-poly glory.

I finally finished the game, so I have some kind of review to write:

On the story front, this is one of the worst self-indulgent masturbatory fan-fics I've ever had the displeasure of sitting through, and good God have I read through a lot of them. I've read better fan-fics than this. I've written better fan-fics than this. The entire thing is geared towards crawling up Aliens' backside and making base camp somewhere around the lower intestinal tract. It's like watching someone pick up a priceless broken vase to glue it back together with hot glue muttering "See? See? It still fits! It still goes together! It can be just like nothing ever happened!"

In terms of the actual gameplay it's a shambles. The directional pad on the XBox 360 controller never seemed to work properly, and assigning two functions to one button -- turn your torch on and pull out your pistol -- ended with me drawing a pea-shooter in the middle of a fight with six Aliens when I decided it'd be nice to see what the hell was going on. I didn't mind the tracker being something you had to pick up, but the game was so devoid of atmosphere, tension, or dread, there didn't seem to be any risk in whipping it out to check for targets or see your mission waypoint. At that point they may as well have integrated it with the HUD like old times.

The worst aspect, though, for my money, when it comes to actually enjoying the game, is that the Aliens aren't the primary threat. The Weyland-Yutani guys are. Aliens may be in the title and there might be a shitload of the buggers, but the only sections which gave me difficulty in any real sense were ones wherein I was being shot at, not clawed to pieces. The Aliens were a persistent yet minor annoyance for most of the game, and I swear they didn't start bleeding acid until the last couple of levels.

Overall I sincerely feel like I've wasted my money :-\

SM

SM

#310
I find Gearbox expecting fans to swallow their bullshit about the storyline kind of insulting as well as their baseless claims about "authenticity".  Beyond that, can't say without playing it.

SiL

SiL

#311
"Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining" springs to mind when it comes to what was said vs. what was delivered.

spacemarine

spacemarine

#312
Is every god damn shooter game going to be a Call of duty clone from now on.
By the sounds of some people you would think COD was the first shooter game ever made. >:(

ShadowPred

ShadowPred

#313
I want to post every quote of mine that I can find on this game, but all I'll say is that I am not personally insulted, but I do feel offended when they say all this stuff about being authentic, and that every details is strictly the same as the movie...which it obviously is not. The fact that they continue to stay adamant about this is madness.

Salt The Fries

Salt The Fries

#314
It's like Uwe Boll now, isn't it? It has reached THAT levels of denial, hasn't it?

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