Aliens: Colonial Marines screens

[Sobek]

I'm always entertained with how unnatural gamepad movement is.

I know, it's like watching a robot play or something.

I posted over on Rage3d about how much I disliked what I've seen in this gameplay so far, but regardless I don't have high hopes for it. There's a really funny glitch in the walkthrough though - right near the end where they're fighting with the loader, you see an alien 'hide' under a flat-to-the-ground floor plate (with its head sticking through the floor geometry), then it just bursts out of the ground shortly after to attack the player. Really classy stuff!

The tracker's selectable, that's bad. There's seemingly no acid damage, the 'acid on your face' texture is horrible, it's almost entirely scripted, the voice acting is terrible, the textures are very poor in a lot of spots (thank you consoles), and it lacks any sense of scariness with the atmosphere.

AVP 2010 definitely had some moments that made you shit yourself, I'm not sure if this game will from what we're seeing. But yes, as always, there's plenty of time for all of that to change, and it's not like I've actually played the entire game so I can't really say anything with certainty.

But it does look pretty shit so far :smile:

 

[AlNom]

Anyway, an equally interesting question like the one you ask is, what have those alien things been eating since Aliens the movie...? I assume they have a metabolism (not sure anyone would buy they're classified as Undead), so they'd need food, and there's no wildlife on the entire planet.

In the novels, and I mean the early 90's, there are many instances of the alien going into a sort of hibernation mode as well as having ridiculously efficient metabolisms on top of that. They also can survive in space (don't need oxygen).

Actually, in the second movie, you get a hint of that hibernation when you first see them coming out of the walls and such when the marines all go down into the hive.

I'm a bit out of the loop here but perhaps it's a marine comission before the Sulaco?

From what I understand, it's after the third movie. The marines are sent to investigate the disappearance of Ripley et al.


Anyways, the animations stood out to me for the aliens. Looks pretty good. I don't think I'll mind the movie-script approach, and maybe it's just that way in the video as it's to show off to the press without actually playing. 4 player co-op should be interesting for gameplay. I hope they can pull that off well as the setting is entirely different from what I've experienced in the Halo series and now Gears 3.

Hope they have other things to add to replayability, even if it's some metagame approach involving the 4 players.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Anyway, an equally interesting question like the one you ask is, what have those alien things been eating since Aliens the movie...? I assume they have a metabolism (not sure anyone would buy they're classified as Undead), so they'd need food, and there's no wildlife on the entire planet.

The game is about the relief squad that Hicks in Aliens expected to arrive in 17 days. Even humans should be able to survive that long without food.

The more interesting question is this: there were only 157 colonists or so, with Newt surviving and some of them dying (like the guys whose facehuggers were surgically removed) there were ~150 aliens on the planet at most. The first squad of marines has to have killed at least half of them (I don't think one can count it using the movie as reference) so are there going to be only 60-70 aliens in this game?

 

[swaaye]

Most of the rest probably went up with the nuke. But the original alien ship with the eggs is surely still there. Who knows.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

You still need a 1:1 human incubator to alien warrior ratio...

 

[AlNom]

How was babby formed?

 

[swaaye]

How big did Bishop say the reactor's explosion was going to be? That reactor was huge too so maybe the explosion didn't wipe out as much as one might think.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

I've seen the movie on Sunday and already forgot... but it was big, several megatonnes - after all it was a fusion reactor, so it acted like an H-bomb. Should've cleaned out the colony too, but hey, Gearbox had to find a way to continue the story...

 

[fellix]

How big did Bishop say the reactor's explosion was going to be? That reactor was huge too so maybe the explosion didn't wipe out as much as one might think.

40 megatons equivalent of TNT.

 

[swaaye]

40 megatons equivalent of TNT.

O. Well in that case yeah there wouldn't be much in the way of structures anywhere near there.

 

[Richard]

easy retcon: because of inflation, in the future, a megaton is roughly equivalent to a tea-spoon of sugar.

 

[swaaye]

How was babby formed?

Where did I read that the aliens are a bioweapon?

 

[Laa-Yosh]

Probably some comics or theory site; but Ridley Scott's working on Prometheus and you can expect it in next june to answer at least some questions.

 

[AlNom]

Yeah, it was still speculated in the novels/comics that they were just too damn efficient at destroying things whilst being high on the survival tree to be natural. All it takes is just one egg for some unsuspecting species to get facehugged.

 

[I.S.T.]

Probably some comics or theory site; but Ridley Scott's working on Prometheus and you can expect it in next june to answer at least some questions.

That was spun-off into its own series. It's no longer connected to Alien.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

It is, they're just confusing things.
For a start the space jockey is back... how is that not connected to Alien and the creature's origins?

 

[Vadi]

Yeah, it was still speculated in the novels/comics that they were just too damn efficient at destroying things whilst being high on the survival tree to be natural. All it takes is just one egg for some unsuspecting species to get facehugged.

If you compare them to a black hole, then they would just wipe out any life forms in their vicinity and sleep until a victim passes by.
They could have evolved for a very long time by surviving the quantum singularity at the "beginning of our universe" ...

The gameplay looks incredibly slow, catered to being a shooter on rails for gamepads. The shooting seems like Wolfenstein or that SNES Jurassic Park game.
The first AvP was terrifing because they were so fast and deadly (at least on highest difficulty), and the motion detector was always on, like in the movie.


edit:
Here the detector seems to be a different flavor of "waypoint".

 

[Davros]

The first AvP was terrifing because they were so fast and deadly (at least on highest difficulty),

Plus you could not clear an area of aliens and be safe (unlike the sequels) as the game would continually spawn them.

 

[swaaye]

AVP2 has stupidly fast aliens too. I played that again fairly recently. The aliens are so fast that I usually can not get a bead on them and end up quickloading every 5 minutes. Not that fun really even if it is probably authentic. Some old games are designed around endless quickload/quicksave which I would say is not amazingly immersive game design.

 

[Vadi]

Funnily - while that was the case - I remember discovering that only after having played through it for the 100th or so time. The re-spawn took very long, and on high difficulty you wouldn't want to hang around.

That's where the somewhat linear levels didn't bother me also. The atmosphere was so good, I simply tried to beat the game, instead of searching every corner for "depth". Kind of like Super Mario, and both games are very good.

This "do everything syndrome" is destroying the atmosphere in games, though you are also responsible for this. I believe it's just our inability to focus on the game and roleplay it. I never wondered if Mario had a family while looking for Peach - it seems like an uncanny valley for story depth.

Again, regarding this game, it seems shallow, that can be OK. But it also looks like it's not challenging either, so nothing compelling would be left.

For example System Shock was an awful shooter game-play wise (compared to say Quake3), but it fitted the game, because shooting was a small part of a bigger whole, it added fear.