Spent a few hours on it today.
It is as bad as I had feared.
I'm really very disappointed with Gearbox, I don't even know where to begin. The game is a mess; an unfinished mess.
The graphics are last-gen- i'm talking Doom 3 for PC, or even the original Xbox. Some of the textures are unacceptable for this gen, for example, the computer monitors and screens simply have a blurred texture on top to make it look like there's something on screen. This texture is so low-res and blurred, think of the monitor screens from Goldeneye on the N64 and you'll get an idea. Horrible. The character models are horrid- expressionless puppets. Animation is crap, could have done with some motion-capture. Lip-synching and cinematics in general are poor. Environments are slightly better rendered than the characters but only from a distance- up close you see how simple everything looks. What annoyed me was a simple thing like water which looks so bad; at one point I was walking through a sewer with a high water level and the water was simply a flat cover, with no water physics. It looked, literally, as if all the characters were standing halfway through solid ground. Horrible. And what kind of age are we in, when you can't shoot out the lights in a game? Gearbox put details in like being able to smash screens, and put dents in walls- but when I tried to shoot out the lights in a room- it wouldn't work. Lights still remain.
Story seems to be non-existent so far (i'm on chapter 3). It's just you and a few crew members re-visiting the locales from Aliens and running away from the Xenos. Doesn't seem any point to anything so far.
Gameplay is very poor. The enemies are just no fun to kill, and the AI is woeful. Hit-points are horrid, on many occasions I was in cover trying to shoot enemies with my laser sight directly on them- but the shots were going nowhere near them. Same as when I was playing as the Spitter in multiplayer- i was trying to spit on the players through a hole in the wall...and the projectiles kept getting blocked by an invisible walls. So many times that the character models were through each other's, or they were floating on the ground, or some other random crappy glitch.
And the game is full of so many glitches, I just can't believe it.
Xenos randomly appear and do the dumbest things, not helped at all considering the game is so glitchy. And as I said before, the AI is horrid. At so many points did an enemy just stand around not doing anything, or froze, or just simply dissapeared. Physics in general are crap, a few times I saw a Xeno jump and it shot directly up into the air like Superman in that Man of Steel teaser, and did a spinning cartwheel. A few times my gun simply disappeared from my hands so I had nothing to shoot with! The Xenos simply run at you in the dumbest-looking way possible- and drop like puppets after a few hits. Doesn't matter where you hit them either, they die in the same manner, which is crap. Remember in AVP 2010 when if you sever their legs, they still crawl at you? Doesn't happen here. This is also a wasted opportunity for multiplayer, too. Which is actually awful.
Music doesn't do anything either..the OST is actually pretty bad..just random ques from Aliens (and Alien, which for me doesn't fit in with this movie because not even James Horner used Goldsmith's tunes for the movie). Music doesn't add to the experience. Weapon sound effects sound fine, but the pulse rifle sound gets very repetitive, they should have used more variety from the movie's rather than the same 3 seconds which loops.
Multiplayer is forgettable. Again, riddled with gameplay issues and glitches. Players will randomly freeze, Xenos are difficult to control (they start doing random things, eg they keep changing direction when when you're on walls which does not help at all in the middle of a fight), the balance seems to be all over the place. I had a bit of fun with "Escape" but otherwise it can't even play on the basic level as Left4Dead did. It's just really poor clone. And no facehuggers in multiplayer makes me think they really missed a trick. Also eggs- you'll find a ton of closed Xeno eggs around the single player campaign and multiplayer levels- at first i just destroyed them all thinking they held live facehuggers, as they should..but then I found out there was no point wasting my ammo, because the eggs actually don't do anything. No facehuggers in them. Theyr'e just there as set decoration. What's the freaking point of having them then if they serve no purpose? I had so many ideas of how cool it would be to be a Xeno in multiplayer, but none of them were realised- it just settles down to you running straight up to someone and slashing like an idiot till they die. No strategy. Sucks.
Honestly speaking, I think the marine campaign in AVP 2010 was better. And I actually hated that game- but that felt more finished, and at least the enemies had some intelligence and the Aliens themselves had some degree of difficulty to kill. I remember acid damage being harmful and the carcasses staying on the floor- none of that happens here. AVP2010 now actually deserves more credit, especially from me. It was definitely more fun, and at leas they tried to make something playable.
Verdict:
I wish Gearbox spent more time on gameplay, than trying to recreate the sets full of pointless little details for fans. It's cool seeing the sets of course, but..that's about it. The game is not the ultimate Aliens experience we all wanted, or the sequel. And the amount of time spent on this, and then this is the result..it's just unacceptable. It's what happens when you let fans take over before people capable of making a game.
Boot up AVP1/2 or (if you must) AVP2010 for the best Aliens games. And keep on wishing that we actually do get a proper Aliens game in the future. Because A:CM is simply an extremely underwhelming, and below average FPS full of problems, cashing in on the Aliens franchise again
4/10
Sorry for my English it's not my first language.
